The First Emperor of China

by Jonathan Clements

  ‘Eventually,’ he pointed out, ‘they were all condemned to death.’

  Remarkably, Li Si still took some persuading, and was ultimately reduced to tears. Li Si had become living proof of the dangers of Legalism. He had pursued harsh realities all his life, and ultimately survived to see the end of his master’s reign, only to be left with no idea how to fight for himself, as a new generation of would-be Legalists sought to seize control. Like the First Emperor himself, he was finally gaining some inkling of his own mortality. Li Si had been successful in creating an almost perfect Legalist state, run along the lines once proposed by Lord Shang. He had used Legalism and its methods to propel Qin out of the valleys and into domination of the known world. But with the embrace of Legalism also comes the survival of the fittest. In a Confucian world, Li Si might have been respected for his age, and left in peace. In a Legalist world, the old and infirm were destined for the scarp heap, particularly if, like Li Si, they knew where all the bodies were buried.5

  Eventually, Li Si agreed to join the plot, and the conspirators drafted a new letter to Fusu and Meng Tian. It was significantly longer than the dead emperor’s original, and complained that in the years they had been at the border, they had failed to advance the Qin empire any further to the north – a low blow, since it had been Meng Tian’s job to define the border with the Wall, not push it further. Prince Fusu, moreover, had behaved in an unfilial way by repeatedly questioning his father’s orders, and sulking about his exile. The letter ordered that Fusu be presented with a sword with which to kill himself, while Meng Tian, for failing to report Fusu’s (non-existent) plot, should similarly take his own life.

  Meng Tian’s own roads made the letter’s passage swift. When it arrived at the Wall, the weeping Prince Fusu did as he was told, and fell on his sword. Meng Tian, who was immediately suspicious of the sudden arrival of a messenger bearing such a grand order, refused to commit suicide, and demanded confirmation that the letter truly had come from the emperor. But the letter had served its initial purpose, and removed the First Emperor’s chosen heir.

  Meanwhile, the First Emperor’s body began its progress back towards Xianyang. He had died at the height of summer, and since no embalmers could be commissioned without giving the game away, the corpse began to rot within its carriage. This was, presumably, of considerable annoyance to Zhao Gao, who was obliged to continue the charade of entering the carriage to discuss matters of state with his master. It also troubled Zhao Gao’s co-conspirators, since it would only take one person to notice the smell for their plot to be discovered. Accordingly, they arranged for a fish cart to be placed sufficiently close to the First Emperor’s carriage to mask the stench with something just as unpleasant, but not so suspicious.

  News of Prince Fusu’s suicide reached the cortege as it neared home, leaving Zhao Gao and Li Si free to carry out the rest of their plan. On their arrival at the capital, they solemnly announced the First Emperor’s demise, and his unexpected deathbed nomination of Huhai as his successor.

  With Huhai crowned as the Second Emperor, the body of his father was laid to rest in a mausoleum beneath Mount Li, surrounded by statuary and memorials to his greatness. The tomb had been under construction for some time, although some of the Second Emperor’s early acts ordered for work on several annexes, since he ensured that tombs were required for many of his siblings. The Second Emperor also journeyed to Mount Tai to offer his own respects to the gods. Now installed as Palace Prefect, Zhao Gao was determined to settle old scores, and advised his former pupil to make the notoriously tough Qin laws even tougher. Although there were already some provisions for punishing entire families for one person’s misdeeds, Zhao Gao advised extending the criteria.

  Just as the First Emperor’s advisers once strove to erase the past, Zhao Gao advised similar purges. Meng Tian’s brother Meng Yi, who might have stopped the whole sorry usurpation bid had he not been ordered away from the First Emperor’s side to pray for his recovery, was one of the first victims. Zhao Gao’s other targets were people in similar positions to undermine his stolen authority. Perhaps rightly, considering the deception, he regarded the Second Emperor’s greatest threats as issuing from within his own family, and concocted a number of excuses to do away with his brothers. Twelve of the First Emperor’s other sons were framed for unspecified crimes and executed, their bodies displayed in the marketplace like common criminals. Nor did the Second Emperor spare his sisters, allowing Zhao Gao to have ten of them killed and their property confiscated. It is possible that the sisters were not the main target, but rather their husbands, since many of the First Emperor’s supporters had been granted princesses as brides. Thanks to the increased harshness of the laws, Zhao Gao was able to remove many of his own rivals by directing false accusations against their wives. By the end, Zhao Gao did not even bother to put much effort into the trumped up charges. Like Prince Fusu before them, three of the Second Emperor’s siblings found themselves arrested without warning and held in the inner palace at Xianyang. A messenger eventually arrived to tell them that their behaviour had been criminal, and that they were ordered to die. They were clearly surprised at this, since the Record of the Historian includes their protestations: they had never argued with Zhao Gao, they had maintained all the temple appearances and sacrifices required of them, and they had always carried out their orders without question; what, precisely, was their crime? The messenger reportedly shrugged that orders were orders, and that the reason wasn’t included, and the tearful boys went to their deaths.6

  Zhao Gao’s purges reached such terrible levels that one of the First Emperor’s last surviving sons decided to turn himself in before he could be framed. Suspecting that he would be next on the hit list, the High Prince was initially tempted to flee, but knew that such an act would spell death for his family. Instead, he submitted a memorial to the Second Emperor announcing his wish to follow his father into the afterlife, as a filial son should.

  The Record of the Historian reports the Second Emperor and Zhao Gao cackling with glee at the thought of an enemy prepared to remove himself before they had even attempted to deal with him. The Second Emperor willingly granted the prince’s request to die, and added to the graves surrounding the tomb of the First Emperor, construction of which had begun long before the death of its resident, and was still continuing into the reign of his successor. However, the Second Emperor was soon diverting manpower from his father’s mausoleum, and sending the work-gangs on other tasks. Work continued on the road network, including the appropriately named Straight Road, which reached up to the northern borders of Qin, and the Speedway, a long conduit to the far south and east, with a central lane walled off by parallel tree-lines, and supposedly reserved for the emperor’s sole use. Such schemes were merely a continuation of the First Emperor’s policies, although another venture was less immediately useful. This was the Apang Hall, a truly massive building that could seat ten thousand people, with a four-sided pyramidal roof 11 metres above the crowd. The foundations of its walls and outer gardens are still extant, and describe an area of 144 square kilometres.7 The Apang Hall was a reflection of the heavens; it was to represent the Pole Star, while its various outlying colonnades seemed to have been designed in an attempt to map out the constellations overhead. It was a bold, sweeping gesture, turning part the Qin capital itself into one giant star map, since one colonnade reached all the way back across the Wei river, into Xianyang itself. The work required timber from Sichuan and south of the Yellow river, and stone from distant mountain quarries, and the hall itself, had it ever been completed, would have been impressive indeed.8

  The Record of the Historian implies that the Second Emperor overstretched his resources and the goodwill of his people. Although no mention was made of it during the Second Emperor’s lifetime, it was not lost on later dynasties that the first syllable of his birth-name, Huhai, was that same Hu that had been predicted as a destroyer of the empire. Perhaps, whispered the superstitious, the prophecy h
ad referred not to the barbarians of the frontier, but to the ruinous behaviour of the Second Emperor.

  But while Zhao Gao’s settling of scores led to many deaths at the court, and the severity of the Qin system continued, it is difficult to comprehend how the public works of the Second Emperor were any more or less arduous than those of the First – indeed, Huhai was only working to his father’s grand plan; the reason given for his attention to the Apang Hall is his unwillingness to leave one of his father’s projects incomplete.9 Possibly it was a matter of distance; a Great Wall sounded grand, and the hardships of its construction were conveniently far removed from society, less exciting when the slaves and the work-gangs were labouring in the next street. If the Second Emperor’s plans turned the capital into a building site, it was not welcomed by the townsfolk, many of whom had been forcibly relocated there by his father. However, it is more likely that the unrest of the Second Emperor’s reign was merely a delayed backlash to that of the First.

  The first revolt broke out in 209 in what had once been the Land of the Immaculate. Its alleged catalyst, much to the embarrassment of any surviving Legalists, was the law itself. Chen She, a former farm worker who had been conscripted into the army and worked his way up through the ranks, had been placed in joint charge of leading one of the innumerable Qin slave-gangs to a new posting, only to discover that they would be arriving late. Chen and his fellow officer, so the story goes, realised that they now faced an unpleasant choice between the death penalty for the dereliction of duty, or desertion.

  The story might be true, although it would require a considerable increase in the severity of Qin laws in the two years since the First Emperor’s death. Even considering the clampdowns instigated by Zhao Gao, it seems unlikely that a sergeant would face execution simply for turning up late. Extant Qin laws from the grave of Judge Xi tell us that Chen She and his colleagues would have probably faced a fine rather than death, although Chen She’s later actions probably predisposed him to exaggerate the excesses of the Qin dynasty.10

  Before long, Chen She was claiming that he was not merely dodging a criminal sentence, but leading a righteous revolt against the Second Emperor, in the name of the wronged Prince Fusu. Fusu was long dead by this point, but news could travel at a sluggish pace among the commoners, particularly if it had been carefully suppressed. Chen She’s uprising soon changed in character, losing any pretence of supporting a Qin candidate, and instead aiming at the overthrow of the Qin dynasty itself. Chen She announced that he was the new king of the Land of the Immaculate, a call to patriotism that helped fuel the fire of rebellion elsewhere. In fact, he was already doomed, the new ‘king’ lasted barely six months before he was murdered by one of his own men in an argument over his change in attitude towards his fellow rebels. However, the private arguments of Chen She and his lieutenants made little difference to the public face of the revolution – other parts of the Land of the Immaculate rose up in support, and news drifted in to the Qin capital that similar revolts had sprung up in the Land of Swallows, the Land of the Devout, and the Land of Latecoming.11

  The immediate problem was nearer to hand: an army of rebels approaching the Qin capital, led by one of Chen She’s associates. Somehow, the rebel army had managed to get close without running into any Qin defenders, although the terse passages of the Record of the Historian hide an even more unpalatable prospect, that Qin’s supposed defenders had probably swelled its ranks. Without the means to summon more distant troops in time, the Second Emperor turned to desperate measures. He authorised Zhang Han, the construction manager at his father’s tomb, to free thousands of the workers from their chains. Criminals were promised of pardons and slaves were offered their freedom, if only they would fight.

  Weapons were in short supply, since the government had already gathered up surplus swords and axes to make the great statues of the Qin capital. Instead, Zhang Han ransacked part of the First Emperor’s own monument, grabbing swords from the hands of the army of terracotta statues that stood symbolic guard. Construction on the tomb was abandoned, and Zhang Han’s ramshackle army somehow beat back the attackers. It bought the court much-needed time to call in other forces, and soon reinforcements were added to Zhang Han’s army as he pursued the rebels into the Land of Latecoming. With the first rebel leaders dead, Zhang Han pressed his campaign on another pretender, and another, drawing the struggle further and further from the Qin heartland.12

  The experience frightened the Second Emperor, who readily took Zhao Gao’s advice to stop showing himself at court. While the Second Emperor cowered in his private chambers, Zhao Gao began to exert even more authority, claiming to speak for his master, even on policy decisions that went against common sense.

  Realising that Zhao Gao’s incompetence and the Second Emperor’s indecisiveness were threatening everything he had worked for, Li Si made repeated attempts to arrange a meeting. But his chief complaint was with Zhao Gao, and Zhao Gao controlled access. Zhao Gao cunningly ensured that Li Si dug himself ever deeper into trouble. Instead of refusing point blank to allow him to meet the emperor, he instead arranged so that Li Si was kept waiting for long periods, only to have his request for an audience delivered whenever the emperor was about to start eating. The emperor only grew irritated with what he saw as Li Si’s lack of consideration, and openly refused to see him. Eventually, Li Si submitted a written memorial, signed by at least one other high official, urging that the Second Emperor make stronger efforts to deal with the rebellion, instead of wasting time and manpower constructing a monument. It would seem that the Apang Hall was a particular issue with the court; the Second Emperor was determined to complete it in his father’s honour, despite reports of revolts in the eastern provinces.

  The Second Emperor’s official reply had all the hallmarks of its probable author, Zhao Gao. Deliberately taunting Li Si by quoting from his late rival Han Fei, it pontificated about days of old and the need to honour one’s ancestor. Instead of answering Li Si’s complaints, it made vague pronouncements about the glory of the First Emperor, and the need to show respect to him and his successor.

  Meanwhile, Li Si was under attack from other quarters. The rebellions had originated in what had once been his home state, Land of the Immaculate; in fact, the first revolt had begun in the county next to Li Si’s birthplace. Li Si’s own son was the prefect of the Three Rivers commandery, over which an entire rebel army had somehow managed to pass unchallenged. Whispers at court suggested that Li Si and his family were somehow implicated in the rebellion.

  Zhao Gao reminded the emperor that Li Si had been one of the conspirators over the matter of the First Emperor’s will, but that while everyone else involved had managed to gain rank and influence, Li Si was stuck where he was, at the highest possible level of government. There was simply no way to reward Li Si beyond making him a king in his own right, and, Zhao Gao sneakily suggested, perhaps this had occurred to Li Si himself.13

  It was the final straw. The Second Emperor authorised the interrogation of Li Si to investigate the matter more thoroughly, and Zhao Gao gleefully ordered the Grand Councillor’s arrest. Li Si was interrogated using the same approved methods set down in the legal books recovered from Judge Xi’s grave, allowed to explain himself, and then pressed upon those facts that did not seem to add up. However, since Zhao Gao was the interrogator, and he had already decided what the answer would be, the Qin law then authorised torture. Now an old man in his seventies, Li Si received a thousand lashes before he eventually agreed to whatever it was that Zhao Gao wanted him to say.

  Zhao Gao used the false confession to secure Li Si’s dismissal, and his own promotion to Grand Councillor. Li Si was sentenced to endure the Five Punishments, a cocktail of tortures that would find him tattooed, mutilated, maimed, castrated, and eventually beheaded. Awaiting punishment in his prison cell, Li Si wrote one final memorial to the Second Emperor, sarcastically phrased as a series of further confessions to non-existent crimes. If it was a crime, wrote Li Si,
to turn the state of Qin into the ruler of the world through hard-fought battles and hard-won diplomacies, then he was undoubtedly guilty. If it was somehow wrong to strengthen the state with detailed programme that unified language, weights and measures, then Li Si had been caught red-handed. If it was a crime to honour his ruler with worship and sacrifice, to oversee public works, and to ensure that the people loved their ruler, then no man was more guilty than Li Si.14

  It was a persuasive, pointed argument, easily the equal of Li Si’s famous memorial on the importance of immigrants. If it reached the ear of the Second Emperor, it might sway him as its predecessor had swayed his father. But Zhao Gao took one look at Li Si’s scroll and set it aside – prisoners, he said, were not allowed to write to their ruler.

  Li Si’s sentence was carried out in a slightly altered form; it was ordered that he, his wife and children should be hacked in half at the waist, in full public view in the marketplace of the Qin capital. His last recorded words were spoken to his weeping son, himself likely to have been in his fifties, as the pair went to meet their executioner. Li Si looked back on his life before Qin, when he had lived in the Land of the Immaculate, and gone out with his son, then a young boy, and their old yellow dog, to hunt rabbits near their house. Perhaps regretting time spent on politics instead of family, he wryly noted to his son that even if they wanted to go hunting today, they would not have the chance.

  Just as Li Si was brought down by Zhao Gao’s intrigues, other servants of the dynasty sensed the time was right to save themselves. Those who could have saved the Qin dynasty were now either dead, like the Meng family of generals, or defecting. Rebel forces in the Land of Latecoming captured Wang Li, the grandson of the great general Wang Jian, quite possibly to his own great relief. Zhang Han, the general who had somehow turned a bunch of slaves into a fearsome army, met with several close calls, and sent repeated dispatches back to the capital asking for reinforcements. When none were forthcoming, he turned himself over to one of the new pretenders. His army switched sides with him. Even as Zhao Gao continued to kill off everyone who stood in his way, and workers continued to toil on the pointless majesty of the Apang Hall, reports drifted in of ever greater numbers of rebel victories. Before long, one of the many rebel armies was sure to march through the passes into the Qin heartland, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to stop them. By this point, all the former vassal states were now in revolt, at least six pretenders now claimed to be king in their respective states