Our records of the First Emperor understandably lack objectivity. They are either the glorified praises of stone monuments to his greatness, or the spiteful recollections of the dynasty that supplanted him. Consequently, it is difficult to separate folklore from fact, even in the Record of the Historian. But if there is a grain of truth in the Historian’s claims, then the First Emperor was losing his mind. His behaviour was highly self-absorbed and irrational, his reasoning perhaps dulled by ‘immortality potions’, his health possibly under similar strain from the consultants’ cures. His behaviour was reclusive and paranoid, both through his own fear of another assassination attempt, and the consultants’ pandering to it. As he reached his mid-forties, he was the most powerful man in the world, but likely to have experienced signs of his own mortality every day.
Overindulgence and indolence were taking their toll, and the First Emperor was turning into a portly middle-aged man. For this, he was increasingly blaming the failure of his consultants to deliver on their promises. Realising that they had run out of excuses, two of the consultants made it known that the First Emperor would never find immortality while he clung to his earthly powers, and then they made a run for it.20
They did not make it far, and their attempted escape only brought matters to a logical conclusion. Dissatisfied with years of double-talk and time wasting, the First Emperor ordered that the full force of Qin dynasty investigation should be turned upon the immortality consultants.
It was a recipe for disaster. The interrogation methods of the Qin scribes, as recorded in the tomb of Judge Xi, were brutally scientific and logical. There was no place in the interrogation guidelines for supernatural tales or spooky threats. Each of the consultants was dragged before an interrogator and questioned about their activities. Many of the immortality treatments, in recognising the paranormal, were themselves illegal under Qin law, leading many of the consultants to enter the interview room with a crime already hanging over their heads. Many of them broke under the relentless questioning, and attempted to buy leniency by implicating their fellow consultants.
Before long, the First Emperor ordered the execution of 460 scholars who had been unable to offer any evidence of their supernatural schemes. The precise method is unclear, but the text of the Historian implies that they were buried alive. Since this punishment was not on the Qin statute books, it may have been the ultimate means of testing their abilities. If any of them had magic powers, then they would surely come back to life when they were let out again.21
The persecution of the consultants was the last straw for one of the princes, the First Emperor’s eldest son Fusu. He alone stood up to his father, arguing that the various scholars were only repeating the knowledge of ancient days, and that it was unfair to subject them to harsh persecution merely for attempting to follow his orders. Fusu’s heartfelt concern was that subjects in the distant corners of the empire would grow restless upon hearing stories of such imperial excesses.
Fusu’s attempt to reason with his father did not go down well. The angry First Emperor decreed that it was time for Fusu to find out for himself, and the prince was packed off in disgrace to the northern frontier, there to ‘help’ Meng Tian with his ongoing campaigns beyond the Great Wall.
Having exiled his son and heir, the First Emperor fell further into paranoia. In the year 211, his astronomers observed that Mars, regarded by the ancient Chinese as the ‘Dazzling Deluder’ had stayed within the constellation the Chinese called The Heart. This was an astrological event of great significance, and could not be ignored, since such an event even had its own chapter in the Annals of Lü Buwei. The First Emperor was forced to deal with an omen whose terrifying qualities he would have read about as a child. The Annals reported the words of an adviser to an ancient duke, made the last time the astrological event had occurred:
Dazzling Deluder is Heaven’s executioner. Heart is the portion of the Heavens that corresponds to [your kingdom]. Some catastrophe awaits your lordship.22
The passage from the Annals, designed as it was to educate, also offered a series of ways of dealing with the problem. Its allegorical subject was offered the chance to pass the curse onto his leading minister, but the lord of old refused to do so. Nor did he accept an offer to pass the curse onto his people, since if they died he would have nobody to rule. It was better, he said, for him to take the curse himself, and thus preserve his land. He even refused an opportunity to pass the damage onto the harvest, as by killing the crops, the curse would kill everyone else by default.
According to the folktale in the Annals, by admitting that his earthly lifespan was over, and that he would rather die than abjure his responsibilities to his subjects, the legendary lord broke the curse. In recognition of this, Mars supposedly moved the next night through three of the lodges of the Chinese zodiac, demonstrating to the ancient astrologers that the trouble had passed, and that their lord had been granted an extension of his lifespan of 21 years.
However, such a happy event did not occur for the First Emperor. The Record of the Historian simply reports that Mars stayed in the Heart Constellation. It makes no mention of any private conversation between the First Emperor and his ministers, although it is likely that they re-enacted the conversation recorded in the Annals in order to break the spell. But there would have been a problem: when Mars did not leap through three constellations the following night, the First Emperor would believe that the curse stayed with him, and that his life was over.
There were other omens. A meteorite struck the earth in what had once been the Land of Latecoming. When imperial officials arrived to inspect it, the stone from the sky had been inscribed with a graffito that implied the First Emperor would die, and his empire would be divided back into the kingdoms of old. Although imperial investigators interrogated, and eventually executed everyone in the area, they were unable to locate the culprit.
The First Emperor attempted to combat the bad luck with a new ritual, ordering his surviving Erudites to come up with a song in praise of immortals and men who had attained enlightenment. The anthem was sung all over the empire, and was played wherever the First Emperor went, but his sense of unease did not pass.
That autumn, an imperial messenger was stopped on a road south of the Wei River, by an old man bearing a jade disc. He purportedly said that it was a gift for the ‘Lord of Hao Pond’, and that it was a sign that the life of the ‘Primal Dragon’ was over, before disappearing, leaving the disc behind.
The information was dutifully reported to the First Emperor, who recognised the disc as one that he had dropped into a tributary of the Yellow River when crossing it 28 years earlier, possibly on his way to his ceremony of manhood. Although the First Emperor had killed most of his supernatural advisers, he still remembered some of their stories: according to them, not even immortals could see more than a year into the future. The First Emperor now believed that he had received a message from the spirit of the River of Power itself, his watery patron deity, announcing that his life would be forfeit within twelve months.23
The First Emperor fell into more superstitions. Consulting the Book of Changes, and being advised by it to ‘keep moving’ he ordered for the mass movement of a number of families to new colonies, and raised the ranks of every household by one level.
It had been five years since the First Emperor had last left his capital, but in the spring of 210, he announced that he would make another trip to the east. He travelled with Li Si, his trusted confidante of many years, along with the imperial entourage of servants, guards and attendants. His youngest son Prince Huhai, a boy on whom the First Emperor doted, pleaded to come along too, and the emperor agreed. With Huhai came his tutor, the long-serving eunuch Zhao Gao, whose father had so famously saved the life of the First Emperor’s father so many years ago.
The party headed far to the south before following the Yangtze downstream, disembarking from their flotilla at Danyang and heading to the sea. They had hoped to head north along the coast, bu
t the waters of the river were so choppy and dangerous that the imperial entourage was forced to detour back towards the west over a hundred miles inland again before finding a suitable place to cross.
As the imperial party headed for its habitual summer retreat at Langya, it left behind another stone monument at Kuaizhi on the coast. If the text in the Record of the Historian reflects the First Emperor’s original inscription, then it reads more like a last will and testament; however, the inscription may have been altered following the First Emperor’s death. But the Kuaizhi monument makes a series of defensive statements, attacking the kings of old for their failures, and recounting one final time the achievements of the First Emperor. It attacks unruly parents, announcing that there is nothing wrong with a killing a father who acts like a rutting pig, or disowning a widowed mother who remarries; could this be a veiled reference to Zhaoji and her relationship with Lü Buwei? The final part of the inscription reads more like an epitaph, announcing that the emperor’s legacy will live on.
We may gain some clue into the nature of the First Emperor’s trip east into how he elected to spend his time at Langya. With curses written in the sky and falling to earth, he was going in search of one last scheme to prolong his lifespan, the long-forgotten mission of Xufu in search of the Isles of the Immortals. He found Xufu at the east coast, where the wily old man offered a series of excuses to explain why he had still not obtained the elixir of life.
Xufu claimed that, yes, he had located the Isles of the Immortals, but that giant sea creatures constantly impeded his passage. Since this latest excused tallied with a dream the First Emperor had recently had, he ordered for a fishing party to set out into the sea. He went along himself, clutching a heavy crossbow at the bow of his own vessel, while other boats carried archers and spearmen. Days went past, and the imperial fishing party drifted miles west of Langya and around the headland without finding a thing.
They found something. The Record of the Historian simply says ‘large fish’, which could be anything, including sharks, whales (classified as fish by the ancient Chinese) or dolphins. Whatever they were, the First Emperor managed to kill one himself, and the fishing party returned to land to report to Xufu that the supernatural guardians had been defeated. Xufu set off towards the east in his fleet, and was never seen again, although legends claim that he and his virginal crews somehow made landfall on islands far towards the rising sun, and settled at the foot of a large conical volcano, Mount Fuji.
Hoping that Xufu would finally find success, the imperial party headed for home, planning to put in at Handan on the way. However, the First Emperor became gravely ill at Ping-yuan ford outside the town.
Realising that his time had come, he drafted a letter to his estranged son, Prince Fusu. He called his attendant Zhao Ghao to his sickbed, and dictated a simple, blunt order that would be interpreted as a tacit apology:
Come to my funeral at Xianyang and bury me.
The order both recalled Fusu from the borderlands to the capital and placed him as the officiator at the emperor’s graveside. With that, the First Emperor lapsed into a sickness from which he did not recover. The entourage continued towards Handan, with his illness kept secret among the men, but when Zhao Gao brought food to the emperor’s carriage at a place called Sandy Hill, he found him cold and dead.
7 The Ashes of Empire
The fate of the empire now rested in the hands of Zhao Gao, a man whose own father had died to save that of the emperor’s father, much wronged by some of the emperor’s closest friends. In his hands, he held both the emperor’s final letter, and the emperor’s seal, and until he broke the news, nobody would know that the emperor was dead. As a loyal servant of his master, Zhao Gao was obliged to follow his last command, to send the letter to Fusu off on the long journey to the Wall zone.
Zhao Gao knew what the emperor’s last letter said, as he himself had been the secretary who wrote it down. The letter would cause Fusu to hand over control of the soldiers to Meng Tian, and to head south to Xianyang to make preparations for his father’s funeral. Although brief and terse, it amounted to a pardon of Fusu’s previous behaviour, an acknowledgement of the continued service of the Meng family, and, worst of all for Zhao Gao, a blessing for Fusu to take charge not only of the funeral, but of the state itself.
This was bad news for Zhao Gao. Fusu, after all, had demonstrated worrying signs of nobility and courage. He had stood up to his own father in the matter of the buried scholars, and seemed opposed to many of the principles of Legalism. If he were to return from exile, backed by armies led by the Meng family Zhao Gao so despised, then there was little chance for his own cronies.
In the riskiest move of his life, Zhao Gao decided to take the news of the emperor’s death and testament to Huhai – the child had been Zhao Gao’s pupil, supposedly the First Emperor’s favourite, and conveniently present in the late emperor’s entourage. Depending on the source one believes, Huhai was either 21 years old or 12; considering his tantrums and susceptibility to suggestion, it seems more likely that he was a mere child.1 In secret, Zhao Gao told him the unhappy news, and also discussed the implications of the First Emperor’s letter. It appears that Zhao Gao, like many of his fellow Qin ministers, still did not agree with all of the changes that Li Si had introduced, particularly the one that forbade the king’s friends and children from being set up as viceroys. Despite all the edicts and deeds of the First Emperor, Zhao Gao hoped that a Second Emperor would be more generous to his faithful servant. A kingdom or fiefdom, thought Zhao Gao, would be a good thing for him to have, and he suggested that, as one of the youngest of the emperor’s many children, it might be something that Huhai would enjoy, too. But Zhao Gao warned that if Fusu took over, there would be no kingdom for Huhai. There was a chance, however brief, for Huhai to make a claim for the throne himself. The will of the emperor could be recast, after all, since others were more than used to reading it in Zhao Gao’s handwriting, and the seals were still in his possession.
To his credit, Huhai is reported in the Record of the Historian as resisting the temptation. Following the teachings of Confucius (which must have irritated Zhao Gao immensely), he pointed out that it went against protocol for a younger son to inherit ahead of an eldest son. With something that, for once, genuinely does not seem to be the false modesty required of Chinese court protocol, Huhai refused, pointing out that he was unworthy of the position, that he doubted he had the charisma to command the Qin court, and that by accepting the subterfuge, he risked angering heaven itself.2
Zhao Gao, however, was used to wily diplomacy, and where Confucius was concerned, there were plenty of obscure passages in the old books that offered loopholes. He pointed out that Confucius was concerned, above all, with what was right, and that there were examples in Confucius’s own work of times when he approved of people who had broken those very same rules of propriety to which Huhai was now attempting to cling. Why, there were even passages in the works of Confucius where he had approved of a man who had killed his own father, for the greater good. The Record of the Historian has Zhao Gao insisting over and over:
In great matters, one does not bother about petty formalities. With great virtue, one does not observe basic courtesies. Towns and villages each have their own customs and the hundred offices their different tasks. Thus if one pays attention to what is small but forgets what is great, he is sure to be troubled later. If one is hesitant and uncertain, he is sure to be troubled later.3
Zhao Gao refused to give up. In a hushed and tense few minutes, he pressed Huhai to admit that the death of the First Emperor would definitely mean danger for someone, and that it was his duty to himself to make sure it wasn’t him. Eventually, Huhai agreed.
Zhao Gao next called on Li Si, and broke the news to him. Li Si, supposedly, was ready to do as the First Emperor wished, on the presumption that life under the Second Emperor would go on as before – or so claims the Record of the Historian, although Li Si and Fusu had famously locked hor
ns over the Burning of the Books, and Li Si was unlikely to look favourably on his enemy’s appointment as his ruler.4 The Historian insists that Li Si was ready to support the Emperor’s last wish, perhaps as a symptom of Li Si’s own career, which had seen a steady rise in rank and privilege from the time he arrived in Qin. Even at his most precarious moment, when he had dared to question the emperor’s policy on immigrants, his words had met with imperial approval and his life had been spared. Zhao Gao, however, had endured many reversals of fortune in his life, and was all too aware of the fickle nature of an emperor’s favour.
When Li Si suggested that the First Emperor’s decision was rather sensible, Zhao Gao impatiently impressed upon him what might happen next, not directly, but with an extended speech about the greatness of Meng Tian. Meng Tian, argued Zhao Gao, was a truly great man, one of the most competent men in the empire, a proven organiser of truly Herculean tasks, a loyal servant of the empire. But, Zhao Gao pointed out, Meng Tian was also the best friend of Prince Fusu. If Li Si expected to enjoy unprecedented access to the new ruler, he was in for a surprise. Zhao Gao urged Li Si to look ahead; with Meng Tian’s qualifications and experience, he was an obvious choice for Grand Councillor. Li Si was now in his seventies, which would alone be enough of an excuse for him to be pensioned off, and if Li Si thought that his retirement would be trouble-free, then Zhao Gao had another surprise for him. As the First Emperor’s long-serving confidante, Li Si had perhaps missed the struggle for survival among the other ministers. Life in a Legalist state might seem safe at the top, but Zhao Gao could not remember a single occasion in his twenty years of palace service in which a minister had long survived dismissal.
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