Huang Chao, the leader of the peasant army uprising during the Tang Dynasty, was the creator of the largest cannibalism record in Chinese history for his brutality and indiscriminate killing of innocents. However, it was this murderous demon king who inadvertently eradicated a cancer that had been harmful for China for more than 900 years, and benefited future generations a lot.
So, what is this cancer? And how did the Yellow Nest eradicate it?
Huang Chao's life is legendary, he received elite education from an early ageIn 820 AD, a child named Huang Chao was born in the Caozhou area of Shandong Province, and his family has been engaged in the business of selling illicit salt for generations, so his family is wealthy.
Huang Chao received elite education since he was a child, not only good at arching horses, but also familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics, which can be said to be a civil and military all-rounder. As an adult, he traveled to Chang'an to take the imperial examination with a desire for fame, and his family provided him with ample funds.
However, despite the cold and summer, Huang Chao participated in many imperial examinations, but finally fell to Sun Shan and failed to pass the examination.
Huang Chao's repeated defeats made him feel deeply lost, and he began to question that it was not his own lack of ability, but the narrow-mindedness of the feudal rulers that led to his defeat.
In February of the same year, he wrote a poem in Chang'an, "Fu Chrysanthemum after the First Month", the content of the poem is: "When autumn comes on September 8, chrysanthemums bloom, flowers wither, and the fragrance permeates the entire Chang'an City, **A covers the whole city." ”
In this poem, Huang Chao uses chrysanthemums to symbolize the oppressed people, and a hundred flowers to allude to the corrupt and incompetent ruling group, expressing his determination to one day use what he has learned so that those feudal rulers cannot ignore him.
Huang Chao's foundation originated from his ancestors, and after inheriting this inheritance, he became the leader of the Salt Gang in the local area with his knowledge and ability. His family's private salt business continued to expand, but the resentment in his heart did not subside.
He still hated the rulers and the clans, believing that they had reduced him to the sale of illicit salt. In 874 AD, natural disasters swept across the country, especially in Shandong and Henan, which were seriously affected, and the people lacked food, but increased taxes, causing resentment.
In this case, people were forced to revolt.
When the Huangchao Uprising broke out, Wang Xianzhi, as a smuggler of salt in Puyang, Henan, had successfully gathered tens of thousands of resistance forces, making the state and county ** army helpless.
Seeing that Wang Xianzhi, who has the same identity, can succeed, Huang Chao is naturally not far behind. So he gathered his sons and nephews and led thousands of people to establish a rebel army near Caozhou, in response to the uprising of Wang Xianzhi's troops in the west.
As time passed, the rebel army grew in strength, and more and more peasants, suffering from harsh taxes, joined the Yellow Nest's troops. Compared to Wang Xianzhi's troops, Huang Chao has a clearer slogan, that is, "Heaven makes up for equalization", and he calls for changing the status quo of wealth inequality so that everyone can live an equal and prosperous life.
The uprising between Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao stemmed from idealized slogans and the support of the people. They converged in Yizhou to fight against the counterinsurgency forces of the imperial court. Despite the strength of the rebel army, under the suppression of the imperial army, Wang Xianzhi and others still suffered defeat.
However, just as they were about to be wiped out, the rulers of the imperial counterinsurgency army adopted a strategy of raising their own respect, allowing Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi to regain their strength, and moved to Yangzhai and other places in Henan Province, where they began their wandering careers.
After Wang Xianzhi's uprising, he skillfully used tactics to successfully defeat the officers and troops who came to support, and killed the general of the Tang Army and the squire of the Criminal Department, and captured the assassin of Ruzhou, making the situation in the eastern capital of Luoyang in danger.
In desperation, Tang Xizong issued an edict to pardon Wang Xianzhi, hoping to recruit his rebel army. However, Wang Xianzhi was caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, the court's **Houlu is very good**; On the other hand, the rebel army was gaining momentum, and he decided to wait a little longer and observe how the situation changed before making a decision.
At the beginning of the rebel army, the local states and counties of the imperial court were more afraid and chose to stick to the city, but unexpectedly gave Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao the opportunity to develop and grow. They coerced the people south, captured more than ten cities, and wantonly burned and looted everywhere they went, destroying the local ecological environment and forcing the people to follow the rebel army.
In just half a year, Wang Xianzhi Huangchao's rebel army has grown to 300,000. However, the imperial army still did not move, and the imperial court ** believed that although there were cases in history where the rebel army was successfully eliminated, if the rebel army died, the emperor was afraid that the emperor would "hide the bow and hide the bird", so he continued to adopt the strategy of "raising the self-respect" and watched the growth of the rebel army of Wang Xianzhi Huangchao.
A few months later, the rebel army led by Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao attacked Qizhou, but the Qizhou Assassin Shi was unable to resist, so he temporarily delayed the offensive of the rebel army under the pretext of asking Wang Xianzhi for the title.
After a brief discussion, Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao agreed to this plan. However, the Tang Dynasty ** played with their hearts in this matter, they only promised to crown Wang Xianzhi as the general of the Shence Army, and did not mention anything about Huang Chao.
Huang Chao was outraged by this outcome, believing that to this day, the imperial court still ignored his existence. So, he summoned a large number of rebel generals and asked Wang Xianzhi in person: "We once agreed to sweep away the injustice in the world, but now you plan to surrender to the imperial court alone, what will happen to the tens of thousands of soldiers who follow us?" ”
Hearing this, the crowd present immediately became excited, and even Huang Chao personally shot Wang Xianzhi. Seeing that everyone was against surrendering, Wang Xianzhi finally refused to surrender to Tang, and successfully broke through the city of Qizhou, killing all the soldiers in the city.
This incident made Huang Chao realize that following Wang Xianzhi could not achieve his goal, and only by acting alone could he truly strengthen himself. Therefore, after capturing Qizhou, he led his army north and returned to his native Shandong.
In 877 AD, Huang Chao led his army to break through Yuncheng in Shandong, killed the envoy of the local feudal town Jiedu, and then conquered Yizhou, which quickly grew into a team of tens of thousands of people.
At the end of the same year, Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi went south to fight together, and the two armies fought side by side, conquering many cities successively. However, due to the uneven distribution of spoils, Huang Chao took the initiative to lead the army north to return to the Central Plains, while Wang Xianzhi began to negotiate with the counterinsurgency army of the imperial court because of his strong soldiers.
At that time, the imperial court tricked Wang Xianzhi into sending the number one general, Shang Junchang, to discuss, and then secretly killed Shang Junchang and others. The imperial court took advantage of Wang Xianzhi's anger and easily led him into a trap and wiped out his troops.
After the death of Huangchao Wang Xianzhi, Huangchao proclaimed himself the "Yellow King" and regarded himself as a sky-high general, leading hundreds of thousands of troops to attack various prefectures and counties. However, in Jing, Xiang and other places, he encountered obstacles and suffered defeats, so he begged the local feudal towns to surrender.
He believed that his defeat was not due to the Tang Dynasty, but to the army of the local feudal towns. If he was able to avoid these feudal towns, he could have achieved even greater ambitions.
In August of the following year, Huang Chao attacked again, and led his army across the local feudal towns and directly to the richest southern region of the Tang Dynasty. The states and counties in the south were safe and sound, so in the face of the cruelty of the Huang Chao army, they asked for surrender.
However, Huang Chao ordered the killing of the government and officials, drove all the people as shields, and assisted the rebels in attacking the city and plundering the land.
After the Huangchao Rebellion, he captured Fuzhou and Guangzhou, and tried to win the position of envoy of Guangzhou from the imperial court. However, the Tang Dynasty was well aware of the importance of the southern economy and did not allow Huang Chao to monopolize power, so it sent troops to suppress it.
When the feudal towns heard of the war in the south, they volunteered to profit from it. The Yellow Nest's army consisted mainly of northerners, who faced problems of adaptation while fighting in the south, and the situation was exacerbated by a sudden plague.
In desperation, Huang Chao could only lead the army back to the Central Plains.
By the time Huangchao's rebel army returned to the Central Plains, their numbers had exceeded hundreds of thousands. However, due to the long-term war in the Central Plains, it is no longer possible to meet the needs of such a large number of people.
Under these circumstances, Huang Chao was forced to capture civilians from Xu, Ru, Tang, Meng, Zheng and other prefectures and counties, mashing them into meat puree and serving as food for front-line soldiers. According to historical records, the rebel army of Huangchao ate 3,000 dead corpses every day, and in the space of a year, they ate millions of innocent people.
After Huang Chao became emperor, he first captured Luoyang, and then marched again, forcing the orthodox emperor of the Tang Dynasty to leave. He then ascended the throne in Chang'an City, established the Great Qi State, and lived a life of luxury.
Because he was born in the rebel army, he was extremely disgusted with the ruling class of the Tang Dynasty, and even wantonly killed Li Tang in Chang'an City, truly realizing his wish to "bring the best armor in the city".
Although the Tang Emperor's uprising ended in failure, if Huang Chao had decisively killed the Tang emperor at that time, perhaps he would have been able to usher in a new era. However, fate is always full of unknowns, and no one can predict that the Li Tang royal family will stand up again in just half a year when it seems to be dying.
At this time, Huang Chao was still intoxicated with his dream of Emperor Chang'an, completely unaware that the shadow of death was slowly approaching. When the Tang army tentatively attacked Chang'an, Huang Chao thought that the Tang Dynasty army had arrived and hastily withdrew from Chang'an.
However, when he found that there was only a part of the Tang army, he immediately returned to his division ** and successfully recaptured Chang'an City. However, this back and forth left enough time for Tang Xizong to transfer troops, and the armies of various feudal towns also marched towards the Beijing Division.
Li Keyong was short of food and grass in Chang'an, but Huang Chao was reluctant to leave Chang'an because of his greed for pleasure, which led to the rebel army in a predicament. Hedong Jiedu made Li Keyong lead the army to fight, and Huang Chao led the army to fight, and they clashed many times in one day, all of which ended in failure.
At this time, the soldiers of the local feudal towns saw the inferiority of the rebel army and began to attack fiercely, and Huangchao was defeated, withdrawing from Chang'an overnight and marching towards the Chenzhou area. After arriving in Chenzhou, Huang Chao found that the other party had already defended himself, but the rebel army had just experienced a major defeat, and in order to solve the problem of food and supplies, Huang Chao could only forcibly attack the city.
During the months of storming Chenzhou, Huang Chao used the traditional method of supplementing the army's food with the human body to help the soldiers regain their strength. However, Li Keyong's army reappeared, and Huangchao's rebel army suffered another defeat, with tens of thousands of soldiers killed on the battlefield and a large number of rebel members forced to surrender.
Huang Chao and the others escaped with only a few hundred, and Huang Chao's nephew Lin Yan, seeing that the situation was critical, staged a mutiny, killed Huang Chao's family, and dedicated his head to the official army, but he was executed on charges of being a party accomplice to Huang Chao.
The Huangchao Uprising was full of flames, and the capital of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an, and Luoyang, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, were reduced to ashes in the war, and the lives of hundreds of people were lost in the shadow of the war. However, when the smoke cleared, we found that in addition to the decline in population, the once feared families no longer existed.
They had played a key role in the ascension to the throne of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, but at this moment, their historical mission has come to an end.
In the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the influence of the family was omnipresent, and they manipulated the heroes to compete with each other, whether it was Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan or Yuan Shao, they had their shadows behind them.
However, with the implementation of the nine-grade Zhongzheng system of Emperor Cao Pi of Wei Wen, the family gradually grasped the right to be an official, resulting in a situation where there was no poor family in the upper grade and no scholar clan in the lower grade.
Throughout the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the family was still an important force that could influence the change of imperial power, and even the rulers of the Southern and Eastern Jin Dynasties had directly shouted the slogan of "King and Horse, Share the World", and the prestige of the Yingchuan Wang clan exceeded that of the Sima royal family.
In ancient China, the family of gate lords relied on their own rights to protect the homeless, annex land, control cultural books and other knowledge, and thus manipulate the national employment system, so that the imperial rulers had to rely on their power.
This situation improved after Emperor Wen of Sui implemented the "imperial examination" system, but the imperial examination system shook the foundation of the family, so after the death of Emperor Wen of Sui, the family united with the Guanlong nobles and taught Emperor Yang of Sui a lesson, which directly led to the fall of the Sui Dynasty in the emerging stage.
After the founding of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin felt the threat of the family, but he had to rely on these ministers. Therefore, during the Li Yuan period, the imperial examination system did not make significant progress.
After Li Shimin ascended the throne, he was boycotted by the family because he did not seize the throne through legitimate means. Even when compiling the "Clan Chronicles", the ministers openly ranked the representatives of the family and the five surnames and Qiwang before the Li Tang royal family, which made Li Shimin angry and could only forcibly order the revision of the "Clan Chronicles".
After the end of the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty, although the emperors briefly suppressed the big families, after Li Shimin's death, members of the five surnamed Qiwang families still occupied a large number of prime ministerships.
During the reign of Emperor Wenzong of the Tang Dynasty, the emperor proposed to the prime minister, Zheng Qin, hoping to marry his granddaughter to the crown prince, but Zheng Qin resolutely refused. He would rather marry his granddaughter to a Jiupin** who is also from a family with the fifth surname Qiwang than marry her to the crown prince.
This move made Tang Wenzong feel helpless, and he sighed: "I have ruled the royal family for more than two hundred years, and I am not as good as the family with five surnames and seven wangs. ”
When the children of the family travel, what is revealed behind is the deep imprint of the family. From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the end of the Tang Dynasty, the family has been inherited for more than 900 years, but they have gradually become a cancer in Chinese society.
With their huge knowledge reserves and land wealth, they hold the upward channel of society tightly in their hands, even if the imperial examination system exists, they will give priority to promoting their own people, which eventually led to the blockage of the country's talent channels, resulting in an unprecedented disaster, just like the "Five Hu Chaohua" in those years, the vast number of ordinary people suffered, and the big families ran to the south to continue to be peaceful.
However, success is also a family, and defeat is also a family. It was precisely because of the control of the imperial examinations by the clans that after the Huangchao Rebellion, they turned the targets of their killings to those who held wealth and power.
Five surnames and seven wangs were successively **, the Central Plains became empty, and those families who had survived for many years finally died out in this uprising.