It was June 1st: Death of Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty

On June 1, 195 BCE, Emperor Gaozu, whose real name was Liu Bang, died in his palace in Chang'an, present-day Xi'an, in Shaanxi province. He was not yet sixty years old. A few weeks earlier, he had been wounded by an arrow during a military campaign against a former rebel ally, Prince Ying Bu. His injuries proved fatal. With him disappeared one of the most extraordinary figures in Chinese history: a peasant's son, a drinker and brawler in his youth, who, through sheer force of will and intelligence, became the founder of the most enduring of the great Chinese imperial dynasties. Two thousand years after his death, the Chinese still refer to themselves as "Han"—his name, which became theirs.

From a village in Jiangsu to the throne of China

Liu Bang was born into a peasant family in Pei County, in what is now Jiangsu Province. The third son of an impoverished family, he spent his youth loitering, drinking, and fighting, much to his father's despair. A position as a patrol leader brought him out of obscurity, until one day, while escorting a convoy of convicts, he witnessed their escape as he slept drunk. Rather than face the punishment that awaited him, he freed the remaining prisoners and joined the resistance. This marked the beginning of an adventure that would lead him to the pinnacle of the empire. In 209 BCE, the death of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang plunged China into chaos. Liu Bang joined the rebellion that engulfed the country, quickly rising through the military and political ranks, and entered into open rivalry with General Xiang Yu, a noble and warrior figure whom tradition would forever contrast with his cunning and popular rival. After five years of fierce warfare between their two sides, Liu Bang achieved a decisive victory in 202 BCE through a ruse: he had never intended to honor the treaty he had just signed with Xiang Yu and attacked him by surprise. Defeated, Xiang Yu committed suicide. Liu Bang proclaimed the Han dynasty and established his capital at Chang'an.

An empire built to last four centuries

Upon becoming Emperor Gaozu, Liu Bang ruled with remarkable pragmatism. Aware that the country was exhausted by years of civil war, he reduced taxes and forced labor, freed those who had sold themselves into servitude to survive, and encouraged agriculture. While he held little natural respect for Confucian scholars, he was shrewd enough to involve them in his government, one of his advisors reminding him that "if the empire is conquered on horseback, it is impossible to govern it on horseback." He reformed the legal code inherited from the Qin dynasty and gradually consolidated his power by replacing vassal princes with members of his own clan. On his northern borders, he faced the formidable Xiongnu cavalry, against whom military force alone proved insufficient: he initiated a policy of marriage alliances that would endure throughout the dynasty. The Han dynasty outlived its founder almost uninterrupted for four centuries, until 220 AD—one of the longest and most prolific dynasties in human history. At the same time, in the Mediterranean basin, Rome was crushing Carthage and building its own universal empire: two civilizations at the height of their power, at opposite ends of Eurasia, without ever having met.