Gaozu was the Han emperor whom Bagatur held on the hill of Baideng in the winter of 200 BC.[1] His dynasty had only just settled the realm when he marched north in person.[2] He came out alive. The terms he agreed to afterwards governed the relationship between the two courts until the Mayi ambush of 133 BC. They were a princess for the chanyu, fixed gifts every year, and the title of brother.[3]

The defectors

The Han frontier gave way before the army did. Gaozu had moved Xin, king of Han, to Dai and given him Mayi as his seat. The Xiongnu came against Mayi in force. Xin went over to them.[3] Others followed over the next years. Xin’s generals Wang Huang and Zhao Li also stood with the Xiongnu. Chen Xi rose in revolt in Dai and made a plan with Xin to attack it. Lu Wan, king of Yan, came over with a following. The Shiji puts it at several thousand, while the Han Shu puts it at nearly ten thousand. Lu Wan troubled the country east of Shanggu until the end of Gaozu’s reign.[1]

On one modern account, the threat at this time was political as much as military. Many border commanders were former merchants with long dealings across the line. They turned to the Han or to the Xiongnu as the situation on the frontier made it worth their while.[4] For a commander who feared his own court, Bagatur’s camp was the nearest refuge. A second modern account goes further. It holds that the emperor’s frontier campaigns were meant to stop border commanders from defying the court and setting up states with Xiongnu support. On this account, the Han Empire stood for centralisation, and a commander who could refuse imperial orders and go over to the Xiongnu endangered it more than the loss of territory did.[5]

The march north

Bagatur took his army south over the Gouzhu pass, with Xin beside him. He struck at Taiyuan and came down to the walls of Jinyang. Gaozu went out to meet him with an army he led himself.[1] The winter was exceptionally hard. It rained and snowed. Two or three men in ten lost their fingers to the cold.[1]

Bagatur pretended to be beaten. He drew back and hid his best troops. He let the Han see only the weak and the thin. The Han came north after him with 320,000 men. Most of them were infantry.[1] Gaozu reached Pingcheng ahead of his infantry.[3]

Baideng

Bagatur sent in his picked cavalry. They shut Gaozu in on Baideng for seven days. The Han inside the ring and the Han outside it could neither relieve nor feed each other.[1] The Shiji counts the encircling cavalry at 400,000, the Han Shu at more than 300,000.[1]

Gaozu secretly sent a messenger with rich gifts to the chanyu’s consort. She told Bagatur that two rulers should not press each other. Even if he took Han land, she said, the chanyu could never live in it. The Han ruler, she added, had a divinity with him that the chanyu should consider.[1] At the same time, Wang Huang and Zhao Li had agreed a day to join Bagatur. Their troops did not come. He suspected that they had an understanding with the Han. He considered the consort’s words together with that suspicion. Then he opened one corner of the ring.[1]

Gaozu ordered every man to hold his bow fully drawn with an arrow on the string and to face outward. The column walked straight out through the gap and joined the main army. Bagatur led his army away. The Han went away too.[1] The account of the encirclement is told in its own article.

The heqin

Gaozu sent Liu Jing to make a heqin agreement, the first of the series.[1] It did not stop the raiding. Wang Huang, Zhao Li and Xin served the chanyu as generals and broke the agreement repeatedly. Chen Xi’s revolt drew the Han army into Dai. There it recovered the commanderies of Dai, Yanmen and Yunzhong without leaving the frontier. Because Han commanders kept going over to the Xiongnu, Bagatur came and went in Dai as he pleased.[1]

Gaozu then sent Liu Jing again, with a woman of the imperial house to be the chanyu’s consort and with fixed yearly gifts of floss, silk, wine, rice and food. The two rulers were to be brothers. According to the Shiji, Bagatur then eased a little.[3] Some scholars describe the payments of silk, wine, grain and food as a subsidy that could just as well be called tribute, a kind of danegeld.[6] On the modern account, the terms were three: a Han princess for the chanyu, regular gifts, and equal standing as brother states. The chanyu, for his part, promised not to invade. Liu Jing took the princess north in the winter of 198 BC.[4]

The memory of Pingcheng

The Han court remembered Pingcheng for generations. Bagatur wrote to the empress Lü in words that the Shiji calls reckless. Her generals stopped her from answering with war. They told her that even Gaozu, wise and warlike as he was, had been hard pressed at Pingcheng.[3] The Han Shu gives the names of the men in the debate. Fan Kuai asked for one hundred thousand men to ride through the Xiongnu country. Ji Bu answered that Kuai deserved to be beheaded. When Chen Xi rebelled in Dai, he said, Kuai had been supreme general over 320,000 men. When the Xiongnu surrounded Gaozu at Pingcheng, Kuai had not been able to lift the siege. The whole realm sang about it: “Beneath Pingcheng it was truly bitter! Seven days without food, and they could not draw the crossbow.”[2]

The edict of Wudi in 101 BC begins with the same memory.[2] After the Han army had taken Ferghana, Wudi wrote that Gao Huangdi had left him the worry of Pingcheng. He also wrote that in the time of the empress Gao, the chanyu’s letter had been rebellious. Duke Xiang of Qi, he added, had avenged a wrong from nine generations earlier and been praised for it in the Spring and Autumn.[2] The Hou Han Shu’s closing judgement on the Xiongnu starts from the same fact. Gaozu’s might covered the four seas, but he was cornered at the siege of Pingcheng.[7] Among the reasons that the inscription cut on Mount Yanran in AD 89 gives for the campaign of Dou Xian is the wish to vent the old anger of Gao and Wen.[8]

The Han Shu’s closing remarks on the Xiongnu trace the whole policy back to Liu Jing. The empire had just been settled and had newly met the disaster of Pingcheng. The court therefore followed his advice, made a heqin and bribed the chanyu in the hope of quiet on the frontier.[2] The same remarks add that under Hui and the empress Lü, the court followed this policy without deviation. They also add that the raids did not diminish and that the chanyu only grew more arrogant.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  2. ^ a b c d e f Han Shu, juan 94
  3. ^ a b c d e Shiji, juan 110
  4. ^ a b Sinor 1990, p. 122
  5. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 479–480
  6. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 467
  7. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 89
  8. ^ Hou Han Shu, juan 23

Sources

Literature

  • Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
  • Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)

Related

What links here3

Persons
Dou Xian · Emperor Wu of Han
Institutions and Titles
Xiongnu Agriculture

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Emperor Gaozu of Han.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/persons/emperor-gaozu-of-han/

Last revised: 8 November 2026