"The heavens are dead, the yellow sky is standing, the years are in the nails, the world is auspicious"
Yellow Turban Uprising
Zhang Jiao is a native of Hebei, and his appearance is good, and he looks tall and majestic. Since he was a child, he has studied some private schools, and compared with ordinary people, he can write and fight, and he is quite strategic. Over time, it is natural to have a certain prestige among the people. At the same time, he also has two younger brothers; Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang. These two people are by no means idle people, following the eldest brother Zhang Jiao to the south and north, have seen a lot of the world, and are Zhang Jiao's right-hand man. Soon, the three of them saw that religion had a very strong control over the people, so they sorted out the teachings in the Taiping Classic and slowly formed a set of their own doctrines to buy people's hearts and control the vast number of toiling masses, which was the Taiping Dao founded by Zhang Jiao. (Later Hong Xiuquan's worship of God is likely to be borrowed from this.) ）
Taiping Daoist believers are spread throughout the north
The three brothers of the Zhang family are very good at taking advantage of people's reverence for religion. Through mysterious spells of water, incantations and intimidation, they used both grace and power, and soon developed hundreds of thousands of Taiping Daoist believers throughout the country. Coupled with the eastern Han dynasty court, it is indeed extremely corrupt, and the people's resentment is boiling.
Due to the suddenness of the incident, the imperial court was ill-prepared, and at the beginning the Yellow Turban army was like a bamboo, and its power reached seven prefectures and twenty-eight counties. Emperor Ling of Han was furious, appointed He Jin as a general, and sent Emperor Fusong and other famous generals of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which slowly stabilized the situation in which the official army was defeated and retreated all the way. Immediately after, he asked the famous ruthless Cao Cao to lead reinforcements and began to counterattack the rebel army.
Cao Cao, the adulterer of the world
The first to suffer was Zhang Liang, the "Rengong General." He was besieged by Dong Zhuo and Emperor Fusong, and finally beheaded by Emperor Fusong in October 184, and 80,000 Yellow Turban troops were killed at the same time. In November of the same year, Zhang Bao, the "general of the land gong", was also beheaded by Emperor Fusong in Quyang, and at the same time more than 100,000 people were captured, so that the main force of the Yellow Turban Army was basically destroyed, and the leading elder brother Zhang Jiao could not bear this blow, and soon fell ill and died. Since then, the Taiping Road has slowly disappeared.
This operation of the three brothers of the Zhang family ended in failure! However, it changed the political pattern at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and many precarious middle- and lower-level officers quickly stepped into the center of power because of their merits in suppressing the Yellow Turban.
Pattern map of the Eastern Han Dynasty after the Yellow Turban Uprising
The main reason for the failure is actually clear:
First: the enemy is too strong, you must know that the skinny camel is bigger than the horse, the strong army of the Eastern Han Court and the local strong armed strength is still very strong, this start of the fight, the Yellow Turban Army will face the crazy suppression of the officers and troops.
Second: Just a month before the uprising, due to the betrayal of traitors, Zhang Jiao's neiying Ma Yuanyi, who had been installed in the Beijing Division, was exposed, and was immediately split by the car, and the officers and soldiers vigorously hunted down and killed believers who believed in the Taiping Dao, and thousands of people were planted, and at the same time, the imperial court also sent troops to Jizhou to arrest Zhang Jiao. Due to the suddenness of the incident, Zhang Jiaoming knew that he was ill-prepared, and he was only forced to hastily revolt a month in advance.
Third: There is a shortage of military talents within the Yellow Turban Army who can recruit good warriors. Even the backbone generals Zhang Jiao, Zhang Liang, Zhang Bao, Bo Cai, Zhang Mancheng, Zhao Hong, and Han Zhong could not use tactical tactics well and flexibly. Always fight with the officers and soldiers, in a passive situation of being beaten. In addition, after the uprising, the rebel armies in various places were not fully assembled, resulting in isolated operations in various places, and thus being broken by the officers and troops.
The failure of the Yellow Turban Uprising illustrates the limitations of the peasant uprising
fourth:
Don't look at this brother who failed in the end, but he was indeed a cattle man, and later Zhu Yuanzhang participated in the Ming Sect, and the ancestor he followed was Zhang Jiao! Does anyone know the story here?
(Next issue: Huangchao Uprising)