Zhang Bao张宝

Style & Daoist names

General of Earth

Period

Eastern Han

Dates

? — 184

Role

Leader of the Way of Great Peace

Birthplace

Julu

Life

Zhang Bao, younger brother of Zhang Jiao, was one of the leaders of the Way of Great Peace, styling himself "General of Earth" during the Yellow Turban Rebellion. In the first year of the Zhongping era (184) he raised the rebellion together with his elder brother Zhang Jiao and younger brother Zhang Liang. After Zhang Jiao died of illness, Zhang Bao led his forces to hold Xiaquyang (present-day Jinzhou, Hebei); in the eleventh month of the same year he was defeated by Huangfu Song and Guo Dian, Grand Administrator of Julu, and was killed in battle, his force of over a hundred thousand slaughtered, after which Huangfu Song "erected a mound of the slain south of the city." The historical records preserve very little about Zhang Bao as an individual, appearing mainly in the "Biography of Huangfu Song" in the Book of the Later Han. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms he is portrayed as a wielder of magical arts who could summon wind and rain — a literary invention. The force Zhang Bao commanded was one of the three main Yellow Turban armies, and its collapse came only a few months after Zhang Jiao's death; although the remaining Yellow Turban forces continued fighting in various places afterward, they were no longer able to mount a major threat.

Contributions & Influence

• One of the principal leaders of the Yellow Turban Rebellion

Legends

In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhang Bao fights using magical arts and is defeated by Liu Bei and others; this is a novelistic invention.