The Collapse of the Han Dynasty

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Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty died in 188 or 189, at the age of thirty-three, while military governors were clinging to the greater independence that they had acquired during the war against the Yellow Turbans. A military general who was a popular figure and the half-brother of the dowager empress tried to assert leadership at the palace. He schemed against the court eunuchs and their supporters, and to combat them he invited to the capital general Dong Zhuo and his army from around the Great Wall in the north. But before Dong Zhuo arrived, fighting broke out at the palace. A eunuch murdered the general. The general's allies struck back and burned the palace, killing every eunuch they could find -- or anyone who looked like a eunuch because of lack of beard. And more than 2,000 eunuchs, and supposed eunuchs, died.