After the Yellow Turban Rebellion, serious famine followed in the Central Plains of China. After his coming to power, Dong Zhuo gave full swing to his army to loot and plunder the population, and abduct women into forced marriages, servants or consorts. When the Guandong Coalition was starting the campaign against Dong Zhuo, he embarked upon a scorched earth campaign, proclaiming that "all the population of Luoyang be forced to move to Chang'an, all the palaces, temples, official residences and homes be burnt, no one should stay within that area of 200 "li"". Considering the hardships of that time this amounted to a death sentence for many, and cries of discontent rose as the population of Luoyang decreased sharply. When Cao Cao attacked Xu Province, it was said that "hundreds of thousands of men and women were buried alive, even dogs and chickens did not survive. The Si River was blocked. From then on, these five towns never recovered." When Li Jue and his army were advancing towards the Guanzhong area, "there remained hundreds of thousands of people, but Li Jue allowed his army to plunder the cities and the people, thus making the people have nothing but eat each other to death."