Why did the Yellow Turban Uprising spread rapidly across the country?

Why the Yellow Turban Uprising spread rapidly across the country

The Yellow Turban Uprising in the late Han Dynasty was the direct cause of the political chaos in the late Han Dynasty and the war that lasted for decades. But how could this Yellow Turban Uprising, which devastated people, gather 300,000 people in a short period of time, thereby shaking the foundation of the Han Dynasty!

The old saying goes: "Though a hundred-footed insect is dead, it is not stiff." This sentence very aptly describes the symptoms of the late dynasties of China, a huge country. The dynasties from Han to Tang, Song, Ming and Qing also There is no escape from this calamity. The peace on the surface may brew a bigger storm, stage a building about to collapse, or the darkness before dawn. Before the fuse is ignited, everything is step by step, but once the fuse is ignited, it will definitely be... The wind and rain are coming, and the common people living on this land are just a foil!

The reason why the Yellow Turban Uprising was able to spread rapidly across the country in a short period of time is due to the following reasons. If you understand these reasons, almost all uprisings in China will be instantly clear!

The favorable natural environment for the Yellow Turban Uprising and the early signs of turbulent political environment. As far as the entire Han Dynasty was concerned, the relatives and feudal princes had always posed a great threat to the centralization of power, and the relatives could easily establish a new king. , even deposed the emperor and established himself on his own, and even poisoned the young emperor. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it became more serious, and the ten permanent servants controlled the government. The sky shows strange signs, tsunamis, thunderstorms, hail, and plagues occur frequently. The eunuch held court and the emperor trusted Zhang Rang and called him "father". The government is deteriorating day by day, so that people in the world are confused and thieves are rising in droves.

In addition, in the first month of the first year of Zhongping, the epidemic was prevalent. Therefore, a large number of victims were trapped by the epidemic, so that people thousands of miles away were in dire straits. The eldest brother of the Zhang brothers in the Yellow Turban was originally a talented scholar, but he learned medical skills from an unexpected encounter and obtained three volumes of the Heavenly Book. At this juncture, Zhang Jiao used what he had learned throughout his life to spread talisman water and treat people's illnesses. Not to mention his medical skills, his deeds of treating illnesses and saving lives earned him a good reputation.

In the hearts of the people, he is a good old man who saves the world and preaches enlightenment from generation to generation. On this basis, he gave himself a resounding name "Great Teacher". In fact, the uprising It is very interesting in the first place. They all have roughly the same social or natural environment as the background, either in the autumn when natural disasters are frequent or when man-made disasters are rampant, such as Chen Sheng Wu Guang in the Qin Dynasty, the White Lotus Sect and the Tiandi Hui in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. Insurgents such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing Dynasty all had certain cultural accomplishments and social prestige. It is precisely because of this that these uprisings finally took shape.

Second, taking advantage of the ignorance of the people and respecting writing, the Han Dynasty respected the Tao of Qi and Huang, and the policy of the Yu family was regarded as a guideline by the rulers. Ordinary people have no access to cultural things and can only rely on Words serve as the basis for action.

Furthermore, Chinese culture has always respected people who can write, and in the Han Dynasty, this phenomenon of respecting intellectuals was even more prominent. However, Zhang Jiao was a failed scholar and an out-and-out intellectual. His cultural level is definitely not the level of simple literacy and hyphenation, so he is more comfortable with writing and composition, a primary form of cultural expression. Therefore, in terms of culture, the Yellow Turban rebels have a great advantage, and farmers in this They joined the Yellow Turban Uprising under the propaganda, so that the uprising spread across the country in just a few months!

Finally, the reason why the uprising broke out so quickly is that the political situation was turbulent in the last years of the dynasty, people's hearts were unstable, and the ruler's vicious policies of obscuring the people made it easy for the people to incite.