Unite the common people of the nine provinces and shake the throne of a single family. I, Zhang Jiao, call upon the Great Han to die!
[Did Zhang Jiao's uprising really have the people's interests at heart, or did he have ambitions of his own? #Han Dynasty #Way of Supreme Peace #Zhang Jiao]
"What's there to say about the Yellow Turban Rebels?"
"Everyone has the right to kill rebels!"
Successive courts after the Han Dynasty, seeking to establish their legitimacy and discourage rebellion, branded Zhang Jiao and the Yellow Turban Rebels as rebels based on the histories left by the Han Dynasty.
Even though they knew why Zhang Jiao had rebelled.
Zhang Jiao looked at the sky screen and said, "What kind of person will I be in the words of later generations?"
["Did Zhang Jiao's uprising really have the people's interests at heart, or did he have ambitions of his own?"]
["Let's put it this way: as long as he didn't rise up, he had money and status."]
["After he rose up, his whole family died, and he was condemned as a bandit in the histories."]
["Yet what did he steal?"]
["Before his uprising, Zhang Jiao had always practiced medicine and saved people. Only in the end did he realize that no matter how many people he saved, he had no way to make the world."]
["That's why he rose up. In that era when people devoured people, who besides Zhang Jiao would truly care about the sick poor? The Great Good and Worthy Teacher was at least willing to give them a bowl of talisman water."]
["Of course they knew talisman water couldn't cure illness, but a bowl of it represented an ideal: I care, and I'm willing to help you."]
["And to the oppressed peasants at the bottom of Eastern Han society, that willingness to help was enough for them to give up everything."]
[In tribute to the Great Good and Worthy Teacher, everyone give us a line.]
[Unite the common people of the nine provinces and shake the throne of a single family.]
[The blue heavens are dead, the yellow heavens shall rise. In the year of Jiazi, great fortune shall come to all under heaven.]
[I, Zhang Jiao, call upon the Great Han to die!]
Seeing these comments, Emperor Gaozu of Han Liu Bang, Emperor Wen of Han Liu Heng, Emperor Xuan of Han Liu Xun, Emperor Guangwu of Han Liu Xiu, and the others were stunned!
Unite the common people of the nine provinces and shake the throne of a single family.
I, Zhang Jiao, call upon the Great Han to die!
Those two lines struck them far too hard.
The emperors who came after the Han Dynasty were just as shocked!
Could they let the people see this?
If Zhang Jiao was a good man, then the court was the villain.
If another Zhang Jiao appeared someday, wouldn't the people flock to his call?
[If I transmigrated to the late Eastern Han, I'd be willing to rise up alongside the Great Good and Worthy Teacher too.]
[That's not a rebellion. It's an uprising.]
[Zhang Jiao was the leader of the Yellow Turban Uprising. From the perspective of a feudal dynasty, Zhang Jiao was a rebel, and the Yellow Turban Uprising he launched was an act of rebellion, because it was an act of defiance against the court. From the common people's perspective, Zhang Jiao could be considered a hero, because he represented the demands of the people and fought for the interests of those at the bottom.]
[In many transmigration novels, the protagonist goes back to the late Han and Three Kingdoms period and either follows Cao Cao or works to restore the Han imperial house.
The Han imperial house isn't worth restoring, and Cao Cao slaughtered innocent people indiscriminately.
According to the Book of the Later Han, in the third year of Emperor Huan of Han's Yongshou era, the country still had a population of 56.47 million. By 280 CE, when Western Jin unified the Three Kingdoms, the total population was 7.67 million. In a little over a century, the population fell by 85 percent.
Natural disasters were constant in the late Eastern Han: earthquakes, locust plagues, flash floods, hailstorms, seawater flooding inland, and severe droughts.
The people could barely survive as it was, yet Emperor Ling of Han knew only how to indulge himself, seek out women, and sell offices and titles. On top of the natural disasters, he caused man-made calamities.
Dong Zhuo went on a killing spree, massacring innocent civilians. According to the Book of the Later Han, Dong Zhuo killed more than a hundred thousand people in Luoyang in a single year, leaving rivers of blood and corpses everywhere.
Dong Zhuo constantly extorted money and supplies from the people and levied heavy taxes on them without cause, leaving them struggling to survive.
After Cao Cao captured Xu Province's city and took counties including Lü, Suiling, Xiaqiu, and Xiangben, he carried out brutal massacres, slaughtering a total of a hundred thousand innocent civilians. Corpses piled up like mountains and blocked the Si River, stopping its flow and leaving "no human traces in several counties."
As Cao Cao himself wrote in a poem: "White bones lie exposed in the wilds; for a thousand li, no rooster crows. Of the living, one in a hundred remains; the thought of it breaks the heart."
When the Three Flanking Regions suffered from Li Cui's rebellion, the people who fled to Tao Qian were all killed by Cao Cao.
This wasn't war. It was a massacre, a massacre of unarmed civilians.
Cao Cao and his generals massacred cities as many as seven or eight times, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in all. These people were killed for nothing; it was entirely a man-made calamity. Massacres of cities and the killing of surrendered troops happened frequently in the late Eastern Han, causing the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians and a massive population decline, leaving nine out of ten households empty.]
[Finally, a few normal comments! As a young person of the new era who grew up under the red flag, I really couldn't stand transmigrating to an ancient feudal dynasty! Especially a chaotic age like the late Han.
If you transmigrate to the late Han and Three Kingdoms, never mind establishing an era where everyone is equal, at the very least you mustn't slaughter innocent people or kill hundreds of thousands, even millions, of unarmed civilians who pose no threat! You have to treat people like people! Because we're people too, and so are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers. In a few decades, we'll all be nothing but dry bones.]
[This is where Cao Cao falls short of Liu Bang. Of the three powers of Wei, Shu, and Wu, Cao Cao was the most likely to achieve unification, but he didn't. Go read about Liu Bang in the Records of the Grand Historian. Would he kill hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians who posed no threat?]
[I did. Liu Bang massacred cities too. It's just that, with Xiang Yu's example before him, his massacres weren't as famous as Xiang Yu's. Besides, Liu Bang ultimately won the empire, and Gaozu became famous in later generations for his benevolence. Who would have thought he massacred cities too?]
[In fact, cities were massacred in every dynasty. Ancient people were already used to it.]
Most Han emperors were still in shock, stunned by the sharp decline in population!
Emperors and officials of different eras had different attitudes toward the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians.
As for massacres of cities, those had indeed occurred in every dynasty.
Officials from the early Yuan Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, as well as from chaotic times, said it was only hundreds of thousands or millions killed. Was that a lot?
"People in later generations are so good! Just like the Great Good and Worthy Teacher, they treat us like people!"
"We swear to follow the Great Good and Worthy Teacher to the death!"
"They don't treat us like people, so let's fight them to the bitter end!"
"The Great Good and Worthy Teacher rebelled for our sake. The sky screen made it clear: if he hadn't led us in rebellion, he could have lived well. For our sake, he lost his whole family!"
"Pah! That's not rebellion, it's an uprising! We're rising up! We're a righteous army!"
If it had been possible, the emperors would have sealed off the sky screen at once.
The videos the sky screen played gave the emperors an increasingly bad feeling.
There were some things the people must not be allowed to see.
If they kept watching like this, the people's thinking would change.
More precisely, the people's thinking had already changed.
That would make it harder for them to rule over the populace and would affect imperial authority.
Unfortunately, they couldn't stop the sky screen.
The sky screen continued playing short videos.
[Why couldn't Daoism compete with Buddhism in ancient times? #Daoism]
Seeing the title, the Daoists frowned.
"Daoism couldn't compete with Buddhism? Did the two religions ever go to war?"
"People in later generations probably mean that Daoism wasn't as prosperous as Buddhism."
"That depends on when."
["Why couldn't Daoism compete with Buddhism in ancient times?"]
["Why else? Because the court wouldn't allow it!"]
["Have you all heard these words: the blue heavens are dead, the yellow heavens shall rise. In the year of Jiazi, great fortune shall come to all under heaven? The peasant uprising that swept across the late Eastern Han was launched by the Daoist Zhang Jiao."]
["With a precedent like that, what emperor would dare let it develop unchecked? If he wasn't careful, it could grow strong, come right up to his face, and declare: I, Zhang Jiao, call upon the Great Han to die."]
Emperor Ling of Han Liu Hong: Zhang Jiao again! Is there no end to this?
["If you were the emperor, could you withstand that?"]
["When Buddhism grew, at most it would acquire some land. As far as the ruling class was concerned, that just meant a few more landlords."]