Yellow Turban Rebellion

The Yellow Turban Rebellion was a great peasant uprising against the Eastern Han dynasty of China, inspired by a Taoist religious movement. It broke out in 184 AD under Emperor Ling and its main forces were crushed within a year, but remnant groups fought on until about 205. The generals and regional governors who put it down gained power at the expense of the court, opening the way to the warlord era and the Three Kingdoms period.

By the 180s the authority of the Han dynasty was badly eroded. A clique of court eunuchs dominated Emperor Ling and enriched themselves. Floods along the Yellow River drove farmers off their land, and epidemics were recorded in 171, 173, 179, 182 and 185. Many people read these disasters as signs that the dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven, the divine approval that justified its rule.

The rebellion grew out of a Taoist sect called the Way of Supreme Peace, led by Zhang Jue (also known as Zhang Jiao) and his younger brothers Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang. Zhang Jue won followers as a faith healer, treating the sick by having them confess their sins, and sent disciples across northern China. The movement expected a new age to begin in the jiazi year, the first of a new sixty-year cycle, which fell in 184. Its slogan declared that the "Azure Sky" was already dead and the "Yellow Sky" would soon rise, and yellow became the colour of the rebels' headscarves, from which the revolt takes its name.

Zhang Jue planned a coordinated uprising across the empire, but shortly before it was due one of his followers betrayed the plot. His agent Ma Yuanyi was executed in the capital, Luoyang, and hundreds of suspected sympathisers were arrested and killed. Forced to act early, Zhang Jue proclaimed the revolt in March 184. Perhaps 360,000 rebels attacked government offices and seized whole commanderies. The main centres were in the north around Zhang Jue's home region, in the area of present-day Beijing, and in what is now Henan.

Emperor Ling made his brother-in-law He Jin commander-in-chief and sent three generals, Lu Zhi, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun, against the rebels with around 40,000 troops. Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun, joined by a young cavalry officer named Cao Cao, defeated the rebels in Yingchuan and went on to clear other districts. Lu Zhi besieged Zhang Jue at Guangzong but was recalled after a false accusation by a eunuch. Zhang Jue died of illness in October 184. Huangfu Song then defeated and killed Zhang Liang in a night attack, in which tens of thousands of rebels reportedly died, and soon afterwards killed Zhang Bao and accepted the surrender of more than 100,000 rebels. Zhu Jun retook the southern city of Wancheng. By early 185 the main rebellion was over, and the emperor marked the victory by changing the era name to Zhongping, "pacification achieved".

Remnant groups kept rising for two decades. The White Wave Bandits in the north allied with the Xiongnu leader Yufuluo, rebels in Yi province in the south-west proclaimed their own emperor, and huge bands roamed the eastern provinces. In 192, after a huge Yellow Turban host invaded Yan province, Cao Cao defeated it; more than 300,000 people reportedly surrendered to him, and he formed the best of their fighters into his elite Qingzhou Army.

The rebellion killed hundreds of thousands of rebels, uprooted many civilians and left the government dependent on military commanders and local strongmen. After Emperor Ling's death in 189, the court collapsed into violence between He Jin and the eunuchs, and the warlord Dong Zhuo seized the capital. Civil wars followed, the Han dynasty collapsed completely by 220, and China entered the Three Kingdoms period, which lasted for nearly a century. The uprising also opens the fourteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Our 200 map shows the Han empire in its last decades, soon after the rebellion and while the warlords were fighting over its remains.