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Zhang Jiao (?--184), a native of Julu (now Ningjin County, Hebei Province), leader of the Yellow Turban Rebel Army and founder of Taiping Road, Zhang Jiao believed in Huang Lao's theory in his early years and was very interested in it during the Han Dynasty. He also has deep research on the popular prophecy science, and is also familiar with folk medicine and witchcraft.

During the Jianning period (168---172), he took his two younger brothers and first started missionary activities in Yizhou, which was particularly severely affected by the disaster. During the Xiping reign of Emperor Ling (172---178), he founded Taiping Tao on the basis of recruiting a large number of students, cultivating disciples, and absorbing disciples.

Taiping Dao is one of the early sects of Taoism in my country. It takes as its own mission to overthrow the decadent Eastern Han Dynasty and establish a Taiping society. Its main feature is that it takes "The Taiping Jing" as its main classic and "Zhonghuang Taiyi" as its supreme god. Taiping Dao’s program, goals, doctrines, titles, parish organizations, slogans, religious rituals, activity content, missionary methods, etc. are all based on the Taiping Jing.

He spread everywhere that "the sky is dead, Huang Tian should stand, and the age of Jiazi will be good for the world."

According to the "Taiping Sutra", "The billions of stars are not as bright as one day; the words of the pillars of heaven are not as bright as the country's one virtuous man", Zhang Jiao calls himself a great sage and mentor, and is Taiping. The general leader of Taoism; his two younger brothers, Zhang Liang and Zhang Bao, claimed to be great doctors and were also one of the leaders of Taiping Taoism. If any member of Taiping Dao and his followers make a mistake, they only need to kneel before the leader, admit their mistake, and promise not to make it again, and they will be forgiven.

Zhang Jiao often holds a nine-section staff and uses talismans and spells to treat people based on traditional folk medical skills. And used this as a cover to widely publicize the doctrines and views contained in the Taiping Jing about opposing exploitation and money-making and advocating equality and mutual love, which won the support of the poor people. Zhang Jiao also sent eight disciples to spread the teachings in all directions. Develop disciples and "educate the world with good ways." In more than ten years, Taiping Taoist forces spread throughout the eight states of Qing, Xu, You, Ji, Jing, Yang, Yan, and Henan, with hundreds of thousands of followers. Mainly poor farmers, but also urban craftsmen, individual officials, and even eunuchs. Zhang Jiao divided the believers into thirty-six parties (diocesan organizations), with more than 10,000 people in the big party and six to seven thousand people in the small party. Each party had a canal commander in charge.

On this basis, Zhang Jiao followed the thinking method of "Five Elements" in the "Tai Ping Jing" and the theory of the mutual generation and restraint of the five elements, and selected Jiazi Day in the Jiazi Year, that is, the Pingyuan of Emperor Ling. A great uprising was held on March 5, 184. Zhang Jiao also put forward the loud slogan "The sky is dead, the yellow sky is standing, the year is Jiazi, the world is auspicious", trying to explain that according to the rise and fall of all things and the laws of the evolution of dynasties, most of the Han Dynasty (Cangtian) has been exhausted. As a result of Tu De (earth color yellow), representative of Huang Tian, ??Taiping Road should replace the Han Dynasty. In early February, leaders and believers from all parties began preparations. They used lime to write slogans such as "Jiazi" on the city gates and state and county government offices in Luoyang.

Ma Yuanyi, the commander-in-chief of Dafang Qu, first notified tens of thousands of believers in Jingzhou and Yangzhou to gather in Ye (Linzhang, Hebei) City to prepare for an uprising. As a result, the believers in charge of it began to gather in Yecheng. Ma Yuanyi also went to Luoyang, the capital, many times to agree that the eunuchs Chang Shi Feng and Xu Feng would be internal responders, and they would join forces with external collaborators on March 5 to start an uprising together.

About ten days before the scheduled date of the uprising, that is, around February 15th, a follower of Taiping Dao and a native of Jinan sent a letter to the government in Tang and Zhou Dynasties to report the uprising. Therefore, the imperial court urgently captured Ma Yuanyi, and the car was broken up in Luoyang; it also urgently mobilized various forces to capture and kill more than a thousand Zhang Jiao believers; it also notified Jizhou to capture Zhang Jiao and his family.

When Zhang Jiao and others discovered that the matter had been exposed, they used various methods to notify all parties at night and immediately revolted. During the uprising, the rebels first killed the captured corrupt officials and offered sacrifices to heaven. During the uprising, Zhang Jiao's army all wore yellow scarves (a symbol of the Yellow Sky), and they were called the "Yellow Turban Army" at the time. After the uprising, Zhang Jiao called himself "General Tiangong" based on the theory in the Taiping Jing that "there is rule by heaven, rule by earth, and rule by humans. The three qi are extremely powerful, and then the deviant actions govern all things." His younger brother Zhang Bao called himself "General Tiangong". General Gong, his younger brother Zhang Liang calls himself "General Gong".

After the uprising began, the masses responded one after another, either joining the army as believers or sending food and clothing. The rebel army developed rapidly. After the rebels captured a town, they often burned down government offices, killed corrupt officials, and distributed their property to the people.

Corrupt officials usually exercise power and power, but when they hear the arrival of the rebels, they are frightened and run away like dogs that have lost their homes. Within ten days, the world was shaken and the capital was shaken.

However, because the majority of the Yellow Turban Army was farmers, the organization was not tight enough and their grasp of policies and strategies was generally not good enough. In addition to attacking the government, they also generally attacked powerful people, scholar families and various wealthy families. As a result, the powerful and noble families quickly stood up and cooperated with the government rebels. About ten months after the uprising, the main force of the Yellow Turban Army was defeated by a combination of government and powerful forces. Soon, Zhang Jiao also died of illness during this period.

The Yellow Turban Uprising led by Zhang Jiao shook the foundation of the Eastern Han Dynasty, directly leading to warlord separatism and melee in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and then evolved into a three-legged situation. At the same time, it was also the first peasant uprising led by religion in the history of our country, which has far-reaching historical significance; it also established the historical pattern that Taoism will mainly spread and develop among the lower classes of society in the future.

Yellow Turban Peasant Uprising War

From the first year of Zhongping (184) to the third year of Chuping (192) of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Julu (junzhi Yingtao, now southwest of Ningshan, Hebei) A large-scale peasant uprising against the Eastern Han Dynasty led by Zhang Jiao and others.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, powerful landlords annexed a large number of lands, resulting in a large number of peasants becoming slaves or serfs, and class contradictions intensified unprecedentedly. Within the ruling class, relatives and eunuchs competed with each other and took turns controlling the government. The exclusive power of foreign relatives and eunuchs also hindered the promotion of sergeant-officials in the imperial court, causing fierce struggles between scholar-bureaucrats and foreign relatives and eunuchs, leading to two "party-controlled disasters" in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and deepening the political crisis within the ruling class. Due to political darkness, official corruption, high concentration of land, and declining rural economy, the majority of farmers were miserable and continued to hold uprisings. In the first year of Zhongping reign of Emperor Ling, the Yellow Turban Peasant Uprising led by Zhang Jiao was the general outbreak of peasant resistance. During the Guanghe period, Zhang Jiao served Huang Lao and preached with the "Taiping Jing" (also known as "Taiping Qingling Shu"). He was known as the "Taiping Dao" and claimed to be a "great sage and good teacher". His disciples traveled far and wide to preach and won the trust of farmers. In more than 10 years, there have been hundreds of thousands of followers in eight states: Qing, Xu, You, Ji, Jing, Yang, Yan and Yu. Zhang Jiao deployed Taoist disciples into 36 tribes (departments), with more than 10,000 people in Dafang and six to seven thousand in Xiaofang, each led by a Qu Commander. In the spring of the first year of Zhongping, Zhang Jiao called for an uprising with the political slogan "The sky is dead, Huang Tian is standing, the age of Jiazi is good for the world" ("Book of the Later Han·Huangfu Song Biography"). Hundreds of thousands of rebels from 36 parties took action at the same time, with great momentum. Because the rebels wore yellow scarves on their heads as a symbol, it was known as the "Yellow Turban Uprising" in history. At the beginning of the uprising, the rebels were victorious: the Yellow Turban Army in Hebei captured the royal family Anping King Liu Xu and Ganling King Liu Zhong alive; the Yellow Turban Army in Nanyang (Junzhi Wan, today's Nanyang City, Henan) killed the prefect Chu Gong and besieged Wancheng; Runan (Junzhi Pingyu, The Yellow Turban Army defeated the prefect Zhao Qian in Zhaoling (now northeast of Luohe City, Henan Province) in the north of Pingyu, Henan Province; the Yellow Turban Army in Guangyang (the county governed Ji County, southwest of today's Beijing City) attacked and killed Guo Xun, the governor of Youzhou, and Liu Wei, the prefect. The main force of the rebel army soon formed three major military centers: Zhang Jiao called himself General Tiangong; his younger brother Zhang Bao called himself General Digong, and Zhang Liang called General Renggong. They led the main force in Jizhou (the state governed Yecheng, today's Ye Town in the southwest of Linzhang, Hebei). South), Zhang Jiao and Zhang Liang were stationed in Guangzong (southeast of today's Weixian County, Hebei Province), and Zhang Baotun troops went to Quyang (now northwest of Jinxian County, Hebei Province), becoming the center of leading the uprising; Zhang Mancheng called himself the "god and divination envoy", He led the Nanyang Yellow Turban Army to garrison in Wancheng and became the main Yellow Turban force in the south; the Yellow Turban Army led by Bo Cai and Peng Tuo controlled Yingchuan (the county was governed by Yangzhai, today's Yuzhou, Henan), Runan, and Chen Guo (the seat was now Huaiyang, Henan). (market) front line and became the main force of the Yellow Turban in the East. In addition, there were also Yellow Turban uprising teams led by Bu Ji and others, which were active in Cangting, Dongjun (now northeast of Yanggu, Shandong). The Yellow Turban armies from all sides surrounded the capital Luoyang from three directions: north, east and south.

In order to suppress the rebels, Emperor Ling ordered a general amnesty for the party members and adjusted the internal contradictions of the ruling class; militarily, he mobilized the country's troops to attack separately. He Jin, the foreign relative, was appointed as the general, commanding the left and right Yulin armies, and stationed troops in Luoyang to defend the capital. He also mobilized troops at starry night to station in Hangu, Guangcheng, Yique, Dugu, etc. outside Luoyang? The eight major military passes of Yuan, Xuanmen, Mengjin, and Xiaopingjin were ordered to strengthen the peripheral defense of the capital; he ordered Zuo Zhonglang General Huangfu Song and You Zhonglang General Zhu Jun to lead more than 40,000 infantry and cavalry troops to attack the Yingchuan Yellow Turban Army; Beizhong Lang General General Lu Zhi led five colonels of the Northern Army and local officers and soldiers to attack the Yellow Turban Army in Hebei; the Nanyang front line was still defended by local officers and soldiers. The focus of the official and army's offensive was first directed at the Yingchuan Yellow Turban Army's Bo Cai Department, which was approaching Luoyang, the capital.

In April of the first year of Zhongping, Bocai led his troops to defeat Zhu Jun and surrounded Huangfu Song in Changshe (now northeast of Changge, Henan). Later, due to lack of combat experience, he formed a camp based on grass and faced strong winds. Huangfu Song took advantage of the night wind to set fire to the rebel army and was defeated. Huangfu Song joined forces with Zhu Jun and Cao Cao to attack, and tens of thousands of rebels were killed (see the Battle of Changshe). Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun took advantage of the victory to attack Runan and Chen Guo's Yellow Turban Army, defeating Bo Cai's troops in Yangzhai (now Yuzhou, Henan), and Bo Cai died in battle; they also defeated Peng Tuo's troops in Xihua (now South China, Henan). In August, the Yellow Turban Army of Dongjun (the county governed Puyang, southwest of present-day Puyang City, Henan Province) was defeated again in Cangting. They massacred more than 7,000 rebels. Buji was also captured and killed. The main Yellow Turban forces in Dongjun, Runan and Yingchuan counties were destroyed. Zhang Mancheng commanded the main force of the Yellow Turbans in Nanyang to attack Wancheng, a strategic location in the Central Plains. However, he was resisted by Qin Jie, the prefect of Nanyang, and Zhang Mancheng died in the battle. Zhao Hongji became the commander-in-chief and conquered Wancheng, with the number of his troops growing to more than 100,000. In June, after Zhu Jun's troops defeated the Yellow Turban Army in Yingchuan, they turned to attack the Yellow Turban Army in Nanyang. They joined forces with Xu Miu, the governor of Jingzhou, and Qin Jie, the prefect of Nanyang, to besiege Wancheng with more than 18,000 troops. The Yellow Turban Army held on for two months. Seeing that the city was difficult to attack, Zhu Jun withdrew his troops to lure the enemy and secretly set up an ambush. The Yellow Turban Army, unaware of the real situation, went out of the city to pursue, but were ambushed by the official army. They suffered heavy losses and were forced to retreat to Wancheng. Finally, because the main force was wiped out and the city was in danger, the remaining troops, led by Sun Xia, moved to Jingshan (now northwest of Nanyang City, Henan Province) near Xi'e (now northeast of Nanyang City, Henan Province) in November. Zhu Jun led the army to pursue, and Sun Xia and more than 10,000 people died in the battle, and the main force of the Yellow Turbans in Nanyang was defeated. After the Yellow Turban Army in Yingchuan and Nanyang were suppressed, the rulers focused their operations on Hebei. Because Lu Zhi led his army to besiege Guangzong for more than three months, Emperor Ling sent Dong Zhonglang general Dong Zhuo to replace Lu Zhi, which also resulted in Zhang Jiao's defeat at Xia Quyang. In October, the Eastern Han Dynasty again appointed Huangfu Song as commander and attacked Guangzong. When Zhang Jue died of illness, the Yellow Turban Army lost its leader and its morale was greatly reduced. Huangfusong took advantage of the situation and launched a sudden night attack. The rebels responded hurriedly, and more than 30,000 people including Zhang Liang and others were killed in the battle (see the Battle of Guangzong). In November, Huangfu Song moved his troops to attack Quyang. Zhang Bao was killed in the battle, and more than 100,000 people in the city were killed (see the Battle of Quyang). So far, the main forces of the Yellow Turban Army in the north and south of the Yellow River have been defeated by the official army and local powerful armed forces. But the remnants of the Yellow Turban Army still persisted in fighting. In February of the fifth year of Zhongping, the remnants of the Yellow Turbans in the north, under the leadership of Guo Tai (also known as Guo Da), raised the righteous flag in Baibo Valley (now Yonggu Town, Xiangfen, Shanxi Province), named "Baibo Yellow Turbans", and attacked Taiyuan and entered Hedong ( The county was in Anyi (now the city of King Yu in the northwest of Xia County, Shanxi Province), and defeated Dong Zhuo's general Niu Fu. In May, Ma Xiang and Zhao Zhi named themselves Yellow Turbans, and they revolted in Mianzhu, Sichuan (now southeast of Mianzhu, Sichuan), and even defeated Yizhou ( It controlled most of Yizhou area; in October of the same year, Qing Dynasty controlled most of Yizhou. Xu Huangjin's army resurrected and attacked Beihai (governing the northwest of today's Changle, Shandong), entered Yanzhou (governing the southwest and west of today's Shandong), and fought against Shouzhang (the southwest of Dongqian, today's Shandong), and held on for several years. However, due to the lack of unified command of the various rebel armies, they fought independently, and were eventually defeated by powerful powers from various places, and were defeated one after another. The Eastern Han Dynasty regime quickly collapsed after the Yellow Turban Uprising.

Comment: The Yellow Turban Uprising was the first organized and prepared peasant war under the cover of religion in the history of our country. It provided valuable experience for subsequent peasant uprisings and occupied an important position in the history of Chinese peasant wars. . The successful experience of the Yellow Turban Peasant Uprising War is mainly reflected in the following: First, it set forth a clear goal of struggle, that is, to eliminate the Eastern Han Dynasty regime and establish its own rule. This played an important role in calling on and uniting the people to participate in the uprising. Second, the use of religious forms to propagandize and organize the uprising paralyzed the government, accumulated strength, and made relatively sufficient preparations for the uprising. Third, the uprising plan was formulated more carefully and concretely. The so-called "both internal and external" and "eight states develop simultaneously" reflect this characteristic. Although the implementation of this uprising plan later encountered great difficulties due to the traitor's informant, after Zhang Jiao's decisive handling, it was basically implemented, thus dealing a heavy blow to the Eastern Han Dynasty. Fourth, he had a determined fighting spirit, preferred to die rather than surrender, dared to attack fortresses, and had the courage to sacrifice. This demonstrated to the world the fighting spirit and noble integrity of the uprising soldiers. But the lessons of the failure of the Yellow Turban Peasant War are also very profound.

Like all failed peasant uprisings, it did not have a long-term strategic vision (such as Chen Sheng, Wu Guang Uprising, Green Forest Uprising, Chimei Uprising, late Sui Peasant Uprising, Huang Chao Uprising, late Ming Dynasty Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong Peasant Uprising, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement), so it cannot be mentioned It has not established a rear base and organized combat forces, so troop support is limited and combat operations are constrained; it lacks unified command and mutual cooperation and operates independently, thus causing conflicts in the theater It was isolated and divided, so that it was defeated one by one by the enemy's dominant main force; it did not understand the importance of adopting mobile warfare, guerrilla warfare and other mobile warfare forms when the enemy was strong and we were weak, so it was keen on attacking and defending the city, and the main force of the insurgent army was Sticking to one place, fighting hard and attrition with the enemy, until they exhaust their fighting power and are defeated. All of these were serious mistakes made by the rebel army in terms of strategy and combat guidance, and were also the direct reasons for the failure of this vigorous peasant revolutionary war