Battle of Gaixia (202 BC): The Fall of Xiang Yu and Rise of Han

The Battle of Gaixia was the final, decisive battle of the Chu-Han contention, the civil war that followed the collapse of the Qin dynasty. In the winter of 202 BC the armies of Liu Bang, King of Han, surrounded Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, at Gaixia in what is now northern Anhui. Xiang Yu’s defeat and death at the Wu River left Liu Bang as sole master of China and founder of the Han dynasty, which ruled for about four centuries.

Background: the Chu-Han contention

The Qin empire disintegrated after the death of its first emperor in 210 BC. Rebels rose across the former Warring States, and two leaders emerged from the struggle. Xiang Yu, a young aristocrat from a family of Chu generals, was the most formidable soldier of the age. Liu Bang was a former minor village official of humble origins who had captured the Qin capital region first.

After their tense meeting at the Hongmen Banquet in 206 BC, Xiang Yu divided the empire into eighteen kingdoms and took the title Hegemon-King of Western Chu. He sent Liu Bang to the remote western kingdom of Han. Within months Liu Bang broke out, seized the old Qin heartland in the Wei valley and challenged Xiang Yu for control of the whole realm.

The war that followed lasted four years. Xiang Yu won most of the battles, including a crushing victory at Pengcheng in 205 BC, where his small force routed a much larger Han coalition. But Liu Bang held the rich Guanzhong region, kept his armies supplied and was willing to lose battles without losing the war.

The road to Gaixia

From 204 BC the two sides were locked in a stalemate around the fortresses of Xingyang and Chenggao, near modern Zhengzhou. Meanwhile the Han general Han Xin conquered the northern kingdoms of Wei, Zhao and Qi, and the guerrilla leader Peng Yue repeatedly cut Chu’s supply lines. Xiang Yu’s army was strong in the field but increasingly short of food.

In 203 BC the exhausted rivals agreed to divide China along the Hong Canal, with Chu to the east and Han to the west. Xiang Yu released Liu Bang’s father and wife, Lü Zhi, whom he had held as hostages, and began to withdraw. On the advice of his counsellors Zhang Liang and Chen Ping, Liu Bang broke the treaty almost at once and pursued the retreating Chu army.

The first clash went badly. At Guling, Han Xin and Peng Yue failed to arrive, and Liu Bang was beaten. He then promised both men large territories of their own, and they marched to join him. With the forces of Han Xin, Peng Yue, Liu Bang and other allies converging, Xiang Yu was cornered at Gaixia.

The battle

Sima Qian, writing about a century later in the Records of the Grand Historian, is almost the only source for the battle. He says Han Xin commanded around 300,000 men, while Xiang Yu’s force is traditionally put at about 100,000. These figures are not reliable in detail, but the Han side clearly had a large numerical advantage.

Han Xin led the centre. When his troops gave ground under the Chu attack, flanking divisions under two other generals closed in from the sides, and Han Xin then turned to attack again. The Chu army was defeated and withdrew into its fortified camp, short of men and food and surrounded by several lines of Han troops.

The songs of Chu and Xiang Yu’s last stand

The best-known episode took place that night. According to Sima Qian, Xiang Yu heard the Han soldiers around him singing the songs of Chu. Alarmed, he asked whether Han had already conquered all of Chu, since so many of the men outside seemed to be from his own land. The scene gave Chinese the idiom “songs of Chu on all sides”, meaning to be utterly isolated.

Xiang Yu rose and drank in his tent with his favourite, Consort Yu, and his horse Zhui. He composed a short lament, now called the Song of Gaixia, in which he said that his strength could uproot mountains but the times were against him, and asked what would become of Yu. Sima Qian adds that Yu sang in reply and that everyone present wept.

That night Xiang Yu broke through the encirclement with about 800 horsemen and rode south. By the time he crossed the Huai River only about a hundred remained. A farmer misdirected him into a marsh, the Han cavalry caught up, and at Dongcheng he was left with just 28 riders. There, Sima Qian says, he deliberately charged the Han ranks to prove that his defeat was the will of Heaven and not a failure of his fighting.

He reached the Wu River, on the north bank of the Yangtze in today’s He County, Anhui. The local station chief had a boat ready and urged him to cross to the southeast, where he could still be a king. Xiang Yu refused. He said he had crossed the river years earlier with 8,000 young men from the region and none had returned, so he could not face their families.

He gave his horse to the station chief and fought on foot, killing many pursuers. Recognising an old acquaintance, Lü Matong, among the Han horsemen, he remarked that Liu Bang had offered a large reward of gold and a fief for his head and that he would do him a favour. He then cut his own throat. Five Han soldiers each seized part of his body, and all five were later made marquises.

Consequences

The death of Xiang Yu ended organised resistance. The remaining Chu territories surrendered, and Liu Bang honoured his rival with a burial suited to a duke of Lu. In early 202 BC, only weeks after Gaixia, Liu Bang was proclaimed emperor near Dingtao. He is known to history as Emperor Gaozu, founder of the Han dynasty.

The victory depended on the allies Liu Bang had bought with promises, and he soon turned on them. Han Xin was stripped of his army almost immediately, demoted and eventually executed in 196 BC; Peng Yue was killed the same year. Gaozu’s new empire would also face an external test within two years at the Battle of Baideng against the Xiongnu.

Key people

• Xiang Yu (232–202 BC): Hegemon-King of Western Chu, a brilliant battlefield commander whose harshness and failure to keep allies cost him the war.
• Liu Bang (died 195 BC): King of Han, later Emperor Gaozu, admired by historians for using able advisers and generals.
• Han Xin: Han’s greatest general, who commanded at Gaixia.
• Peng Yue: guerrilla leader whose raids weakened Chu’s supplies.
• Consort Yu: Xiang Yu’s companion, known only from the episode at Gaixia.

Myths and facts

Myth: Consort Yu killed herself with Xiang Yu’s sword at Gaixia. Sima Qian does not say how she died. The suicide story appears in later tradition and became famous through the Peking opera Farewell My Concubine.

Myth: Han Xin laid an “ambush from ten sides”. The phrase is the title of a celebrated piece for the pipa lute, first recorded many centuries later. It dramatises the battle rather than describing Han Xin’s actual tactics.

Fact: The “songs of Chu” may have had a practical cause. Many soldiers in the Han coalition, including Liu Bang himself, came from the old Chu region, so Chu songs in the Han camp need not have been a deliberate trick.

Timeline

• 206 BC: Xiang Yu divides the empire and sends Liu Bang to the kingdom of Han; Liu Bang soon breaks out.
• 205 BC: Xiang Yu defeats Liu Bang’s coalition at Pengcheng.
• 204–203 BC: Stalemate at Xingyang and Chenggao; Han Xin conquers Zhao and Qi.
• 203 BC: Treaty of the Hong Canal divides China; Liu Bang breaks it and pursues Chu.
• 203–202 BC, winter: Han defeat at Guling, then the decisive battle at Gaixia.
• 202 BC, winter: Xiang Yu breaks out and dies at the Wu River.
• 202 BC, early spring: Liu Bang is proclaimed emperor of Han.

Legacy

Gaixia became one of the most retold stories in Chinese culture. Poets argued for centuries over Xiang Yu’s choice at the Wu River: the Tang poet Du Mu suggested he could have crossed and returned to fight, while the Song poet Li Qingzhao praised his refusal to flee. The opera Farewell My Concubine and Chen Kaige’s 1993 film of the same name carried the story to world audiences.

Why it matters

Gaixia decided who would inherit the Qin empire. Liu Bang’s victory created the Han dynasty, whose institutions, culture and name came to define Chinese civilisation, while Xiang Yu’s fall became a lasting image of tragic heroism.