Others at court such as the Merkit Majarday and his son, Toqto'a, also led the way in cultivating Chinese learning by establishing contacts with ethnic Han scholars and hiring them as tutors.

[2] By the time Kublai (Emperor Shizu) conquered the Central Plain, the Yuan army was composed mostly of professional Han soldiers who had once been subject to the Jin dynasty prior to its conquest by the Mongols.

From that time on the people of the realm regarded the government forces as useless and depended on local leadership for defense, contributing to the process of decentralization.

Their religious teachings created sects with broad local followings that practiced night gatherings of men and women to burn incense and worship Mile Pusa.

[10] The Red Turban movement traces its origins to Peng Yingyu, a Buddhist monk, who led an uprising in Yuanzhou (in modern Jiangxi) in 1338.

[11] In 1351, a mass mobilization of workers from the farming population, numbering 150,000 in total, for a project to rechannel the Yellow River and to open the Grand Canal in western Shandong saw ripe conditions for recruitment by the Red Turbans.

A Red Turban leader, Han Shantong, and his advisor, Liu Futong, successfully recruited from the disgruntled workers, resulting in explosive rebellious activity.

The Red Turbans in Liaodong had proven inferior to the soldiers of Chaghan Temur, who had defeated them in battle, and possibly saw Goryeo as an easier target unprotected by Mongol forces.

The invasions caught the unprepared Goryeo forces off guard, causing much destruction, sacking several cities, and briefly occupying Pyongyang (1359) and Kaesong (1360).

[14] In the summer of 1351, Peng Yingyu and his principal military follower, Zou Pusheng, found in Xu Shouhui, a cloth peddler, the makings of a Red Turban figurehead.

In September, Zou captured the city of Qishui in southern Hubei and enthroned Xu Shouhui as emperor over the Red Turban dynasty of "Tianwan" (Heaven Consummated).

He seemed to have governed competently, having recruited scholars and heeding the advice of a Confucian official named Liu Zhen, but failed in an attempt to take Yunnan from the Mongols.

[15] Historical records commonly portray the Red Turban Army as dealing with captive Yuan officials and soldiers with considerable violence.

The Red Army was equally merciless toward captured Yuan soldiers: according to contemporary observer Liu Renben, Tianwan troops dealt with these demonized enemies by "placing them in shackles, poking them with knives, binding them with cloth, putting sacks over their heads, and parading them around accompanied by drum-beating and derisive chants".Zhang Shicheng was a boatman from the market settlement of Bojuchang (modern Dafeng District) in northern Jiangsu.

Under the conditions laid out, Zhang was supposed to send a million piculs of rice to Khanbaliq every year by sea, but the Yuan capital never received more than 15% of the agreed amount.

Afterwards, Zhu returned to his village and recruited over 700 men led by 24 of his friends, which included figures such as Xu Da, Chang Yuchun, Tang He, Lan Yu, Mu Ying and Geng Bingwen.

After successfully repelling a Yuan army in the first months of 1355, at which point Guo Zixing had died, Zhu started preparations to attack Nanjing.

In October, the Red Turbans tried to take Nanjing again, and in the process both of Guo's successors were killed, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in sole command of his forces.

Zhu accepted the titles and Han Lin'er as emperor, legitimizing himself as a representative of a 'revived' Song dynasty and the 'Luminous King' described in White Lotus teachings.

Zhu personally traveled to regions that had been conquered to survey problems and actively recruited scholars and officials, whom he invited to dine with him in his headquarters.

In March 1358, he assigned Kang Maocai, a former Yuan official who had surrendered, to the Superintendency of the Office for Hydraulic Works to repair dikes and embankments.

In the same year, Zhu won the Battle of Lake Poyang against his rival Chen Youliang, and proceeded to eliminate Zhang Shicheng and Fang Guozhen.

[28] Zhu continued to use the Song's reign period as his official calendar until Han Lin'er drowned while crossing the Changjiang in January 1367, possibly by design.

Toqto'a was the primary decision maker behind the Yuan throne starting in 1340 after taking power in a coup supported by the emperor Toghon Temür.

One of his efforts in this endeavor was to repair and extend the Grand Canal so that the capital, Khanbaliq, could be securely supplied with grain grown in the Changjiang delta.

Toqto'a's successor, Berke Bukha, had no answer to the crisis, which was exacerbated by the coastal rebellion of Fang Guozhen, whose fleet interdicted most of the grain shipments headed for the capital.

In April 1351, Toqto'a tried once again to tame the Yellow River and Grand Canal through the mass mobilization of rural farmers, leading to the Red Turban Rebellion.

Although originally Turkic, by the time of the Red Turban Rebellions, Chaghan Temur's lineage more closely aligned with both Mongol and Chinese culture.

Bolad Temur was assassinated in August 1365, after which Köke Temür escorted Ayushiridara back to the capital, where he remained for some time before returning to Henan.

On 23 April, a Ming division caught a part of the Mongol army by the Tuul River and defeated it, causing Köke Temür to avoid combat for the next month.