1. His childhood nickname is "piggy". Thus, the most widely acknowledged Top Three Emperors of China is Qin Shihuang, the Dragon, Li Shimin, the Phoenix, and Liu Che, the piggy.
2. Yes, he is in fact the guy who promoted Confucianism to supremacy as I've written about before.
3. He is the archetypical Chinese history example of a man who became successful solely by sucking the blood of his wife, as a lot of people think that he only succeeded the throne because he married beloved princess Chen Ajiao, and promised to build her a house of gold. And as soon as he came into power, he immediately kicked her aside to marry Wei Zifu, Wei Qing's sister, instead. (Different sister, not Huo Qubing's mom.)
4. Like all Chinese Emperors who lived too long, he spent his latter years being deeply paranoid of his own son. When political factions framed the Crown Prince for performing voodoo rituals against Liu Che, he was forced into revolt, and Liu Che defeated him and executed him. Only to find out later that it was all a conspiracy. He built many monuments and palaces to his former Crown Prince to try to ease his guilt.
5. The latter years of his rule saw multiple disasters every single year, whether it was droughts or floods or earthquakes or plagues or hail, he saw them all. It got to the point that, despite him being an otherwise pretty damn awesome Emperor, people still started doubting whether the Celestial Bureaucracy had a problem with him. He was one of the few Emperors who eventually was forced to write a judgement declaring himself guilty and passing a sentence on himself to try to appease the Heavens.
6. Like all Chinese Emperors who lacked a good successor, Liu Che also believed in Chinese sorcery and sought immortality. To the point that he even married one of his daughters to a supposed Daoist wizard. But he, at least, realised it was all a trickery and gave up before he could die from eating too much mercury.
> Nobody has confirmed the migration hypothesis—that the Huns that invaded Rome are the very same as the Xiongnu. Historians seem to think it’s at least possible, but not strongly supported.
Genetic study of the remains of European Huns indicates that they were partly descended from the Xiongnu and partly from the Aryan peoples of Central Asia (which they presumably traveled through to get to Europe), according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Huns#Genetic_evidence
An interesting counterpoint to Liu Bang's support for social mobility might be Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the middle of the 3 warlords who ended the Sengoku period in Japan. He started out as a farmer turned soldier, made it big, and when he was in power (shogun in all but name) he pulled up the ladder after him. He formalized the class system and made it illegal to change classes, he disarmed the peasants, and he made it illegal to leave your area of residence without permission.
My impression of the Great Wall is that it's a much bigger deal for horse nomads. Sure, individual people can climb it, no real problem, and you can even have an army make enough ladders for everyone. But if you're traveling with 5 horses per warrior, and maybe a giant herd of sheep, how are you going to get all of that across a wall? You'd have to pull down a section, or build a ramp, or something like that. But I've never heard this from an actual scholar, so who knows.
Just to be clear, the rebellions started and funded by noble lords did it with the explicit goal to ”Restore the Han/Qi/Zhao/Yan Empire" and borderline explicit implication that, of course, the subsequent nobility would be restored too. Liu Bang was the only rebel force that wasn't explicitly fighting for one dead Kingdom or another.
Of course, there were plenty of people in his advisors who came from a noble background. Zhang Liang came from a family that has been a Chancellor of Han for the last four generations, for example. And people believe that Han Xin has to come from some sort of noble family, because random people don't just have swords.
As for the Great Wall, as far as I can tell, it didn't do much to slow down the frequency with which China was invaded by barbarians in subsequent dynasties, so they must've had some strategy to get around it.
A couple of pointless facts about Liu Che:
1. His childhood nickname is "piggy". Thus, the most widely acknowledged Top Three Emperors of China is Qin Shihuang, the Dragon, Li Shimin, the Phoenix, and Liu Che, the piggy.
2. Yes, he is in fact the guy who promoted Confucianism to supremacy as I've written about before.
3. He is the archetypical Chinese history example of a man who became successful solely by sucking the blood of his wife, as a lot of people think that he only succeeded the throne because he married beloved princess Chen Ajiao, and promised to build her a house of gold. And as soon as he came into power, he immediately kicked her aside to marry Wei Zifu, Wei Qing's sister, instead. (Different sister, not Huo Qubing's mom.)
4. Like all Chinese Emperors who lived too long, he spent his latter years being deeply paranoid of his own son. When political factions framed the Crown Prince for performing voodoo rituals against Liu Che, he was forced into revolt, and Liu Che defeated him and executed him. Only to find out later that it was all a conspiracy. He built many monuments and palaces to his former Crown Prince to try to ease his guilt.
5. The latter years of his rule saw multiple disasters every single year, whether it was droughts or floods or earthquakes or plagues or hail, he saw them all. It got to the point that, despite him being an otherwise pretty damn awesome Emperor, people still started doubting whether the Celestial Bureaucracy had a problem with him. He was one of the few Emperors who eventually was forced to write a judgement declaring himself guilty and passing a sentence on himself to try to appease the Heavens.
6. Like all Chinese Emperors who lacked a good successor, Liu Che also believed in Chinese sorcery and sought immortality. To the point that he even married one of his daughters to a supposed Daoist wizard. But he, at least, realised it was all a trickery and gave up before he could die from eating too much mercury.
> Nobody has confirmed the migration hypothesis—that the Huns that invaded Rome are the very same as the Xiongnu. Historians seem to think it’s at least possible, but not strongly supported.
Genetic study of the remains of European Huns indicates that they were partly descended from the Xiongnu and partly from the Aryan peoples of Central Asia (which they presumably traveled through to get to Europe), according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Huns#Genetic_evidence
No mention of how 新朝 is literally "The New Dynasty"?
This is great, thanks for writing this!
The mention of extinct dog breeds reminded me of "turnspit dogs":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog
An interesting counterpoint to Liu Bang's support for social mobility might be Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the middle of the 3 warlords who ended the Sengoku period in Japan. He started out as a farmer turned soldier, made it big, and when he was in power (shogun in all but name) he pulled up the ladder after him. He formalized the class system and made it illegal to change classes, he disarmed the peasants, and he made it illegal to leave your area of residence without permission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyotomi_Hideyoshi
My impression of the Great Wall is that it's a much bigger deal for horse nomads. Sure, individual people can climb it, no real problem, and you can even have an army make enough ladders for everyone. But if you're traveling with 5 horses per warrior, and maybe a giant herd of sheep, how are you going to get all of that across a wall? You'd have to pull down a section, or build a ramp, or something like that. But I've never heard this from an actual scholar, so who knows.
Just to be clear, the rebellions started and funded by noble lords did it with the explicit goal to ”Restore the Han/Qi/Zhao/Yan Empire" and borderline explicit implication that, of course, the subsequent nobility would be restored too. Liu Bang was the only rebel force that wasn't explicitly fighting for one dead Kingdom or another.
Of course, there were plenty of people in his advisors who came from a noble background. Zhang Liang came from a family that has been a Chancellor of Han for the last four generations, for example. And people believe that Han Xin has to come from some sort of noble family, because random people don't just have swords.
As for the Great Wall, as far as I can tell, it didn't do much to slow down the frequency with which China was invaded by barbarians in subsequent dynasties, so they must've had some strategy to get around it.