Way of Great Peace

ZHANG JUE (d. 184 CE), a faith healer titled General of Heaven, with his brothers ZHANG BAO (General of Earth) and ZHANG LIANG (General of Man).

The Yellow Heaven, an age of Great Peace succeeding the exhausted Blue Heaven of the Han. Zhang Jue healed by confession and talisman water, and his slogan was chanted across eight provinces: 'The Blue Heaven is dead; the Yellow Heaven will be established. In the year jiazi, let there be prosperity under Heaven.' Followers wore yellow headscarves. He organised several hundred thousand adherents into 36 military divisions over a decade before rising.

Zhang Jue; Zhang Bao; Zhang Liang; the Han general Huangfu Song; the warlords Cao Cao, Liu Bei and Sun Jian, whose careers began suppressing the rising and who went on to divide China into the Three Kingdoms.

Militarily crushed within a year of rising, with remnants fighting on to about 205. IT DID NOT ITSELF DESTROY THE HAN — see the note.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF REBELS KILLED is what the sources support; the rising itself is described as having involved up to a MILLION PARTICIPANTS. THE 'MILLIONS DEAD' FIGURES OFTEN QUOTED ARE NOT SUPPORTABLE FROM THE RISING ALONE. The enormous Han census decline across this era reflects administrative collapse and uncounted population as much as mortality, and spans the whole Three Kingdoms period rather than the rebellion — it cannot be read as a death toll

One of the largest religious risings in world history. THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY CALLED IT 'THE DIRECT CAUSE' OF THE HAN COLLAPSE, WHICH OVERSTATES IT AND CONTRADICTED THIS ENTRY'S OWN TIMELINE. The rebellion was broken in 184, the year it began; THE HAN DID NOT FALL UNTIL 220, THIRTY-SIX YEARS LATER. What the rising actually did was force the court to devolve military authority to regional commanders in order to crush it — and THOSE COMMANDERS became the warlords who dismantled the dynasty. CAO CAO, LIU BEI AND SUN JIAN ALL BEGAN THEIR CAREERS SUPPRESSING THE YELLOW TURBANS AND ENDED THEM DIVIDING CHINA INTO THE THREE KINGDOMS. The accurate statement is that the rebellion set in motion the process that ended the Han, not that it ended it. Almost entirely absent from English-language cult literature. Read alongside the Taiping (030). THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY SAID 'CHINA HAS THE TWO DEADLIEST ENTRIES IN THIS DOSSIER', PAIRING THIS ENTRY WITH THE TAIPING. THAT RANKING DOES NOT SURVIVE THE DOSSIER'S OWN FIGURES. The Taiping is first by an enormous margin and is not in question. SECOND PLACE CANNOT BE RANKED AT ALL, because the candidates are overlapping ranges rather than counts: THE WHITE LOTUS (134) at 100,000 to over a million, THE MAHDIST STATE (139) at hundreds of thousands, THE LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY (077) at 100,000+, and this entry at hundreds of thousands. ON THIS FILE'S OWN NUMBERS THE WHITE LOTUS OUTRANKS THE YELLOW TURBANS, so even the China pairing was wrong. WHAT IS DEFENSIBLE AND WORTH SAYING: China holds the deadliest entry in this dossier by a wide margin and several of the largest, and none of them is well known in the West.