After the fall of the Qin Dynasty, peasant anti-Qin leaders Liu Bang and Xiang Yu fought a fierce four-year battle for the throne, known as the "Chu-Han Dispute". In this battle, Xiang Yu suffered repeated defeats and finally committed suicide in Wujiang.
With his wits and courage, Liu Bang successfully defeated Xiang Yu and finally ascended the throne of the Western Han Dynasty, ending the four-year-long Chu-Han War.
Liu Bang won with the right tactics, divided and disintegrated Xiang Yu's camp, and cut off his back road;At the same time, he is good at employing people, uniting the forces against Xiang Yu from all over the country, forming a powerful force, with the assistance of the virtuous, the good ministers to strategize, and the fierce generals to fight, and the strength is increasing day by day, and there is more stable Guanzhong as the rear, without worries.
After Liu Bang ascended the throne, in order to consolidate unification, he continued the Qin Dynasty's ** centralized system and county system. In terms of ideology, it is mainly based on Confucianism, supplemented by Legalist thought. He abolished the Qin Dynasty's strict punishment law, abolished the law of continuous sitting and the provisions of the three tribes, and put forward the concept of "morality and punishment", that is, to focus on education and punishment, so as to achieve the effect of mercy and softness, and strict and loose.
Xiao He referred to the laws of the Qin Dynasty and formulated nine chapters of Han law, including the law of theft, the law of thieves, the law of prison, the law of arrest, the law of miscellaneous, and the law of Gu, etc., while the household law involved household management, the marriage system and the collection of taxes.
At the same time, Liu Bang also ordered his uncle Sun Tong to formulate a political etiquette system suitable for the needs of the situation at that time, including the "Twelve Articles of Han Yi", "Han Etiquette", and "Eighteen Articles of the Law and Order", which played an important role in the establishment and consolidation of the Han Dynasty and left a valuable cultural heritage for future generations.
In the process of strengthening the imperial power, Liu Bang adopted a variety of means: first, he weakened the power of the emperor by attacking the veteran hero Xiao He and sending him to prison, further increasing the power of the emperor.
Secondly, he respected his father, the Taigong, as the emperor, so as to convey to the ministers and the common people the values of respecting his father and elders, and emphasizing the importance of filial piety. Finally, he further emphasized the allegiance of his subjects to the monarch through his treatment of Ji Bu and Ding Gong.
These measures demonstrate Liu Bang's emphasis on the balance of power, family ethics, and the relationship between monarchs and ministers in the process of strengthening imperial power.
When Liu Bang was young, he was careless and looked down on scholars. But when he ascended the throne of the emperor, he thought that he had obtained the world through war, so the "poems" and "books" were of no use to him.
In this case, Lu Jia advised him: "You have obtained the world only through war, can you rule the world through war?" After Liu Bang heard this, he ordered Lu Jia to write a book to discuss the reasons why the Qin Dynasty lost the world, and use it as a reference.
He also established huge national libraries, such as Tianlu Pavilion and Shiqu Pavilion, and implemented a relaxed policy of inaction. This series of measures not only appeased the people and united China, but also laid a solid foundation for the graceful and generous culture of the Han Dynasty, and played a decisive role in the formation of the Han nation, the unification and strength of China, and the protection and development of the Han culture.
Liu Bang formulated a political system for the Han Dynasty that lasted for more than 400 years with foresight and foresight. When he returned to Lu from Huainan, he sacrificed three animals to Confucius, one of the pigs, one of the oxen, and one of the sheep, which not only showed his Confucian values after taking power, but also showed the important position and influence of Confucianism in social change.
There are different opinions on the evaluation of Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, as the famous historian Xun Yue of the Eastern Han Dynasty said, he was originally an ordinary person, but he seized the world with swordsmanship, without going through Tang Yu Chan, nor did he experience the Tang Wu Revolution, his success was like a dragon flying and a tiger leaping, conforming to the time and place, after countless battles and suppressions, and finally established his own throne.
In just eight years, he conquered an entire country and achieved unprecedented feats. All this is not just because of his eloquence, magnanimity, and divine favor, without which he would not have been able to achieve such great things.