Yellow Turban Rebellion - Military Action

Military Action

The rebels were mostly concentrated in three areas. The group led by Zhang Jue and his two brothers gained their support from the region just north of the Yellow River, near Zhang Jue's home territory of Julu and his base in Wei Commandery. A second major rising took place in Guangyang and Zhuo commanderies in You Province, in the neighborhood of present-day Beijing. The third center of rebellion was in the three commanderies of Yingchuan, Runan and Nanyang. This force had evidently been intended to co-operate with the traitors inside Luoyang in the attempt to seize the capital, but even without that support, the rebels in this region were a major threat.

In the first weeks of the uprising, the government of Emperor Ling was chiefly concerned with finding and executing the traitors at the capital and with the immediate defense of the city. General-in-Chief He Jin, the half-brother of Empress He, was placed in charge of putting the rebellion down in the capital. In the third month, when these preparations had been made, three armies were sent out to deal with the rebellion. One was sent east against Zhang Jue. The other two, commanded by Huangfu Song and by Zhu Jun, were sent against the rebels in Yingchuan, Runan and Nanyang. Zhu recommended Sun Jian's appointment to call up troops and join his forces. With such widespread rebellion to deal with, the imperial commanders were anxious to gain any reinforcements that they could, and the territory of the lower Yangtze River, not directly affected by Zhang Jue's movement, was close enough to be a convenient source of recruits for the imperial army. Sun Jian rallied his troops, and he marched to join Zhu Jun's army with a thousand men under his command. The fighting against the rebels of Yingchuan, Runan and Nanyang was frequently fierce, with varying success.

In the third month of 184, soon after the rebellion had broken out, the rebel leader Zhang Mancheng defeated and killed the Grand Administrator of Nanyang, and in the fourth month, at the beginning of summer, the imperial army under Zhu Jun was defeated by Bo Cai in Yingchuan, while the Grand Administrator of Runan was defeated by another force of rebels.

In the middle of 184, however, the tide turned. In the fifth month Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun combined their armies to defeat Bo Cai, and in the sixth month they destroyed the rebels of Runan at the Battle at Xihua in Henan. Then the two generals went separate ways, Huangfu to join in the attack on the rebels north of the Yellow River, and Zhu to deal with the rebels of Nanyang. By this time, a new Grand Administrator had defeated Zhang Mancheng and killed him. In that campaign, however, the rebels were able to capture the capital of the commandery, Wan, and took refuge there.

For the next several months, the core of the campaign was the fighting in and around Wan, until the place was finally stormed and the defenders massacred in the eleventh month, midwinter at the beginning of 185. The capture of Wan was the last great defeat of the rebels. Their forces in the North China Plain had been destroyed in the field by the imperial armies during the summer, their strongholds were besieged and captured, and the three Zhang brothers were dead. The remaining, scattered rebels were pursued by commandery and county forces in various mopping-up operations, and in the twelfth month of the Chinese year, mid-February 185, the government issued a proclamation of celebration, changing the era name to Zhongping (中平), or "pacification achieved."

The rebels were defeated in February 185, but only two months later, the rebellion broke out again. In 185, it spread to the Taihang Mountains on the western border of Hebei 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 was not coordinated with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in other parts of the country.

In 192, the warlord Cao Cao was able to gain the submission of a rebel army after they marched into Yan Province. The rebels eventually ceased to pose a military challenge by 205.