The leader of the Huangchao Rebellion was named Huangchao and came from a family of salt merchants. In ancient Chinese feudal society, salt and iron belonged to the official monopoly, and despite the social turmoil of the late Tang Dynasty, the control of these traders was not so strict, but it was enough to see that Huang Chao's origin was still good.
Wealthy families can make Huang Chao indulge in something that interests him, such as riding and shooting, and then wenmo. Unfortunately, Huang Chao, who is talented in martial arts, is always a little worse when it comes to the imperial examination. Repeatedly falling off the list aroused the resentment in Huang Chao's heart, and he thought to himself: "Since this Li Tang Jiangshan will not let me be an official, I will push this Jiangshan and mix my own status." "Soon the time has come to let the Yellow Nest come out."
In 874 AD, the year when Emperor Tang ascended the throne, disasters occurred frequently throughout the country, and often the residents on this side were uprooted because of floods, and the people there had no harvest because of the drought that fell from the sky, and Henan, as the Central Plains region, was even more the hardest hit area; in addition, the political institutions at that time were completely chaotic, and the officials did not do anything at all, resulting in "the people were exiled and there was nowhere to complain."
In this context, Wang Xianzhi, who was also a salt merchant, took the lead in attacking and pulled up a team of thousands of people in Puyang, Henan, to conquer many states and counties in a row, and the momentum was very large. Seeing that Wang Xianzhi's uprising was so vigorous, Huang Chao, who was already dissatisfied with Li Tangjiangshan and keen on adventure, immediately moved his mind and also drew a team of thousands of people in his hometown to choose to join Wang Xianzhi's rebel army.
Huang Chao brought his own troops, plus he did have a certain combat quality, so he quickly rose to prominence within the rebel army, and it did not take long to achieve a similar status as Wang Xianzhi.
At first, the grass army led by Wang Xianzhi was indeed like a broken bamboo, but there were still three or two nails in the broken ship, and the Tang Dynasty army that reacted began to actively resist, and let Wang Xianzhi suffer a lot of losses, and Wang Xianzhi, who was in a high position, began to fear and fear. Once the rebel army cannot resist to the end with firm faith, it will be destroyed sooner or later.
The shaken Wang Xianzhi accepted the Tang Dynasty's offer and was named "Left Divine Strategy Army", but at this time, Huang Chao, who was equal to Wang Xianzhi in the Grass Army, did not have any title, which made Huang Chao very dissatisfied. On the one hand, he was dissatisfied with Li Tangjiangshan's favoritism, valued Wang Xianzhi but regarded himself as nothing, on the other hand, he was angry that Wang Xianzhi had forgotten his original intention and was easily bribed.
Wang Xianzhi's compromise also made the grass army full of complaints, in order to calm the resentment within the team, Wang Xianzhi could only continue to unite with Huang Chao, and was eventually killed by Song Wei.
After Wang Xianzhi's death, his troops immediately chose to defect to Huangchao, but this period of time was not a good time for the uprising, where Huangchao fought and lost, whether it was Jiangxi or Xiangcheng, Xinzheng or western Zhejiang, all were defeated, and the casualties did not know the geometry, which made Huangchao extremely depressed and could only choose to surrender temporarily.
However, not long after, Huang Chao realized that at this time, the Tang Dynasty's feudal towns were also full of contradictions, and it was impossible to really restrain himself, so he began to rebel again and chose to advance towards fujian. Huang Chao, who had failed several times, learned to be obedient this time, and he realized the importance of Confucian scholars, and asked the military to treat Confucians well and not to disturb the readers.
After capturing the Fujian area, Huang Chao chose to run to Guangzhou, "wanting to occupy the land of the South China Sea, forever as a nest." It's just that the Central Plains people have been in the Guangzhou area for a long time, and Huang Chao's army has just caught up with the epidemic, and after thinking about it again, he still decided to turn back to the Central Plains by controlling the Lingnan area.
Huangchao, who had won many battles in jiangsu and Zhejiang, finally attracted Li Tang's attention again, but at this time Li Tang's army could not contain the pace of Huangchao, which claimed to have a million troops. In November 880, Luoyang fell, and in early December of the same year, Huang Chao successfully invaded Chang'an, and Emperor Tang only ended up fleeing in a hurry. On December 13, not long after the invasion of Chang'an, Huang Chao officially ascended the throne as emperor, with the national name "Daqi".
Is the whole process of the Huangchao Uprising undesirable? No, at least in terms of treating the people, Huang Chao still did a very good job, whether it was to attack Luoyang or capture Chang'an, it did not disturb the people; but defeating Jiangshan did not mean that he sat in a stable position, Huang Chao himself and the peasant army led by him were very hateful to the Gongqing family, and implemented a high-pressure policy against these successive gongqing in Chang'an City, causing the clans to rebel.
At the same time, Emperor Tang, who had fled the country, actively sought the power of the clan town, regardless of whether these emissaries had other intentions, but in the face of Emperor Tang's edicts, they all chose to fight together against the Qi army.
Everyone has heard the name Zhu Wen, right? The founding emperor of Liang after the Five Dynasties period, the person who really overthrew the Tang Dynasty, actually belonged to Huang Chao at the beginning. However, Zhu Wen had already seen the shortcomings of huangchao's troops at this time, and understood that huangchao could only fight the world and could not form a stable rule at all, so he turned against the Tang Dynasty.
The people around him turned against each other, and the envoys of various festivals had already arrived, and Huang Chao, seeing that the general trend had gone, withdrew from Chang'an in April 883, and was chased and beaten by Li Keyong. In the first month of 884, Huangchao, which had besieged Chen Prefecture for several months but could not be conquered, was once again chased by Li Keyong, and when he reached the vicinity of Fengqiu, Huangchao had only more than a thousand remnants left.
Sometimes betrayal often comes from the people around him, seeing that the trend has gone, Huang Chao's nephew Lin Yan chose to sneak up on Huang Chao and kill Huang Chao and his brother and wife, and asked for credit for this, the emperor who sat for 4 years, once had a million troops of the uprising commander, and finally died in an absurd way.