Yuan Shao

Portrait of Yuan Shaos, from The Story of the Three Kingdoms

Yuán Shào ( Chinese  袁紹  /  袁绍 , IPA ( standard Chinese) [ y̆ɛn35 ʂɑo̯51 ]; * 154 in Luoyang ; † June 28, 202 ) was a Chinese warlord during the civil war after the fall of the Han dynasty .

He came from the aristocratic Yuan family , whose members had occupied senior posts in the imperial bureaucracy from the 1st century onwards. His father, Yuan Feng, was the Chinese Interior Minister. Almost nothing is known about his mother, a concubine of Yuan Feng. In the 180s he became the commander of a unit of the Imperial Guard and in 188 he became one of the eight chief officers of the Army Commander in Chief He Jin .

After the death of Emperor Ling in 189, Yuan Shao became an ally of General He Jin in the raging power struggle . After He Jin was murdered on September 22, 189, Yuan Shao stormed the Imperial Palace and massacred around 2,000 courtiers belonging to the opposing faction.

He had to hand over central power to Dong Zhuo first . In 191, Yuan Shao established an independent state in Ji Province . At first he was able to successfully defend and even expand this state against the other warlords, but in the year 200 he lost a decisive battle at Guandu: although Cao Cao initially had no chance against Yuan Shao's towers, from which his archers threw a hail of arrows on the Wei troops , Cao Cao was able to overcome the fortifications with an artillery assembled overnight and beat Yuan Shao. In 202 there was another defeat in the Battle of Cangting, in which he lost his life.