The Death of the First Emperor
In July of 210 BC a grand procession started out from Pingxiang (in today's Hebei province) and began moving slowly toward Xianyang, the capital city north of today's Xi'an. It was a royal entourage, accompanied by eunuchs and guarded by many soldiers.
The centre of all this pomp was an elaborate closed chariot. Court retainers periodically took food to it and brought back orders. But the chariot's sole occupant would never eat or issue orders again - it was the body of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who had been ill and had died. The ruse was part of a plot by high officials to delay discovery of his death so that they could take power.
Qin Shi Huang is widely known today for the giant pottery army created by his order, excavated in the 1970s in the vicinity of his tomb near Xi'an in Shaanxi province. Historians recognise the extraordinary achievements of his 37 year reign. Succeeding his father as king of the State of Qin at the age of 13, he became in 221 BC the first great unifier of China by conquering and bringing under one rule the seven major states which had been fighting for hegemony for two and a half centuries. He built the Great Wall (by joining a number of smaller local walls), unified the currency and the system of writing and weights and measures.
But Qin Shi Huang's contemporaries came to hate him as a tyrant. In his last days he became secretive and suspicious, fearing assassination and searching for an elixir of immortality. He had reason to fear. His enemies included those who resented his conquest of the other states and the families of the tens of thousands who had suffered and died working in labour gangs on the Great Wall and other grandiose projects.
His rule was also noted for the burning of the books and the burying of scholars. The emperor ordered these actions at the instigation of his prime minister, Li Si, who thus sought to silence opposition to centralised rule. In 213 BC, throughout the states, all histories and writings other than the official Qin history and books on topics such as medicine and agriculture were collected and burned, though copies were securely locked up in the imperial library.
Confucian scholars had been particularly active in opposing the emperor, using quotations from the classics. A year after the book-burning, the scholars themselves were rounded up, along with alchemists and makers of immortality pills, whose ineffectiveness had displeased the emperor. Some 400 persons were buried alive as a lesson to any who thought of speaking out against the regime. When the emperor's eldest son Fu Su objected, he was banished to a border region.
Hence many had reason to hope for the end of this cruel emperor. One legend has it that the autumn before his death one of his attendants encountered an old man with a piece of white jade in his hand (signifying that he had immortal connections). The old man had a message for Qin Shi Huang: the Primal Dragon will die this year.
Others took more direct measures. One of those making an attempt on his life was Zhang Liang, from a noble family in the former State of Han (he later became an influential counsellor in the Western Han dynasty, founded in 206 BC). Zhang enlisted a man of extraordinary strength to make a heavy iron hammer and strike the emperor with it while he was on tour near Kaifeng in Henan province. The attack failed, and an imperial retainer was killed instead.
In his last years, the fearful emperor forbade anyone to mention the word death in his presence. Around his capital Xianyang he is said to have built 270 small palaces, many connected by covered passages and bridges. He moved from one to the other in secrecy, and no one was permitted to reveal where he was on penalty of execution.
One 'security leak' brought harsh punisment. Seeing the retinue of Prime Minister Li Si on the road one day, the emperor commented on its size. Li Si received word of this through one of the emperor's eunuchs and immediately cut the number of his attendants. When the emperor heard of it he was furious - undoubtedly someone had repeated his words, and he hated the idea. When no one would confess, he ordered everyone who had been with him on that fateful day killed.
A year before his death, a meteorite fell near Puyang in today's Henan province. On it someone carved seven big characters implying that after the conqueror's death the country would revert to separate states. Again, when no one in the district would admit the deed, he had all those questioned executed.
The secrecy and plotting that characterised his final years followed his body on its last long journey from Pingxiang to Xianyang. The weather was hot and the body began to decompose; baskets of fish were placed around it to hide the smell. The only ones who knew of his death were Prime Minister Li Si, the emperor's second son Hu Hai, the powerful court eunuch Zhao and a few others. In part they feared an uprising in the former independent states, but they also wanted to further their own ends.
They destroyed a letter the emperor had written to his eldest son telling his to return to the capital, and instead forged documents charging Fu Su (and his ally general Meng Tian, who had supervised work on the Great Wall) with a serious crime and ordering their deaths. At the same time they forged a decree making Hu Hai successor to the throne.
When the party reached Xianyang, the death of the emperor was announced and Hu Hai was crowned Second Emperor. In the ninth month the First Emperor was buried in the magnificent tomb on Mount Lishan which he had built for himself by 710,000 conscript labourers.
The tomb was an underground palace and, according to the Historical Records of the later historian Sima Qian, included a banquet hall for a hundred officials. In the centre of the tomb chamber was a model of the topography of China. The rivers reproduced in mercury were, by some mechanical means, made to flow into the ocean. In them were waterfowl made of gold and silver. The ceiling reproduced the heavens with pearls set in as the sun, moon and stars. The tomb was filled with models of palaces and pavilions, precious stones and other rarities. In it burned lamps of salamander oil, thought to provide illumination for the longest possible time.
Hidden bows and arrows had been installed which would be triggered off automatically and kill anyone who disturbed the objects. Someone pointed out that the artisans and labourers who made the tomb might reveal what treasure was in it, so after the burial the gates were closed, imprisoning them inside. Hu Huai also ordered that the palace women who had not given birth to boys be shut in the tomb. Trees and grass were planted over the mausoleum to make it look like a hill.
Though adjuncts to it have been excavated, the tomb has not. It is doubtful whether all the fine things in it remain, for despite the elaborate precautions, it is generally believed to have been robbed.
It was Qin Shi Huang's hope that his dynasty would be carried on for ten thousands years. Actually it lasted for only two generations. It was overthrown by a peasant rebellion begun in 209 BC by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, two conscripts for the Great Wall.
Legend adapted from Shanghai on Internet
