Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han#Insurrection_against_the_Qin_dynasty
Liu was responsible for escorting a group of penal labourers to the construction site of Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum at Mount Li. During the journey, some prisoners escaped; under Qin law, allowing prisoners to escape was punishable by death. Rather than face punishment, Liu freed the remaining prisoners, some of whom willingly acknowledged him as their leader and joined him on the run from the law.
Sounds like someone who had 34 felony convictions and now doesn’t want to deal with accountability. You can’t be prosecuted by a government if you destroy the agencies that intend to hold you accountable.
If your offense carries penalty of death what other choice do you have? Die or overthrow the system trying to end you. One of many reasons why it’s foolish to have a death penalty in the first place
Damn that hell of a story. Amazing exactly how many laborers was he escorting by himself? Because apparently he had enough for revolution. This be like joining ICE here in America releasing all those in the camps and have them follow you to over throw the government.
He wasn’t alone at the top of one instant big army. He joined a lord who was already making his own kingdom, like several others, as the Qin were losing control of a lot of land. Liu Bang did become one of that lesser lord’s two top generals, and the other general, Xiang Yu, is the one who raced to the Qin capital and burned the palace.
Then Xiang Yu ordered the official split of the Qin empire into like a dozen smaller kingdoms, giving some of them to his friends, and then went around slaughtering them to reunite the land under his control, because that was his fucking jam (that was after having made his own former lord the new emperor, and then murdered him). Liu Bang was one of them, getting his own army, and ran around uniting people like smart tacticians and leaders with their own armies faster than Xiang Yu could kill them. He won that race, Xiang Yu got himself cornered and alone (and was so metal he cut his own head off in the middle of the battlefield when he was the last one standing on his side), and Liu Bang founded his dynasty with all the people who put him there.
and was so metal he cut his own head off in the middle of the battlefield when he was the last one standing on his side
When writers don’t know when to stop…
Enough to get a start, then he just kept stumbling into a series of opportunities to get more followers over and over. Also helped that the Qin dynasty was dealing with like 6 simultaneous rebellions from a previous war of expansion. Liu was in the right place at the right time and was such a massive improvement over the dickheads ruling most places under the Qin he just kept advancing.
Wonder if we could do something similar today?
Unfortunately, somebody already has…
Hmmmm
I think they’re on to something here
Is the picture recent? That man seems to modern-western-world conventionally handsome to be drawn by a ancient Chinese artist.
Wikipedia has
from the Ming era (much later).At best it’s modern art, at worst it’s generated
My slop-dar went off immediately.
Love me some class consciousness
Pretty sure he was an aristocrat. “Low-ranking official” in this context basically means “from an unimportant noble family, or low-ranking within a medium-importance noble family.”
Basically, infinitely higher standing than a peasant, yet still the dirt beneath the shoes of the high-ranking nobles.
Confucian bureaucracies were highly stratified.
Is that a little house on his head, with an arrow through it?
Its a kind of crown/cap, hair is tucked into it and secured via a hairpin stuck through it
A little house for his hair
Exactly
Get in loser. We’re founding a dynasty.
King shit
Emperor shit, even
What a legend
BC always trips me up. History shouldn’t have negative numbers, save that for pre-history goddamit!
We can only do that when we know how many years go by, though. Western History can maybe count back safely some centuries before that, but beyond that we find some calendar discrepancies, we’re missing some rulers and we know we have incorrect reign lengths, and depending one which one we pick, the whole thing shifts maybe a decade or two (short / intermediate / long chronology in Mesopotamia and Egypt), so that’s not ideal. Eastern chronologies aren’t any safer beyond 1000 BCE either. As you may say, people learned to write before they learned to count.
Even the Julian / Gregorian calendar counted back and was still off by 3 to 7 years.
I feel like a decade drift isn’t so bad a price to pay for easier historical literacy.
Human Era for the win
May as well be hanged for
a sheepoverthrowing the empire as fora lamblosing track of some prisoners.Not gonna Liu: Bang-er.
