War and Game

The Xiang clan, who had served for generations as generals in the state of Chu, was one of the families reduced to commoner status when the First Emperor did away with the aristocracy of the feudal states. Not surprisingly, when Chen She began his revolt in 209, Xiang Yu and his uncle Xiang Liang also launched an uprising by assassinating a Qin governor. Xiang Yu was twenty-four at the time. Xiang Liang quickly became a major leader in the rebellion, and after his death, Xiang Yu took over. As the one rebel general who could consistently defeat imperial troops, Xiang rose to a preeminent position. After he engineered the surrender of the Qin’s commanding general, Xiang took possession of the capital, executed the last Qin ruler, and unified China once again. Rather than ruling as an emperor, however, he returned to the feudal pattern by appointing eighteen of the rebel generals as deputy kings. He himself took the title of hegemon-king, and he named a grandson of the last king of Chu the “Righteous Emperor”—a position with little power and even less security. Within a year, Xiang Yu had the man assassinated. He appointed Liu Bang to be the king of Han, even though according to an earlier agreement Liu should have gotten the “Land between the Passes,” that is, the territory of the old Qin capital (Xianyang). Xiang Yu decided to reign from his home territory of Chu, but when he marched east with his troops, Liu seized possession of the Qin capital that had originally been promised to him, and other kings began grabbing territory as well. Xiang Yu turned his army around and began fighting again, but after four years, most of China had gone over to the side of Liu Bang. After his troops were surrounded and defeated, Xiang Yu committed suicide on the battlefield at the age of thirty-one. Though Xiang Yu was undoubtedly the better military strategist, in the end he lost the war—most likely because he was less adept than Liu Bang at taking advice and rewarding his followers (though later in the Han Empire, people claimed that Liu’s victory also had something to do with the Mandate of Heaven). (Shiji, ch. 7)