It was not necessary to wait for 1911 for the first revolution in China to take place , although the one that took place that year has retained that name (or that of Xinhai, corresponding to its equivalent date in the traditional calendar).
Throughout the evolution of the eastern giant there were several movements that overthrew emperors and changed dynasties; One of the most notorious occurred in the year 23 AD. and it is known by a curious name:the rebellion of the Red Eyebrows , due to the iconographic element that its members wore to recognize each other.
The China of that first century was going through a difficult time. The Yellow River had overflowed its banks, flooding the fields and forcing millions of peasants to emigrate to save their lives without the government not only failing to come up with solutions, but also the measures introduced were not exactly popular, something aggravated by the fact that the throne was in the hands of an usurper. It was about Wang Mang , former chancellor and nephew of the empress who had assumed the regency during the emperor's minority until he managed to convince everyone that the Han dynasty had lost the mandate of Heaven (a poetic way of alluding to legitimacy, given the dynastic struggles), so in the year 10 he himself rose to power founding the Xin dynasty.
Wang Mang attempted to implement a major reform program , both economically and socially, which failed to radically break with what had been established until then, altering the traditional mentality of the Chinese:nationalization of coin minting, colonization of uncultivated lands, promotion of the commercialization of certain products... In fact, the Chinese revolutionaries of the 20th century considered Wang Mang as a pioneer of their ideology. In any case, the chaos caused by so much sudden change plunged people into poverty and, when the aforementioned natural disaster arrived, hunger and desperation prompted many to organize to conspire against the cause of his misfortune.
The first movements They began between the years 17 and 18, encouraged by the noble and wealthy classes, who considered their interests threatened by government policy. Initially, the peasants were only bands of looters. But little by little they increased the number of members in their ranks until they became authentic armies divided into two factions.
One was known as Mother Lü , because of her leader, a landowner whose son had been executed for a minor crime and who decided to put her fortune at the service of the fight against the system; her followers were called Lülin and they acted in the south. The other was that of the Chimei or Red Eyebrows , a jointly managed secret society made up of leaders Pang An, Xu Xuan, Xie Lu, Yang Yin and, above all, the charismatic Fang Chong, who moved in the east.
The government not only showed itself incapable of defeating them, but with its repressive incursions it stirred up more and more people. Nor did the decree that increased taxes and the distrust that the emperor showed towards some of his generals help. After a year Mother Lü passed away and the two groups decided to join their forces , showing in its hierarchical structure a significant absence of bombastic positions. Everything was very basic but it proved to be enough to victoriously face the government forces in successive skirmishes, which apparently had no major significance until two of the imperial generals died in one of them. So the emperor sent a mighty army of one hundred thousand men Led by two military veterans, Wang Kuang and Dan Lian, with a mission to wipe out the insurgents once and for all.
Faced with the approaching confrontation, the rebel leaders instructed their men to dye their eyebrows red and thus be able to recognize each other on the battlefield. The clash took place in Chenchang and, surprisingly, it was favorable to the Chimei:Lian was killed in combat and Kuang fled as best he could, so the way to the capital, Chang'an, was clear. Indeed, the usurper ended up beheaded and replaced by Liu Xuan , one of the Lülin ringleaders, who took the name Gengshi Di in the year 23. The Han dynasty was thus restored, since Xuan was a prince of that family.
However, things did not end there. Gengshi awarded the Red Eyebrows with positions in the administration but was not willing to assume their demands for land distribution , so they did not lay down their arms and threatened to depose him. The new emperor was in a precarious situation, barely controlling the capital (which he had moved to Luoyang) and with few forces to sustain himself, while the enemy numbered some three hundred thousand men. In his defense, it is fair to recognize the disavowal of the plan that some generals presented to him, consisting of breaking the dikes of the Yellow River to flood the fields again and drive away the insurgents, due to the harm it would cause to the population as a whole.
Meanwhile the Red Eyebrows found their own candidate for the throne:Liu Penzi , a teenage minor member of the Han dynasty. When they finally took Chang'an and overthrew Gengshi, they made him emperor in Gengshi's place. A puppet emperor, yes, who limited himself to endorsing the Chimei programmatic provisions.
The implementation of these, clumsy and dictatorial, did not take long to make them lose popular support they had had until then and rumors of Genghsi's return began to circulate. A general bribed ad hoc He was in charge of settling the issue by assassinating him. Shortly after, Penzi had a moment of lucidity making a threat of taking over the country, but it was a flash in the pan, as they say, and China was once again submerged in a series of continuous wars between the Red Eyebrows and various local lords.
In all of them they managed to prevail until they suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of Liu Xiu -another member of the Han, Xuan's cousin- and his general Deng Feng , who used a trick to deceive his opponents:he ordered his soldiers to also dye their eyebrows red to confuse them.
The Chimei disintegrated as an organized movement, allowing them to settle in the Louyang region; that is to say, there were no reprisals because, in order to pacify China once and for all, Liu Xiu decreed an amnesty. Evidently, he had been proclaimed emperor (under the name of Guangwu ) but he also forgave Penzi. However, the epilogue of this episode could not avoid the violence that characterized it:some time later the Red Eyebrows leaders were discovered conspiring and several of them ended up executed.