Ch 1 - In the Beginning

The Men of Han

The Han Dynasty, born out of a rebellious civil war, replaces the Qin Dynasty and establishes a new era in Chinese government and society.

The Qin Dynasty completely transformed the political and social landscape of China, replacing the old city-states with prefectures and replacing hereditary nobles with government appointed officials. The Chinese aristocracy, once heavily comprised of warriors, became a class of intellectuals. The brutally oppressive Qin Dynasty forced thousands of xia and loyalists of the conquered states underground, where they waited for their next chance. It came unexpectedly soon after the collapse of the Qin regime in 206 BC. Cast adrift in a new arena and more concerned with success than allegiance to any group or individual, xia immediately resurfaced to ride the sweeping tide of rebellion by actively involving themselves with rival warlords fighting for superiority. This new crop of "knights-errant," most of whom came from the lower end of Chinese society, were a very different breed from the cultured and educated xia of the Spring and Autumn Period. These ambitious and egocentric soldiers-of-fortune were decidedly uneducated and uncultured men who nonetheless found unprecedented opportunity to become generals and lords.

Two types of people in Chinese history had the ambition and intellect needed to contend for the throne:  the nobility at the top of society and the rogues at the bottom. The sons of influential noble families could always obtain power by taking advantage of their privileged position and wealth. Always waiting in the wings however, were unscrupulous, rough-edged, borderline criminals who dared to seek glorious adventure. While the majority of China's crown-seekers sprang from noble backgrounds, many a rebel battled his way to the top during widespread and chaotic peasant uprisings. Xiang Yu and Liu Bang came from very different backgrounds, but both men shared a common characteristic:  ambition.

After Xiang Yu, the self-proclaimed Supreme General of the Chu armies, sacked the Qin capital at Xianyang in 206 BC, Liu Bang avoided a major confrontation with Xiang Yu by returning to Xianyang with his captured treasure and apologizing for guarding the Hanku Pass. He explained he had merely preserved Qin's treasures while waiting for Hsiang's arrival. A few months after the situation in Xianyang quieted down and the transfer of treasure had been completed, Xiang Yu left for Chu, to return home in triumph and show off his success. Not to go home, he thought, would be like dressing up in "silk gowns to walk in the dark where no one can see me well dressed." He established his capital at Pengcheng, the modern city of Xuzhou in Jiangsu Province. He installed King Huai of Chu as Emperor Yi, the "Just Emperor," and took the title Protector King of Western Chu. He also repudiated King Huai's earlier promise that the first general to enter the Hanku Pass would become ruler of the Wei River valley by giving the region to General Chang Han and two other former Qin generals. He awarded titles to a variety of generals and noblemen who had helped him destroy the Qin Empire and posted them to eighteen separate territories.

Liu Bang, long an arch rival of the Xiang family, was "honored" with the title King of Han and given a vast territory that included Hubei Province, southern Shaanxi Province and the "wild-west" territory of the Red Basin in modern Sichuan Province. Liu Bang surrounded himself with men of similar backgrounds to his own, men like Ying Bu, the common criminal with a tattooed face, Peng Yue the bandit, and Li Yiji, the hard-drinking scholar. Nearly every one of Liu Bang's prominent aides and advisors, all men with humble origins, later rose to become noblemen. Han Xin, for example, was a dirt poor commoner with little scholarly training. His lack of education kept him from working for the government. Unable to find work and despised in his home town, he became a vagrant, often dependent on others for a living and struggling along on the verge of starvation. After he joined Liu Bang, he showed his true ability and earned recognition for his courage. He later became a great general under Liu Bang and commanded a number of military victories.

Han Xin persuaded Liu Bang that his "honored" position as King of Han was really an exile and that he should reconquer the State of Qin then march east against Xiang Yu. In a daring surprise attack during the summer of 205 BC, Liu Bang defeated General Chang Han and the other Qin generals in the Wei River valley. He proclaimed an amnesty for criminals, gave people access to the former imperial parks and orchards, granted a two year exemption from taxes and labor service, and appointed a local leader in each district who was over age fifty with a cultivated personality. Liu Bang then marched his army eastward. As he crossed the Yellow River, a local leader told him that Xiang Yu had grown weary of the puppet Emperor Yi and ordered his assassination. After proclaiming a period of mourning, an enraged Liu Bang called on all other kings and dukes to join a revolt against Xiang Yu and avenge the death of Emperor Yi. It began a new civil war in China that raged for five years.

While Xiang Yu was preoccupied trying to brutally force the State of Qi into submission, Liu Bang entered the Chu capital at Pengcheng virtually unopposed. Xiang Yu hurried home and inflicted a bloody defeat on the King of Han, capturing his parents, wife, and children in the process. Liu Bang escaped to the west and established a new base camp along the Wei River near the Ao Granary, where he rebuilt and resupplied his army. The defeat cost him a great deal of support. While generals Han Xin and Peng Yue were winning great victories in the east, Xiang Yu cut off Liu Bang's supply road and surrounded his army. Xiang Yu, a brilliant military strategist, won so many of his early battles against Liu Bang it seemed he would crush his rival.

Liu Bang was not a man to be defeated. After Xiang Yu refused an offer to divide the empire between them, Liu Bang angrily accused Xiang of breaking King Huai's promise, murdering General Song Yi, burning the Qin palaces and killing its king, slaughtering 200,000 men at Xianyang, replacing local kings with his own generals, and driving out and assassinating Emperor Yi. Liu Bang intended to punish him for these crimes. Meanwhile, generals Peng Yue and Han Xin repeatedly attacked Xiang Yu's army until its food supplies were dangerously low. By the end of 203 BC, Xiang Yu's rude manners, arrogance and lack of political vision finally caught up with him. After many of the lesser kings and barons deserted his banner, he released Liu Bang's family and agreed to divide the empire. Liu Bang planned to return to his western domain, but his advisors argued that now was the opportune moment to crush his long-time rival. Han Xin, Peng Yue and Liu Bang marshaled a force of 300,000 men and routed Xiang Yu's 100,000 man army at Gai Xia in Anhui Province, killing nearly 80,000.

Xiang Yu sat in his tent one evening with his favorite concubine, surrounded by Liu Bang's army, when he heard songs from home. Liu Bang's troops, loudly singing the songs of Chu, convinced Xiang Yu and his soldiers that Han had conquered their homeland. Overwhelmed with sadness, he sat and drank late into the night. When he could take it no longer, he and his remaining 800 warriors broke through the lines with Liu Bang's cavalry close behind. After fighting their way to the Wujiang River in northern Anhui Province they reached the river bank where a boat waited to take Xiang Yu across. Convinced that Heaven was against him, Xiang Yu dismissed his remaining two riders and told them to go their own way. He refused to get into the boat, telling the boatman, "I started the revolution with eight thousand men from Dong Jiang. There is not a single man with me now. They all died in the battle fields fighting for me ... I am too ashamed to go back to face the parents of dead comrades." With the blood of so many men on his hands, the Supreme General and Protector King of Western Chu took out his sword and slit his throat.

The xia rebel Liu Bang, King of Han, Conquerer of the Wei River valley, assumed the position of Supreme Emperor in 202 BC. He took the royal title Gaozu, meaning "Exalted Ancestor," and took the dynastic name of Han. Emperor Gaozu disbanded his armies and established his capital at Luoyang, then considered the center of the world. His advisor, Liujing, persuaded him that under the circumstances it would be strategically better to locate his capital inside the Hanku Pass. So, Gaozu returned to the Wei River valley near the old Qin capital of Xianyang, where he set about creating an entirely new central government in his new imperial capital at Changan.

Liu Bang handsomely rewarded his followers. Han Xin, born a dirt poor commoner, became the King of Chu. The former bandit Peng Yue became King of Liang. Zhang Er, a prominent military leader in the Qin uprising, was appointed King of Zhao. When he died two years later, his son Zhang Ao, who married Liu Bang's daughter Princess Lu Yuan, succeeded his father on the throne. Wu Jui became King of Changsha, Qing Pu, King of Huainan, and Zang Tu, received the title King of Yen. Many a former xia became a nobleman in Liu Bang's new regime. During the Qin Dynasty, xia activities were limited largely to the lower levels of Chinese society. By draping the cloak of nobility on former warriors, Liu Bang elevated xia behavior to upper society.

A powerful new crop of arrogant and imperious young princes emerged, a noble class that was still highly military-spirited and attracted to aggressive and heroic deeds. Many of the great landowners and powerful families used their wealth to exploit others and accumulate huge fortunes that enabled them to do just about anything they pleased. The lenient legal code in the early years of the Han Dynasty did nothing to change the customary practice of acquiring personal retainers and many newly titled noblemen continued to retain thousands of men under arms for their personal armies. The xia influence took root among the local gentry, creating a force that to some extent shared power with local authorities in regional affairs. Their influence over local affairs soon overshadowed that of lords and marquises and the local population envied their notoriety and prestige.

Liu Bang had a reputation for hating scholars and few such men ever got very close to him. He once angrily declared to the Confucianist scholar Lu Jia that he had won everything on horseback, so why should he bother with the Confucian classic, Odes and Documents. Master Lu Jia noted that rulers failed because they paid too much attention to military affairs and asked the Emperor whether he could rule his empire on horseback. If the Qin rulers had practiced goodness and justice, Liu Bang would never have become Emperor Gaozu. To the Emperor's delight, Lu Jia wrote a book called New Discourses explaining why Gaozu won the empire lost by Qin Shih Huang Di. Gradually, Emperor Gaozu became more receptive to Confucian influences.

To consolidate his power, Emperor Gaozu had to neutralize the numerous warlords who supported the Qin emperor's rise to the Celestial Throne. These men had received large provincial domains in exchange for their support and did not relinquish their power willingly. Gaozu's drive to eliminate the most powerful warlords, triggered an entirely new crop of rebellions in northern China. Most of his seven-year reign involved taking back the kingdoms he had given away to old allies suspected of revolting and putting the lands under the control of his own family. Han Xin was arrested and demoted. The Emperor's son-in-law, Zhang Ao, was demoted for conspiring to assassinate Gaozu. General Peng Yue was arrested, sent into exile, then executed. Qing Pu died in the Huainan rebellion. Gaozu's boyhood friend Lu Guan replaced Zang Tu as the King of Yen. During the winter of 196-195 BC, Lu Guan took up arms against the Han government in the Liaodong military district in eastern Yen. When Emperor Gaozu's armies crushed his rebellious warriors, Lu Guan moved his family and troops northward beyond the "Great Wall" to seek shelter among the Xiungnu. When Gaozu died in 195 BC, nine of his sons and relatives ruled kingdoms.

The heir apparent to the Celestial Throne, a worthless sixteen-year-old boy named Ying, the son of Dowager Empress Lü, ascended the throne in 195 BC as Emperor Hui. The real ruling power however, rested with the Dowager Empress, a competent, conservative ruler bent on seeing her own family on the throne. Through a series of macabre palace intrigues, she managed to strategically place a number of Lü family members in official positions, including prime minister and commanding general.

The death of Dowager Empress Lü opened the way for Liu Bang's old associates to clean out the royal court. Having sworn to Gaozu that his family line should never be replaced, they ousted court officials installed by his wife and killed the entire Lü family. They brought another of Liu Bang's sons, the King of Tai, to Changan in 179 BC, and installed him as Emperor Wen. Despite the murderous palace maneuvering under the inactive reign of Emperor Hui and his mother, a period of peace and prosperity settled across the empire. Emperor Wen's benevolent reign continued this trend and his policies became a model for later eras of restrained government.

In his first year on the throne Emperor Wen abolished laws that extended accusations and punishments to the relatives of criminals, particularly the cruel punishment of mutilation, and greatly reduced the number of executions. He limited his own expenditures, sent women home from the palace so they could marry, and ensured that orphans and the elderly were well treated. He eventually eliminated taxes on land and produce and did away with customs barriers and passports. In 162 BC, he quieted the northern border regions by making peace with the leader of the Xiungnu tribes. The following year he proclaimed another general amnesty and freed all slaves held by the government. Following his death in 157 BC, the dramatic improvement in relationships throughout the empire prompted his successor to name Emperor Wen "the Great Exemplar of Emperors" and ordered he should be worshipped along with Emperor Gaozu, the "Great Founder of Emperors."

The economic developments of the Han Dynasty's first fifty years moved the empire from recovery to prosperity and paved the way for political expansion of the central government. Shortly after Emperor Jing followed Emperor Wen to the throne, he divided the State of Qi into seven separate kingdoms as the start of a major campaign to reduce the power and lands of his vassal state lords. The stubbornly defiant King of Wu had become very wealthy using the state-owned copper and salt industries to build up his power. When he learned the Emperor was planning to move against him, he organized a coalition with Chu and five other kingdoms to march on the capital. Emperor Jing suppressed the Revolt of the Seven Kingdoms and effectively removed the main obstacle to his political expansion.

The strong-willed Emperor Jing next turned his attention to dealing with the powerful warlords and rebellious clan leaders of his domain. He dealt with the problem by assigning oppressive officials, or kuli, to those provinces which constituted the greatest threat to his government. He appointed Zhi Du as governor of Ji'nan, home to over 300 households of the notorious and powerful Xian clan. As soon as Zhi Du reached his new post he threw a dark blanket of fear across the entire province by rounding up and executing the Xian clan's most lawless members and their families. The rest of the province quickly calmed down. This brutal approach to suppressing local warlords worked at first, but its impact was short-lived and superficial. As soon as one powerful clan was eliminated, another clan moved in to fill the local power vacuum.

Many noble families, local government officials and warlords frequently battled each other in local power struggles, but they all shared common economic and political interests. The aristocracy and local government officials not only protected the warlords' interests when they fought together against the central government, they also involved themselves in similar activities. With such help, the warlords used every avenue of influence at their disposal to strike back at envoys sent by the central government to diminish or blunt their influence. In the end, almost every so-called kuli who built his reputation on brutally suppressing local warlords and sometimes even royal in-laws, was executed by imperial order. Zhi Du's harsh interrogation of the Lord of Linjiang, Emperor Jing's deposed son, pushed the young man to suicide. The emperor's mother, Dowager Empress Dou, was so angered by the event she ultimately found an excuse to have the Governor of Ji'an executed. Zhi Du's death ended the terror in Ji'an, but it left the powerful families and warlords of the province to their old vices. Emperor Jing's brutal campaign had little lasting effect on containing the power and influence of local warlords and things were much the same when he died in 141 BC.

Among his first major acts after taking the Celestial Throne, Emperor Gaozu threw off nearly all the oppressive legal measures of the former Qin Dynasty and embarked on a much milder political policy aimed at rehabilitating and nourishing survivors and rebuilding China's broken economy. He declared a general amnesty, freed all government slaves, and restored the civil rights of refugees and exiles. The Han Dynasty inaugurated by Liu Bang ushered in a new era of prosperity under his successors and ultimately a new kind of government that dominated China for more than two centuries and earned the undying love of the Chinese people. Though the name Qin is the origin of the name "China," the Chinese preferred to call themselves "men of Han."