A retreat that should have ended a movement instead created its leader

Facing encirclement by Nationalist forces in 1934, roughly 86,000 Chinese Communist fighters broke out and marched some 9,000 kilometers over a year, crossing mountains and rivers under constant attack; fewer than 10,000 completed it. The ordeal cemented Mao Zedong's leadership of the survivors and became the party's founding legend.

— Chinese Communist Party military history, Long March — October 1934 - October 1935