YELLOW TURBAN REBELLION

The 'Yellow Turban Rebellion', sometimes also translated as the 'Yellow Scarves Rebellion', () was a 184 peasant rebellion against Emperor Lingdi of the Han Dynasty of China. It is named for the color of the scarves which the rebels wore around their heads. The rebels were associated with secret Taiping Taoist societies and the rebellion marked an important point in the history of Taoism. The rebellion is the opening event in the Chinese literary classic ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms''.

Contents

Causes

The rebels

Founders

Taoist Sect

Religious practices

Military action

Aftermath and impact

References

Causes

A major cause of the Yellow Turban Rebellion was an agrarian crisis, in which famine forced many farmers and former military settlers in the north to seek employment in the south, where large landowners took advantage of the labor surplus and amassed large fortunes. The situation was further aggravated by smaller floods along the lower course of the Yellow River. Further pressure was added on the peasants by high taxes imposed on them in order to build fortifications along the Silk Road and garrisons against foreign infiltrations and invasions. In this situation, landowners and landless peasants formed armed bands (around AD 170), setting the stage for an armed conflict.
At the same time, the Han Dynasty showed internal weakness. The power of the landowners had been a problem for a long time already (s. Wang Mang), but in the run-up to the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the court eunuchs in particular gained considerably in influence on the emperor, which they abused to enrich themselves. Ten of the most powerful eunuchs formed a group known as ''The Ten Regular Attendants'' and the emperor referred to one of them (Zhang Rang) as his "foster father". Consequently, the government was widely regarded as corrupt and incapable and against this backdrop, the famines and floods were seen as an indication that a decadent emperor had lost his mandate of heaven.

The rebels

Founders

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was led by Zhang Jiao known as the "General of Heaven"(who is referred to as Zhang Jue in the Moss Roberts' English translation of the ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'') and his two younger brothers Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, who were born in the Julu district of the Ye Prefecture. The brothers had founded a taoist religious sect in Shandong Province. They were healers, usually taking patients for free because they were too poor to pay. They saw the harshness of the world from seeing the peasants — they were often abused by the local government, or too hungry from the heavy taxes.

Taoist Sect

The Yellow Turbans considered themselves followers of the "Way of Supreme Peace" (Tai Ping Dao) and venerated the deity ''Huang-lao'', who according to Zhang Jiao had given him a sacred book called the Crucial Keys to the Way of Peace (Tai Ping Yao Shu). Zhang Jiao was said to be a sorcerer and styled himself as the "Great Teacher". The sect propagated the principles of equal rights of all peoples and equal distribution of land; when the rebellion was proclaimed, the sixteen-word slogan was created by Zhang Jiao: 蒼天已死，黃天當立。歲在甲子，天下大吉。 ("The Blue Sky (ie. the Han Dynasty) has perished, the Yellow Sky (ie. the rebellion) will soon rise; in this year of Jia Zi, let there be prosperity in the world!") Since all three of the brothers were healers, they spread it easily by telling their patients to spread it amongst the peasants.

Religious practices

Nearly all of the religious practices of the sect were communal activities (collective trances, fasts).^[1]

Military action

To oppose the Yellow Turbans, Huangfu Song, Lu Zhi, and Zhu Jun formed a subjugation force to go on the offensive. Liu Yan looked for people to be in the volunteer forces. Liu Bei one of the people to answer the call, rescued General Dong Zhuo from the enemy. In AD 184, the Yellow Turban Rebellion started in the provinces Shandong and Henan. At this time the rebel force consisted of approximately 360,000 fighters. He Jin, the half-brother of the empress, was placed in charge of putting the rebellion down. The rebels were defeated in February AD 185, but only two months later, the rebellion broke out again. In AD 185, it spread to the Taihang Mountains on the western border of Hebei Province and in 186 it reached Shaanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning, in 188 it reached Shanxi. In the same year, a second independent uprising took place in Sichuan, but it wasn't coordinated with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in other parts of the country. In December 188 and early in 189, the rebels threatened Luoyang, which was the capital city of the Han Dynasty at the time. As a reaction, imperial troops were sent both west and south to confront the rebels. Although the southern detachment was able to score a victory, its commander, Lu Zhi, was arrested for not keeping on the offensive against the rebels. In 192, Cao Cao was able to defeat the rebels again after they marched into Yanzhou, who eventually ceased to pose a military challenge by the year 205. Cao Cao defeated Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, effectively swaying the momentum to the imperial forces. Zhang Jiao died of illness, and a year later the rebellion was crushed.

Aftermath and impact

While the Yellow Turban rebellion was defeated eventually, the military leaders and local administrators gained self-governing powers in the process. This hastened the collapse of the Han Dynasty in AD 220. After emperor Lingdi died in AD 189, a power struggle between He Jin and the eunuchs ensued in which He Jin was assassinated on September 22 189. He Jin's chief ally Yuan Shao retaliated by setting the emperor's palace on fire and slaughtering the eunuchs. Finally, the warlord Dong Zhuo was able to gain control over the underage heir to the throne which he used as a legitimation for occupying the capital, which was ransacked on the occasion. Because of his cruelty, Dong Zhuo was murdered in 192, which set the stage for Cao Cao's rise to power.
Although the rebellion was crushed, its legacy lived on. Despite the negativity portrayed in The ''Romance of Three Kingdoms'', several peasant uprisings in China actually used the Yellow Turban rebellion as their role model.
The Yellow Scarves Rebellion is the opening event in the Chinese literary classic ''"Romance of the Three Kingdoms"''. Two Koei video game series, ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' and ''Dynasty Warriors'', are loosely based on the ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' and also contain the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Earlier version of the video game used the name ''Yellow Scarves Rebellion'', but in later versions this was changed to ''Yellow Turban Rebellion''.

References

1. China: "Its History and Culture", W.Scott Morton, , , , , ISBN 0-07-043424-7