Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang)

Few founders of major dynasties have risen from origins as modest as those of Liu Bang (256-195 BC), the peasant-born first emperor of the Han, known to history by his temple designation Gaozu. A native of Pei in present-day Jiangsu, he served the Qin state as a minor local police officer before the death of the First Emperor. When convict laborers under his escort began deserting, he released the rest and became an outlaw, and as the great anti-Qin uprisings spread from 209 BC he emerged as a rebel leader in his home region.

Operating nominally under the restored kingdom of Chu, Liu Bang led the column that entered the Qin heartland first, receiving the surrender of the last Qin ruler, Ziying, near Xianyang in 206 BC. He won a reputation for restraint by sparing the population and simplifying the Qin laws to three articles, in contrast to his rival Xiang Yu, who sacked the capital. Enfeoffed by Xiang Yu as king of Han in the remote Hanzhong region, he soon broke out and fought the four-year struggle known as the Chu-Han contention, which ended in 202 BC with Xiang Yu's defeat at Gaixia and suicide. Liu Bang then assumed the imperial title.

As emperor he kept the bulk of the Qin administrative machinery while moderating its severity, lowering taxes and demobilizing armies to revive a devastated economy. The eastern half of the empire was initially parceled out as kingdoms for allied generals, most of whom he or his wife Lü Zhi eliminated within a few years and replaced with members of the Liu family. A campaign against the Xiongnu in 200 BC ended with the emperor nearly trapped at Baideng, after which the Han adopted a policy of treaties and marriage alliances with the steppe.

Liu Bang died in 195 BC of an arrow wound aggravated during the suppression of a revolt by the king Ying Bu. His teenage son by Lü Zhi succeeded as Emperor Hui, with real authority passing to the dowager empress. Despite contemporaries' descriptions of him as coarse and contemptuous of scholars, Liu Bang's willingness to take advice and to reward able subordinates was credited by Han historians as the foundation of a dynasty that lasted, with one interruption, four centuries.