Yellow Turban Rebellion

By 184 the Han court was dominated by eunuchs — Emperor Ling once called the eunuchs Zhang Rang and Zhao Zhong his “father” and “mother” — and official posts were sold for money. Floods along the Yellow River drove farmers from their land, and epidemics were recorded in 171, 173, 179, 182 and 185; some historians have suggested that they were the Antonine Plague spreading along the Silk Road, but this is only a hypothesis. Zhang Jue of Julu Commandery, a Taoist healer who treated the sick through confession of sins and charmed water, headed the Way of Supreme Peace (Taiping Dao); over some ten years his disciples won several hundred thousand followers in eight provinces of the empire, organised into thirty-six districts (fang) of 6,000–7,000 to more than 10,000 people each. Their slogan promised a new age in the jiazi year, the first year of the new sixty-year cycle — 184.

The rising was set for the fifth day of the third month, but Tang Zhou, one of the sect, betrayed the plan: Ma Yuanyi, who had won over even some palace eunuchs, was torn apart by chariots in Luoyang, and according to the Book of the Later Han more than a thousand suspects were put to death. Zhang Jue struck at once, in the second month. The rebels, who wore yellow headscarves, burned government offices, and within ten days the whole empire was in turmoil. Zhang Jue called himself “General of Heaven”, his brothers Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang “General of Earth” and “General of Man”. Emperor Ling made He Jin General-in-Chief, pardoned the proscribed partisans and sent armies under Lu Zhi, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun. Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun crushed the rebels of Yingchuan, while Lu Zhi besieged Zhang Jue in Guangzong until a eunuch’s false accusation got him arrested and brought back to Luoyang; after Dong Zhuo failed there too, Huangfu Song took over in the north. Zhang Jue died of illness at Guangzong in the autumn (his body was beheaded and the head sent to Luoyang), Zhang Liang fell at Guangzong late in 184, and Zhang Bao at Xiaquyang at the turn of 184 and 185. The main rising was put down in about nine months, but scattered Yellow Turban bands, some joined with the Black Mountain rebels, fought on until 204–205; the English Wikipedia and Wikidata therefore date the rebellion 184–205.

To defeat the rebels the court had to rely on generals and provincial governors who raised their own troops and refused to disband them, among them Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao. Their struggle for supremacy destroyed the central government and led to the Three Kingdoms; the Han dynasty formally ended in 220. The Way of Supreme Peace marks an important point in the history of Taoism, and the rebellion opens the 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.