rbans.

The rising of the Yellow Turbans began in 184; all parties, cliques and
generals alike, were equally afraid of the revolutionaries, since these
were a threat to the gentry as such, and so to all parties. Consequently
a combined army of considerable size was got together and sent against
the rebels. The Yellow Turbans were beaten.

During these struggles it became evident that Ts'ao Ts'ao with his
troops had become the strongest of all the generals. His troops seem to
have consisted not of Chinese soldiers alone, but also of Hsiung-nu. It
is understandable that the annals say nothing about this, and it can
only be inferred from the facts. It appears that in order to reinforce
their armies the generals recruited not only Chinese but foreigners. The
generals operating in the region of the present-day Peking had soldiers
of the Wu-huan and Hsien-pi, and even of the Ting-ling; Liu Pei, in the
west, made use of Tanguts, and Ts'ao Ts'ao clearly went farthest of all
in this direction; he seems to have been responsible for settling
nineteen tribes of Hsiung-nu in the Chinese province of Shansi between
180 and 200, in return for their armed aid. In this way Ts'ao Ts'ao
gained permanent power in the empire by means of these troops, so that
immediately after his death his son Ts'ao P'ei, with the support of
powerful allied families, was able to force the emperor to abdicate and
to found a new dynasty, the Wei dynasty (A.D. 220).

This meant, however, that a part of China which for several centuries
had been Chinese was given up to the Hsiung-nu. This was not, of course,
what Ts'ao Ts'ao had intended; he had given the Hsiung-nu some area of
pasturage in Shansi with the idea that they should be controlled and
administered by the officials of the surrounding district. His plan had
been similar to what the Chinese had often done with success: aliens
were admitted into the territory of the empire in a body, but then the
influence of the surrounding administrative centres was steadily
extended over them, until the immigrants completely lost their own
nationality and became Chinese. The nineteen tribes of Hsiung-nu,
however, were much too numerous, and after the prolonged struggles in
China the provincial administration proved much too weak to be able to
carry out the plan. Thus there came into existence here, within China, a
small Hsiung-nu realm ruled by several _shan-yue_. This was the second
major development, and it became