Ai Zhang哀章
fl. 8–9 CE
A man of Zitong studying in the capital, recorded as fond of large talk. He cast the bronze casket, wrote the eleven names inside it, added his own, and became a duke.
Dynasty
Han 漢
206 BCE – 220 CE
Four centuries that gave China its name. Our episodes begin with the rebel army that took the Qin capital in 206 BCE and end in 184 CE, the year the empire's provinces stopped obeying it — the year the Three Kingdoms block below opens.
Episodes
Three Articles of Law
Into the Pass, 206 BCE
Seven Days at Baideng
Pingcheng, 200 BCE
Cut Back the Fiefs
Wu, Liang and Chang'an, 154 BCE
The Road Bored Open
Longxi to the Oxus, 138 BCE
The Great Hammer
The Mobei, 119 BCE
The Historian's Price
Juyan and the Sima, 99 BCE
Ashes in Chang'an
The Palace Digging and the Luntai Edict, 91–89 BCE
Dead Beyond Ten Thousand Li
Chang'an and the Steppe, 53–33 BCE
Ten Thousand Changes
Chang'an and the New, 8 CE to 23 CE
The Gentle Emperor
Luoyang, 25–57 CE
Thirty-Six Men
The Western Regions, 73–102 CE
The Deep Roots
The Partisan Prohibitions, 166–184 CE
The Yellow Turbans
Jizhou and Yingchuan, 184 CE
People of this age
Ban Chao班超
32–102 CE
The clerk who took the road west. Thirty-six men at Shanshan, thirty years in the Western Regions, and the title Marquis Who Settles the Far.
Ban Gu班固
d. 92 CE
The historian of Han who traded his pen for a sword-stroke at the Yanran Mountain; author of the stele's inscription, dead in the Luoyang gaol the year after it was raised.
Ban Yong班勇
fl. 102–127 CE
Ban Chao's son, who inherited the western business, argued the court back into the Western Regions and recovered it with a staff of five hundred.
Bing Ji丙吉
d. 55 BCE
An officer of the Commandant of Justice set to work the witchcraft cases in the prison of the commandery residences. He kept the emperor's great-grandson alive on his own money and never spoke of it.
Chao Cuo晁錯
d. 154 BCE
Imperial adviser turned Censor-in-chief, called the bag of wit of the eastern palace while he served the crown prince. He wrote the plan to cut the fiefs back and was delivered to the block in his court robes to buy the rebels' withdrawal.
Chen Fan陳蕃
d. 168 CE
Grand Tutor, eighty-ish and unbought; in 168 he tried to wipe the inner court out in one morning and died with his cap-strings undone.
d. 178 BCE
The emperor's planter of stratagems, ennobled six times for counsels the record says were kept too secret to be heard. At Baideng what it will let him say is an order of march: crossbows strung, two arrows nocked to the outside, and walk.
fl. 47–36 BCE
Deputy commander: poor, always borrowing, disliked in his home district, twice in gaol. He forged the edict, the garrison colonies marched on his signature, and he spent the rest of his life defending it.
Deng Yu鄧禹
d. 58 CE
The boy who attached himself to Liu Xiu in the capital's college, rode north to tell him an empire was there for the taking, and was made Grand Minister over the Masses in the field at twenty-four with a fief of ten thousand households. His house was still choosing emperors in 106 CE.
Dou Wu竇武
d. 168 CE
Regent and general-in-chief for one season, empress-dowager's kinsman; betrayed by the officers he trusted, he died outside the capital rather than be taken.
Dou Xian竇憲
d. 92 CE
Grand general of the imperial in-laws. Rode five thousand li past the Altai to the Yanran Mountain and cut his victory in stone — and fell three years later, with the man who wrote that inscription, Ban Gu, dead in gaol.
Du Mi杜密
d. 169 CE
The governor who would not run: the order to arrest him reached his own commandery while he sat at his office, and he went to the prison-wagon of his own will.
d. 57 CE
Liu Xiu of Nanyang, a distant grandson of the first Han emperor who took the throne in 25 CE at thirty-one and died in 57 CE at sixty-two. He spent the thirty-two years between on taking the empire's size down.
188–141 BCE
Liu Qi, second emperor of Han, the prince who had killed the heir of Wu with a gaming board. He approved the strategy that won, gave way to the one that did not, and said afterwards that he regretted it.
156–87 BCE
Wanted a diversion for his wife's brother's army, took a boast for a promise, then suspected the man who made it. He wished the defeated general dead on the steppe, killed his mother and wife on a misreport, and admitted later that he had been wrong about the relief.
d. 180 BCE
Wife of the founder, mother of the heir and of one daughter, and the power in the court after 195 BCE. The bargain on the table needed that daughter. She wept day and night, and the girl who went north was somebody else.
Fan Kuai樊噲
d. 189 BCE
A dog butcher of Pei by trade, brother-in-law to Liu Bang. Remonstrated with his lord at the palace and carried a shield through the gate at Hong Gate.
Fan Pang范滂
137–169 CE
The inspector who took up his reins with the resolve to make the whole empire clear. When the second list came for him he refused to run, and went into the prison-wagon himself.
Fan Zeng范增
d. 204 BCE
An old man of Juchao, the strategist behind Xiang Yu's throne. Read Liu Bang's abstinence as ambition, and cursed the feast afterwards.
Feng Yi馮異
d. 34 CE
A surrendered prefect of five walled counties who became the army's model of good order, brought a bowl of hot bean porridge at Raoyang, and was nicknamed the Tree General because he stood aside under a tree while the other officers sat and argued about their credits.
Gan Yanshou甘延壽
fl. 36–33 BCE
Protector General in the Western Regions, a frontiersman picked for his strength at throwing stones. He was ill in bed when his deputy raised an army in the emperor's name, and ended up riding at the head of it.
Gan Ying甘英
fl. 97 CE
Ban Chao's envoy, the farthest-reaching messenger of Han: he came to the Western Sea and looked at Rome — and was talked out of the crossing.
d. 13 CE
The Han's great-grandmother and the Wang family's own root. She held the transmission seal, threw it down at her nephew's man, and told his brothers they would be clan-exterminated.
Han Xin韓信
d. 196 BCE
King of Han on the frontier, and not the marquis with the same name. Besieged at Mayi, scolded by his own court for treating for peace, he handed the town to the Xiongnu and gave the emperor the war he was caught in. He died leading Xiongnu cavalry five years later.
Huangfu Song皇甫嵩
d. 195 CE
Left Commandant of the Guards, sent west into Yingchuan with Zhu Jun. He won that war in one night's fire and the north in a dawn assault, and in the year after, an accusation from two Regular Attendants he had offended took his general's seal and six thousand of his households.
Huhanye Chanyu呼韓邪單于
d. 31 BCE
Claimant in a five-cornered civil war who took his adviser's advice and gave the Han his name. Ended with a title above every vassal king, a Han bride, and a Han guard left at his camp.
Huo Qubing霍去病
d. 117 BCE
Son of the empress's elder sister and nephew of his own commander, a palace attendant at eighteen. Given the picked men and no subordinate generals; buried with a tomb shaped like the mountains he took.
d. 91 BCE
An informer out of Handan who destroyed a crown prince to save himself and was trusted for it. He rode with a shaman to read the ground and heated iron to make men confess.
Junchen軍臣單于
d. 126 BCE
Chanyu of the Xiongnu, who caught the envoy at the frontier and saw no reason at all to let him through — and who kept him for over a decade, gave him a wife, and never got the Han staff out of the envoy's own hand.
Kunmo昆莫
fl. 119–105 BCE
Kunmi of the Wusun, the horse-lords of the Ili valley whom the second mission was sent to move east. He was old, his kingdom was split three ways, and his ministers were afraid of the Xiongnu; he took the gifts and did not move.
fl. 24–41 CE
The beauty of Nanyang he admitted wanting as a poor young man, who refused the empresshood because her rival had the elder son, and whose son became the next emperor. Her own record is the Book of the Later Han's memoir of the empresses.
Li Guang李廣
d. 119 BCE
The old frontier shot, past sixty and with the luck against him, given the long road east instead of the Chanyu. He lost the way, and refused to be written up by a clerk.
Li Guangli李廣利
d. 88 BCE
General of Ershi, named for the Dayuan town his army had been sent to take, and brother of a consort the emperor was burying honours under. Thirty thousand horse out of Jiuquan, and out again with a hundred-odd men after an encirclement.
Li Ling李陵
d. 74 BCE
Grandson of the famous shot Li Guang and heir to his posthumous marquisate. Given five thousand foot and no horse: thirty days north, a month of retreat south, a surrender, then twenty-odd years as the Chanyu's son-in-law.
Li Ying李膺
d. 169 CE
The judge whose severity made the eunuchs' kin afraid to leave their gates. The first name on the faction's lists, and the first great name it killed.
Liu Bang劉邦
256–195 BCE
Emperor Gaozu of Han, founder. Took the field in the tenth month against a vassal's revolt, reached Pingcheng before his own army, and spent seven days inside a closed ring of cavalry. On the way home he apologised to a man he had put in irons and told the army he had killed the ten who had advised the march.
Liu Jing劉敬
fl. 202–198 BCE
A conscript from Qi in a sheepskin coat who argued the court into camping the capital inside the pass, then reported that the Xiongnu could not be attacked and was chained for it. Released with a marquisate of two thousand households, he wrote the marriage-tribute agreement and proposed moving over a hundred thousand people into the Wei valley.
Liu Ju劉據
d. 91 BCE
Son of a singing girl who became empress, heir for thirty-one years. He struck off the investigator's head with his own hand, held Chang'an five days, and hanged at Hu.
Liu Pi劉濞
d. 154 BCE
King of Wu, sixty-two in 154 BCE, son of the founder's elder brother and therefore the founder's nephew. He had coins cast from his mountains and salt boiled from his sea, had not attended court for a generation, and lost a war that lasted three months.
Liu Quli劉屈氂
d. 91 BCE
The emperor's nephew and the second chancellor of these eleven months. He won the street war, and was cut in two afterwards on a fresh charge of witchcraft.
Liu Wu劉武
d. 144 BCE
King of Liang, the emperor's full brother and the empire's richest prince. He held Suiyang through the siege, was deliberately abandoned while he held it, and spent the rest of his life getting even.
Liu Xin劉歆
d. 23 CE
The age's greatest scholar of texts and the New's Teaching Master of the State, the man who wrote its ceremonies. An open indictment named him as the one who had inverted the Five Classics; he took his own life after a plot.
Liu Yan劉縯
d. 23 CE
His elder brother, Bo Sheng, who liked retainers and hard drinkers more than ploughing and who actually raised the rising. Killed by the emperor the family had made, in 23 CE; honoured by his brother twenty-odd years later.
d. 194 CE
Imperial clansman who in 188 proposed turning the regional inspectors into governors with real power, then asked for such a post himself — a far southern province, to be out of the way — and got Yizhou instead.
Lu Bode路博德
fl. 102–99 BCE
Strong-Crossbow Commandant, ordered to meet Li Ling halfway. Ashamed to be another man's rear, he asked to postpone the stroke to spring; the emperor read the plea as treachery and marched the five thousand out.
Lu Zhi盧植
d. 192 CE
North Commandant of the Guards, leading the northern army's five campuses, and the age's great teacher of the classics. He would not fee the Yellow Gate envoy sent to his camp, was reported for it by the man himself, and lost his command and very nearly his life.
Ma Yuanyi馬元義
d. 184 CE
Zhang Jue's chief of one great battalion, who gathered tens of thousands out of Jing and Yang for a junction at Ye, came and went to the capital and took two Regular Attendants at the emperor's elbow as his men inside it, and was torn apart by teams at Luoyang when a fellow disciple gave the whole arrangement away.
Modu冒頓單于
d. 174 BCE
Chanyu of the Xiongnu. He drilled his escort with a whistling arrow, killed his father with it, took a horse, a wife and a thousand li of empty grazing from the Eastern Hu, then hid his fat cattle and strong riders to lure the Han north.
Ou Bo區博
fl. 12 CE
A middle-rank palace officer. One memorial of his — the well-field has been dead a thousand years, not even Yao and Shun could revive it in a hundred — reversed the dynasty's central law.
Ouyang Xi歐陽歙
d. 39 CE
Grand Minister over the Masses, a teacher of the Documents from Runan, put in chains in 39 CE over the figures in the land-and-household audit and dead in prison within the year.
Ren An任安
d. 91 BCE
Courtesy Shaoqing: an officer in Wei Qing's household who would not change masters when the younger general rose, later protector of the Northern Army. He wrote to a friend in the inner chambers to reproach him with the duty of recommending men, and got this answer.
Shi De石德
d. 91 BCE
One of the prince's teachers, afraid of dying with his pupil. The only voice the record keeps from inside the eastern palace: proof dug up by an accuser, he says, proves nothing.
Sima Qian司馬遷
fl. 108–91 BCE
Grand Astrologer, keeper of the stone chamber and the golden cases. He had never drunk a cup with Li Ling; asked his opinion he gave it, and took the palace punishment rather than leave a hundred and thirty chapters unfinished.
Tangyi Fu堂邑父
fl. 138–126 BCE
A Xiongnu-born slave of the Tangyi household who went with him as guide and bowman and kept the party fed by shooting game when the rations gave out. One of the two men, out of over a hundred, who came back.
Tian Qianqiu田千秋
d. 77 BCE
An officer of the high tomb, over eight feet tall, who put the dead prince's case in one sentence about a son playing with his father's weapons and was made chancellor for it.
d. 23 CE
Regent, then the one emperor of the New. Poor in a house of nine marquisates, famous for his own frugality, he governed an empire the way he had read a classic: by correcting the words.
Wang Yi王邑
d. 23 CE
Commander-in-chief of the New and Marquis of Chengdu. He led the mobilisation of a million, refused good advice twice under Kunyang, and rode back to Luoyang with a few thousand men.
Wang Zhaojun王昭君
fl. 33–31 BCE
A woman of Nan commandery chosen into the palaces, given to the chanyu as a consort when the northern war was over. The era name was changed the same spring to mark the gift as finished.
Wei Qing衛青
d. 118 BCE
A marquis's household servant who called himself a slave's son, and rose to General-in-Chief. Formed his waggons into a ring, fought the Chanyu in a sandstorm, and never again received an increase of his fief.
Wu Han吳漢
d. 56 CE
A fugitive horse-dealer from the far north-east who had sold grain on the road; Marshal-in-Chief for twenty years, the man who burned Chengdu after it had surrendered, and the one whose wife was scolded for buying land while the soldiers had none.
Xiang Yu項羽
232–202 BCE
Commander of the allied armies, forty thousand strong. Broken the Qin main body already, he came west to punish a man he had agreed to make king.
Xiao He蕭何
d. 193 BCE
Liu Bang's old superior in the county office. While the generals scrambled for gold he loaded the archives: maps, registers, statutes.
Xiao Wangzhi蕭望之
d. 47 BCE
The grandee who argued that a chanyu should be received as a guest and not a subject. He won, was painted on the wall of honoured ministers while still alive, and was driven to poison two years later.
Yan You嚴尤
d. 23 CE
The one commander who argued against every frontier at once, and against encircling Kunyang. He got the king's head he said he would not hunt, and lost his rank for putting the bandits first.
Yuan Ang袁盎
d. 148 BCE
A former chancellor's rival and the one man the emperor had not let Chao Cuo destroy. He proposed the execution that was meant to end the war, carried the pardon to Wu, and was refused audience.
d. 198 CE
The inspector who accused the great eunuch's mother's house and was hunted for it; he fled a year and every door he came to took him in, and the age named the flight for him.
d. 184 CE
The healer of Julu who styled himself Great Excellent Teacher, da xianliang shi, and served the way of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi, later called the way of Great Peace. Ten-odd years of charmed water and confession made him head of an enrolled empire inside the empire; he died of sickness before it was broken.
fl. 218–195 BCE
Heir of a destroyed state, counselor to both men in turn. Persuaded his general to sleep in the open and later walked him out of a banquet.
d. 114 BCE
An imperial attendant of Hanzhong who answered an advertisement for a man who could get there. Captured on the way out and again on the way back, gone thirteen years in all and more than ten of them in Xiongnu hands, he reached Ferghana, the Yuezhi, Bactria and Kangju and brought back the west as information.
d. 189 CE
Regular Attendant, the man the emperor said was his lord. When the capital's plot was found out the emperor turned on the Regular Attendants, and Zhang Rang and his fellows went bareheaded and barefoot, paid their private wealth into the war, and were left in office; the officer who pressed for their deaths died in prison on a charge worked up against him.
Zhizhi Chanyu郅支單于
d. 36 BCE
His elder brother, who would not kneel and rode ten thousand li west instead. Built a city on the Talas, killed the envoys sent to talk to him, and was shot through the nose on the wall and died in his inner quarters.
Zhou Yafu周亞夫
d. 143 BCE
Marquis of Jiang, commander-in-chief. The man whose camp the late emperor had been stopped outside for discipline. He let the rebels beat the empire's richest fief to pieces, cut their grain, and would not fight until they were starving.
Zhu Jun朱儁
d. 195 CE
Right Commandant of the Guards, fighting his own war at Wan. The one officer who argues that men with no way out must fight to the death — and who refused a surrender for that reason, took the place by storm, and is credited with the killing either way.
Ziying子嬰
d. 206 BCE
Forty-six days King of Qin. He killed the minister who had enthroned him, then came out in a plain cart with a cord about his neck.
Chronology
- 206 BCEInto the Pass: a rebel general abolishes the Qin code and promises three articles of law. Then Hong Gate.Shiji, juan 8, 9, 7
- 202 BCEXiang Yu is dead at the Wu river. Liu Bang becomes Emperor Gaozu.Episode 1
- 200 BCEBaideng: the founder is held seven days by the steppe, and buys the next sixty years with silk and a borrowed princess.Episode 2
- 196 BCEThe vassal kings are removed one by one. The fiefs that survive are made smaller and safer.Hanshu, juan 1
- 154 BCEThe Seven Kingdoms rise over the plan to cut them back, and are broken in three months.Episode 3
- 138 BCEZhang Qian goes west to find the Yuezhi and never quite does. The road is bored open.Episode 4
- 119 BCEThe Mobei campaign: two generals, two columns, and the steppe's herds driven far beyond the river.Episode 5
- 99 BCELi Ling's crossbow column surrenders; the man who defends him takes the palace sentence instead of the block.Episode 6
- 91 BCEThe witchcraft prosecutions: effigies dug up by the thousand, a crown prince fighting in the streets of Chang'an, then dead.Episode 7
- 89 BCEThe Luntai edict — the emperor publicly withdraws the northern war he had waged for forty years.Hanshu, juan 7
- 51 BCEHuhanye Chanyu comes to court as a subordinate. The steppe splits in two.Episode 8
- 36 BCEZhizhi Chanyu is killed in a far-off city by a Han colonel who acted without authority and was argued over afterwards.Episode 8
- 8 CEWang Mang takes the throne and starts renaming everything.Episode 9
- 23 CEKunyang breaks the new order; the usurper dies in his own palace pool.Episode 9
- 25 CEGuangwu restores the Han, and moves the capital east to Luoyang.Episode 10
- 39 CEThe land-and-household audit, and six governors executed for falsifying it. The compromise that followed is the dynasty's.Episode 10
- 56 CEThe Feng Shan sacrifice, and a refusal to send an army further west than the next valley.Episode 10
- 73 CEBan Chao takes thirty-six men into the Western Regions and stays thirty years.Episode 11
- 97 CEAn envoy is sent on to the sea in the west and turns back. Then the passes close.Episode 11
- 166 CEThe Partisan Prohibitions: the empire outlawises the very families it later needs to fight for it.Episode 12
- 184 CEThe Yellow Turbans rise in eight provinces at once. The dynasty survives; its authority does not.Episode 13