Liu Bang Founds the Han Dynasty
A village policeman defeated an aristocratic general in 202 BC and founded a dynasty that lasted four centuries. The Qin empire had collapsed within four years of the first emperor's death, and the rebellion against it produced two rival leaders: Xiang Yu, of the old Chu nobility, an outstanding soldier and, by every account, incapable of governing anything; and Liu Bang, a minor local official of peasant origin who had let a group of conscripts go rather than deliver them late and be executed. Liu Bang reached the Qin capital first, forbade looting, and abolished the whole apparatus of Qin law in favour of three rules — that murder, injury and theft would be punished — which is the single most effective political act of the war. Xiang Yu arrived, massacred the population, burned the palaces and divided the empire into eighteen kingdoms, giving Liu Bang the remote west. The Chu-Han contention that followed ran four years and ended at Gaixia, where Liu Bang's forces surrounded Xiang Yu and had their men sing Chu songs through the night so that his soldiers would believe their homeland had fallen. He killed himself at the river rather than cross it. The Han that followed kept the Qin administrative structure and dropped the ideology, adopting Confucianism as the doctrine of the state and recruiting officials by recommendation and eventually examination. Chinese people call themselves Han to this day. Liu Bang's own explanation of why he won is recorded and is unusually self-aware. He said that he was inferior to his best general, his best strategist and his best administrator in each of their specialities, and that he could use all three and Xiang Yu could not use the one able man he had.
- Year: 202 BCE
- Category: Military
