Emperor Ling of Han - The Yellow Turban Rebellion

The Yellow Turban Rebellion

Sometime before 183, a major Taoist movement had emerged from Ji Province (冀州, modern central Hebei) -- the Taiping Sect (太平教), led by Zhang Jiao, who claimed he had magical powers to heal the sick. By 183, his teachings and followers had spread to eight provinces—Qing (青州, modern central and eastern Shandong), Xu (徐州, modern northern Jiangsu and Anhui), You (幽州, modern northern Hebei, Liaoning, Beijing, and Tianjin), Ji, Jing (荊州, modern Hubei and Hunan), Yang (揚州, modern southern Jiangsu and Anhui, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang), Yan (兗州, modern western Shandong), and Yu (豫州, modern central and eastern Henan). Several key imperial officials became concerned about Zhang's hold over his followers, and suggested that the Taiping Sect be disbanded. Emperor Ling did not listen to them.

Zhang in fact planned a rebellion. He commissioned 36 military commanders and set up a shadow government, and he wrote a declaration:

The blue heaven is dead. The yellow heaven will come into being. The year will be Jiazi. The world would be blessed.

(Under China's traditional sexagenary cycle calendar method, 184 would be the first year of the cycle, known as Jiazi.) Zhang had his supporters wrote Jiazi in large characters with white talc everywhere they could—including on the doors of many imperial offices in the capital Luoyang and other cities. One of Zhang's commanders, Ma Yuanyi entered into a plan with two powerful eunuchs, and they planned to start a rebellion to overthrow the Han Dynasty from inside.

Early in 184, this plot was discovered, and Ma was immediately arrested and executed. Emperor Ling ordered that Taiping Sect members be arrested and executed, and Zhang immediately declared a rebellion. Every member of the rebellion wore a yellow turban as the symbol—and therefore the rebellion became known for it. Within a month, Zhang controlled large areas of territory. Under suggestion by the eunuch Lü Qiang (呂強), who was sympathetic to the partisans, Emperor Ling pardoned the partisans to ward off the possibility they would join the Yellow Turbans. (Lü himself became a victim, however, when the other eunuchs, in retaliation, falsely accused him of wanting to depose the emperor, and he committed suicide later that year.)

Emperor Ling sent out a number of military commanders against the Yellow Turbans, and in these campaigns several of them distinguished themselves—including Huangfu Song, Cao Cao, Fu Xie (傅燮), Zhu Jun, Lu Zhi, and Dong Zhuo. A key military development with great implications later was that the Yellow Turbans were largely combatted with battle-tested Liang Province (涼州, modern Gansu) troops, who had been accustomed to fight the Qiang rebellions. In late 184, Zhang Jiao was killed, and while the rest of the Yellow Turbans were not defeated immediately, in the following year they gradually dissipated. Because of the Liang forces' contributions to the campaign, they began to be feared and began to look down on troops from all other provinces. During and in the aftermaths of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, many people from other provinces, in order to ward off pillaging by Yellow Turbans or governmental forces, also organized into military organizations, and a good number resisted government forces, and even after the Yellow Turbans were defeated, the central government's control of the provinces was no longer what it used to be.