Liu Bang

Liu Bang the Chinese peasant-turned-warlord who founded the Han dynasty in 202 BC and ruled as Emperor Gaozu (256-195 BC). Rising from obscure origins to defeat the powerful general Xiang Yu in the Chu-Han Contention, he created one of the longest-lasting and most influential dynasties in Chinese history and established the patterns of government that defined imperial China for centuries.

Humble Origins

Liu Bang was born in 256 BC in a peasant family in Pei county, in what is now northern Jiangsu. He was the third son of an ordinary farming household and received little formal education. As a young man he was appointed a low-ranking village official, a small post that brought him into contact with the local gentry and with the world of administration beyond the fields, and he was known for his easy manners, his generosity and his fondness for drink and company.

The story of his rise is bound up with the collapse of the Qin dynasty. When the harsh rule of Qin Shi Huang's successors provoked widespread rebellion in 209 BC, Liu Bang joined the uprising and soon gathered a following of his own. His modest origins and his plain manner won him the loyalty of common soldiers and of the local leaders who joined his cause, and he distinguished himself less by personal military prowess than by his ability to attract and hold able men.

In 207 BC he led his forces into the Qin heartland and received the surrender of the last Qin ruler at the capital. According to the tradition, he entered the palaces but refrained from plunder, and issued the simple and generous proclamation that the people would be governed by three basic laws. This restraint, contrasting with the vengeance of Xiang Yu, helped to secure the goodwill of the population and prepared the way for his later contest with the great general.

The Chu-Han Contention

When Xiang Yu divided the empire into eighteen kingdoms, he granted Liu Bang the remote and mountainous territories of Hanzhong and Shu in the west, hoping thereby to contain him. Liu Bang accepted the settlement, built up his strength on the fertile Chengdu plain and waited. In 206 BC his general Han Xin famously marched through a repaired mountain road to surprise the enemy, and the long civil war between Chu and Han began.

The war lasted four years and was fought across central China. Liu Bang was repeatedly defeated in the field by Xiang Yu, whose skill as a commander was unmatched, but he proved superior in grand strategy. He held the strategic pass of Chenggao, defended his western base, cultivated alliances with other disaffected leaders and delegated campaigns to talented commanders such as Han Xin, Peng Yue and Ying Bu. His willingness to listen to advice, particularly from his strategist Zhang Liang and his administrator Xiao He, contrasted with Xiang Yu's isolation.

By 202 BC the balance had shifted decisively. Liu Bang's forces encircled Xiang Yu's army at Gaixia and destroyed it, and the Chu leader took his own life. Liu Bang then assumed the imperial title and founded the Han dynasty, choosing Chang'an in the west as his capital. The victory of a commoner over the greatest warrior of the age became one of the most celebrated stories in Chinese history and a lasting emblem of the power of cooperation over solitary strength.

Founding the Han Dynasty

As emperor, Liu Bang faced the task of governing a country exhausted by decades of war. He adopted a policy of consolidation and recovery, lightening the burdens of taxation and labour, encouraging the return of peasants to abandoned fields and restoring the agricultural economy. He also moderated the severity of the Qin legal code and won the support of the scholar-officials whose learning and administrative experience the empire required.

He preserved much of the centralised administrative structure inherited from the Qin, including the commanderies and counties and the system of appointed officials, but he softened its harshest features. He granted large territories as kingdoms to some of his most powerful generals and allies, a concession that created a dangerous class of semi-autonomous vassal kings. In his later years he moved to reduce their power, replacing many of the original kings with members of his own family.

The founding emperor established the rituals and the ceremonial dignity of the Han court, building upon the model of the Qin and of the classical Zhou kings. He regulated the succession, adopted the title of emperor for his line and laid the foundations of an imperial house that would rule, with a brief interruption, for four centuries. He also began the long process of reconciling the military men who had won the empire with the civil scholars who would govern it.

Government and Character

Liu Bang was celebrated for his ability to recognise and use talent, and he acknowledged frankly that his own gifts lay not in strategy or logistics but in knowing which men to trust. In a famous exchange recorded by Sima Qian he told his ministers that he was inferior to Zhang Liang in planning, to Xiao He in administration and to Han Xin in command, and that his success lay in his capacity to employ them. This confession of limitation became a classic statement of the art of leadership.

His government combined the practical wisdom of a man of the people with the advice of trained officials. He listened to criticism, sometimes reluctantly, and he was willing to change course. He abolished many of the oppressive laws of the Qin, reduced corvee demands on the peasantry, encouraged trade and settled soldiers on the land. These measures allowed the population and the economy to recover and gave the new dynasty a stability that its predecessor had never enjoyed.

His personal character was marked by a mixture of generosity and ruthlessness. He rewarded his followers richly and remained close to his old companions, yet he could also be brutal, and in his last years he moved against the very generals who had helped him to power, fearing the threat they posed to his heir. The struggle between the founding emperor and his former comrades was a recurring theme of dynastic history and coloured the memory of his reign.

Legacy

The Han dynasty that Liu Bang founded endured, with a break of some fifteen years, for more than four centuries and gave its name to the Chinese people and their script. It became a byword for unity, prosperity and cultural achievement, and later Chinese often described themselves as men of Han. The unification of the empire under a single dynasty, continued under his successors, established the political norm that China would return to after every period of division.

Liu Bang's reign established the model of the founder who rises from obscurity to renew a corrupt order. The story of the peasant who became emperor, and the comparison with the fall of the brilliant but arrogant Xiang Yu, became a standard lesson in the moral literature of China. The image of a ruler who succeeds through humility, patience and the wise use of others served as an ideal against which later emperors were measured.

He died in 195 BC and was buried near his capital at Chang'an. His successors built upon his foundations: the empress Lu held power after his death, and his descendants, including the great Emperor Wu, extended and consolidated the empire. Historians remember him as a man of modest talents and great practical intelligence, whose achievement was to end the disorder of the age and to found a dynasty that shaped the identity of a civilisation for two thousand years.

See also

• Han dynasty
• Xiang Yu
• Emperor Wu of Han
• Zhang Liang