Dong Zhuo

Besides the capture of the Jin Emperor Huai, the ancient capital, cultural center, and historically significant city of Luoyang was destroyed.

For the second time since Dong Zhuo did it in 190, torched not just buildings, libraries, scrolls, and anything else that survived Dong Zhuo, the accumulated learning of everything going back to the earliest times in Chinese history was destroyed in this disaster of Yongjia.

You could be sure no mercy was shown to the city inhabitants either.

aristocrats, royals, commoners.

Once settled in, He Jin began to build an alliance against the eunuch faction of the Ten Attendants.

Besides Yuan Shao and his brother Yuan Shu, He Jin also called on another powerful warlord named Dong Zhuo.

Dong was invited to come to the capital in Luoyang to assist in dealing with the eunuch faction.

He needed Dong to lean on Empress Dowager He, who was still holding out against attacking the palace eunuchs.

But the eunuchs were no pushover, and ultimately before Dong Zhuo arrived at the capital, they made fast work of He Jin, and he was beheaded in one eighty-nine.

And as the history goes, they tossed his head over the palace walls.

Rather provocative stuff.

Yuan Shao was an aristocratic warlord from a very prestigious clan who went way back, and many of these Yuan family members served throughout the Han as high-ranking officials.

They weren't actually made of solid gold.

Dong Zhuo will come along three decades later in 190 BC and melt those 12 metal colossi down again.

The new Qin emperor also had to consolidate his power and tamp out any brush fires and pockets of resistance to his government.

Word went out to all the aristocratic and wealthy families from Yan in the north to Chu in the south.