This lovely iron sword with its wood- and lacquer- decorated scabbard comes from the 2nd century BCE Han Dynasty, and well symbolizes its founding leader, Liu Bang, posthumously named Emperor Gaozu, “the High Founder”. The man who started a Chinese Dynasty that lasted over 400 years was born from a peasant lineage, making his success story unique among Ancient Chinese rulers.
Liu Bang’s parents were farmers who lived under the Qin Emperors, notorious abusers of power who had hard pressed the peasant population of China with forced military service and extremely high taxes. The Qin leaders had spent extraordinary resources climbing to power and then on costly building projects (like the Great Wall and the Terra Cotta soldier statues), making them unpopular.
Enter Liu Bang, who had gained employment in the Qin service and was leading some prisoners to labor at the Qin Emperor’s mausoleum. Some of the captured men escaped, but instead of trying to recover them, Liu Bang ended up joining the group, freeing the other prisoners, and declaring himself an enemy of the Qin. In a very early legend, a story goes that Liu Bang, while drunk, killed a white serpent that had slain some of his men — this was a prophecy that Liu Bang would destroy the Qin Emperor. Later, Han Dynasty Emperors claimed they still possessed the sword he had used to kill the snake, and it aquired a relic-like status.
Liu Bang has so many fanciful stories about him that it is difficult to know what specific accounts are true, but he characterized his reign by accepting advice from his strategists, rewarded and acknowledged the service of his best men, and shared the spoils of war. He was popular among the peasant classes because he stopped the corvée (levying of men for military use) and reduced taxes. Although he was not educated, he eventually embraced Confucian ideology, liking the aspects that emphasized how rulers should govern with good morals versus strict and harsh laws.
Sources: Sword from British Museum. Legend from Sima Qian, _Records of the Grand Historian_. Pp 529-530 “Well, how’d you become king then?” Swords in Early Medieval China,” _Journal of the American Oriental Society_ vol 132, no 4 (Oct-Dec 2012). New World Encyclopedia Emperor Gaozu of Han.
