They began with the prosecution of the Meng brothers. By relay carriage, the Second Emperor dispatched his imperial secretary to the prison in Dai where Meng Yi was incarcerated, and accused him of opposing the First Emperor’s plan of appointing Prince Hu Hai as heir apparent. Convicted of being disloyal to the throne, Meng Yi was instructed to commit suicide.
Meng Yi replied, “I have served the First Emperor from the time of my youth and continued to do so until he passed away. Of all the princes, Hu Hai was the only one ever chosen to accompany His Late Majesty on his travels around the empire. If the former ruler had planned to raise him as heir apparent, who am I to have dared to oppose him? What proposal could I have offered to question his plan?
“I’m not saying this in order to avoid death. It’s just that I am ashamed to drag the First Emperor’s name into dishonor. If I am to be put to death, please bring charges that have some substance. Otherwise, you will be executing the guiltless and punishing the innocent.”
The imperial secretary paid no heed to his words. He knew what Hu Hai wanted and had Meng Yi put to death.
Shiji records that Hu Hai also sent an envoy to confront Meng Tian with an order that read, “You have made many mistakes, and your younger brother has committed numerous crimes. We have evidence that you are implicated and are, therefore, guilty by association. As a mark of imperial favor, we allow you to take your own life by drinking poison.”
Meng Tian took the cup in his hand and said, “The Meng family has served the Qin rulers faithfully for three generations. With 300,000 men under my command at the northern frontier for so many years, I could have started a rebellion at any time, even from prison if I so wished. Yet I choose to die rather than take up arms against the Qin emperor. Before Heaven, I swear that I have committed no crime. I die an innocent man.”
He drank the poison in one gulp. While waiting for the drug to act, he reflected on his role in building the Great Wall and added, “Perhaps there was a crime for which I am responsible. Beginning at Lintao (in present-day Gansu Province) and extending all the way east to Liaodong (on the Gulf of Bohai), I have erected bulwarks and dug trenches over more than 10,000 li (3000 miles). In that great distance, I must have cut through the veins of the earth and disturbed it in other ways. Maybe that is my crime.”
So died Meng Tian, apologizing for his role in altering the landscape to fulfill human desires in building the Great Wall. The ancient Chinese concept of feng shui is surprisingly modern. In his dying remarks 2200 years ago, Meng Tian was expressing his reverence for nature as well as his belief that the life and vital force of our environment is intimately connected to human destiny.
Prince Zi Ying, an uncle of the Second Emperor, came forward and protested the execution of the Meng brothers, but the Second Emperor paid no heed. His reign of terror continued with the execution of many other ministers as well as twelve royal princes, all older brothers of his. The princes’ bodies were exposed and displayed in the marketplace. This was followed by the killing of ten royal princesses, who suffered a worse fate than that of their brothers. Shiji relates that their bodies were torn limb from limb, and their properties were confiscated by the government.
Prince Gao, a brother of the Second Emperor, was planning to flee but feared for his family. He sent a letter to the throne:
When our father, the former Emperor, was alive and well, he treated me to delicious meals whenever I visited him in his palace. On my visits abroad, he granted me carriages. He gave me presents of clothing and prize horses. When he died, I should have followed him but failed to do so. Therefore, I am an unfilial son and a disloyal subject. Being disloyal, I shall never be able to establish my renown and therefore request that I be allowed to follow my father in death, and be buried near his tomb at the foot of Mount Li.
The Second Emperor was delighted. He showed the letter to Zhao Gao and remarked, “This is quick!”
“Indeed, if your subjects are all preoccupied with death, they won’t have time to do anything else, let alone plot rebellion!”
The Second Emperor approved his brother’s request and granted him 100,000 copper coins to pay for his funeral. Prince Gao then took his own life.
The bloody massacres terrified the populace. Anyone who protested was accused of slander. After a brief trial, they and their families would be exterminated. Bu ke sheng shu, “innumerable persons were implicated.” Ren ren zi wei, “everyone felt threatened and feared for his own safety.” The ministers clung to their posts by keeping quiet and ingratiating themselves with Zhao Gao.
Meanwhile, the Second Emperor continued his father’s building projects. After completing the mausoleum, he restarted the work of building new roads as well as the massive Afang Palace. “If we do not complete my father’s projects,” said the Second Emperor, “it would appear as if he were wrong in his undertakings.”
On the foreign front the Second Emperor went on waging war against the barbarians on every border, even though men of ability were revolting against his own rule throughout China. He moved 50,000 crossbow men from all over the empire into Xianyang to guard his palaces. Since they and their horses, dogs, and pets consumed large supplies of food, he ordered extra beans, millet, grass, and fodder to the capital, further impoverishing the countryside. Within a radius of a hundred miles of Xianyang, farmers were not allowed to eat their own grain.
Harsh new laws were constantly promulgated, and the penalties increased in severity day by day. Taxes became ever more burdensome, and there were ceaseless demands of forced labor and military service. The empire was seething with discontent and heading toward disintegration.
Li Si tried to remonstrate with the Second Emperor, but the latter would not spare the time even to see him. He was reduced to writing long-winded memorials to the throne, with many references to the saintly conduct of exemplary rulers who lived hundreds of years before. Most of these letters were ignored, except when the young monarch wished to lash back. In doing so, he wrote,
What is the point of having the honor of possessing the empire if one has to tire his body and exert his mind daily? That’s a job fit for a dullard, certainly not one for a man of substance.
When a man of substance holds the empire, what he needs to do is to use the empire to gratify his every desire…. This is the reason I’d like to act as Iplease, broaden my experience, and enjoy the pleasures of the empire for a long time to come without harming myself.
The Second Emperor proceeded to do just that. From then on he devoted himself to using the empire for his personal pleasure.
Shiji relates that the Second Emperor praised those officials who could squeeze the largest amount of taxes out of his subjects. “Such are the men who may be said to be truly supervising and punishing correctly!” he would exclaim.
Penalties were so severe that half the people walking along the roads had endured corporal punishment; and bodies of the executed piled up daily in the marketplace. Having begun his reign with a crime, the Second Emperor now turned to terror to underpin his regime. Oblivious to the suffering all around, he promoted only those ministers who were handing out the greatest number of death sentences, calling them loyal and efficient.
The eunuch Zhao Gao took the opportunity of executing as many of his private enemies as he could. Fearful that the chief ministers who frequented the court would speak ill of him in front of the emperor, he encouraged the young monarch to remain enclosed in the private areas of the palace, under guise of preventing the monarch from making any mistakes in public. The Second Emperor agreed wholeheartedly, and from then on he no longer met with his officials in the throne room but remained in the private recesses of his palace. Zhao Gao and his eunuch attendants were the only ones who had access to him, and all matters of state were decided by Zhao Gao.
Li Si commented unfavorably about this state of affairs, and Zhao Gao decided to take action against him. He sought an audience with the prime minister, prostrated himself, and said, “I hear that many
bandits have risen in revolt east of the mountains, and yet at present the emperor is conscripting more and more laborers to build the Afang Palace. He occupies himself by playing with dogs and horses and engaging in other useless activities. I would like to reprove him but am not really in a position to do so. This should be a matter for Your Lordship, who was his father’s chief adviser for so many years. Why don’t you have a talk with him?”
Li Si answered, “I am aware of this and have wanted to speak to His Majesty for some time. However, he no longer sits in court but stays within his palace. When I ask to see him, he has no time.”
Zhao Gao replied, “Allow me to help you. When he is next available, I shall let you know.”
Zhao Gao lay in wait until the Second Emperor was feasting and enjoying himself with his women. Then he sent word to the prime minister that he should come at once to meet with His Majesty. Li Si hurried over to the palace gate and sent in a request for an interview, disturbng and irritating the monarch. This happened three times.
The emperor became annoyed and said to Zhao Gao, “There are many days when I am doing nothing special and the prime minister never comes. Then as soon as I am merrymaking with my women, he immediately appears and wants to talk about affairs of state. Why does he slight me this way? Is it because I am young, or does he think I am stupid?”
Seizing the moment, Zhao Gao exclaimed, “Is this what he is doing? Then he is dangerous and Your Majesty must proceed very carefully. The prime minister was a participant in our plot at Sand Hill. These days Your Majesty has become the emperor, whereas his position has not changed. May be he is planning to grab a slice of your territory and make himself a king.
“There is something else I have never dared mention to you before. There have been a few minor rebellious uprisings in the last few months. Recently, I have received confidential information that the most brazen bandit leaders all came from the area of Sanchuan, where the Lis have their ancestral home and where the prime minister’s son Li You is the governor. When the rebels marched through Sanchuan recently, Li You stayed behind city walls and refused to attack them. Instead, numerous letters passed back and forth between the two parties. Since Your Majesty has not given me permission to make a full investigation, I have no clear proof at this point.”
The Second Emperor sent an envoy to look into this matter. Li Si heard of it and tried to see the emperor, but His Majesty was away at his Sweet Springs palace, attending wrestling matches and theatricals. Belatedly becoming aware that his position was precarious, the prime minister wrote an eloquent memorial to the throne in which he openly attacked the eunuch Zhao Gao.
I have heard that whenever a subject is deceptive and pretends to be the ruler, the state is endangered. Just as when a concubine is false and pretends to be her master, the home is threatened…
After quoting numerous historical precedents of greedy and power-hungry ministers who eventually deposed their rulers and ruined their countries, Li Si warned that Zhao Gao was evil and treacherous. He ended his letter with a clear message:
Unless Your Majesty pays attention to this matter, I’m afraid that Zhao Gao will turn traitor and cause revolt.
The Second Emperor disagreed. In his reply, he hotly championed his former tutor, and apparently Li Si was never given the opportunity to see the emperor again. In the ensuing power struggle between Li Si and Zhao Gao, the prime minister was reduced to pleading his case by submitting memorials. He never understood the depth of the eunuch’s influence over his former pupil until it was too late. Li Si wrote:
I beg to differ. Zhao Gao comes from lowly origins. He has no principles and his greed is insatiable. He is only interested in profit. His power and rank are second only to Your Majesty and his desires are limitless. That’s why I say he is dangerous.
When he read this letter, the Second Emperor was afraid for Zhao Gao and, incited by him, began to fear for his own life. He gave the fatal order to let the matter be decided by Zhao Gao. Li Si was arrested, shackled, and thrown into prison, and Zhao Gao presided over his trial. Li Si and his eldest son were accused of plotting rebellion and aiding the bandits from Chu. All of Li Si’s relatives and retainers were taken into custody. The elderly prime minister, then in his seventies, was ordered to be beaten with one thousand strokes of the cane until he could no longer endure the torture and made a false confession.
Still he refused to give up. In order not to die, Li Si wrote a final appeal to the emperor. He began by describing his thirty years of service to the state of Qin: his role in unifying China; in driving out the barbarians; in selecting capable ministers; in standardizing the law, the language, and the weights and measures; in building roads and parks; and in the reduction of penalties and taxes so as to win the hearts of the people. He ended by begging for his life.
From the letter it is obvious that the elderly prime minister never understood that by giving in to Zhao Gao and participating in the Sand Hill plot, he had demeaned himself and lost his moral authority. Toward the end of his life, he did strive to guide the emperor toward enlightened government, but by then it was too late. The young monarch had become Zhao Gao’s creature entirely and never even saw Li Si’s letter.
Instead, Zhao Gao sent more of his retainers to question Li Si, beating him mercilessly until he submitted to all the false charges. Meanwhile Li Si’s eldest son, Li You, was attacked and killed by the rebel army from Chu. Zhao Gao falsified all the reports and submitted those to the emperor, together with Li Si’s forced confession of guilt.
The emperor was delighted, “If not for Zhao Gao,” he said, “I would have been delivered to the rebels long ago by the prime minister!”
Shiji relates:
In the seventh month of the second year of the Second Emperor’s reign [208 B.C.E.], Li Si was sentenced to undergo the five punishments as well as to die by being cut in two at the waist in the marketplace of Xianyang. [The five punishments consisted of tattooing the face and amputating the ears, nose, fingers, and feet.] While being led out of the prison, he looked at his younger son, who was to die with him, and asked, “Even if you and I were to yearn once more to walk our yellow dog together out of the East Gate of Shangcai in order to chase the wily hare, can we indeed do so?” Whereupon, father and son wept.
Their execution was followed by the extermination of Li Si’s three sets of relatives [parents, wife and siblings, children].
Shangcai was Li Si’s birthplace in the state of Chu. His last words to his son are often quoted in Chinese literature as a reminder of the preciousness of life and its simple pleasures.
Meanwhile, revolts were springing up all over China. Although the First Emperor had transferred 120,000 of the richest nobles from the six conquered states to Xianyang immediately after unification in 221 B.C.E., many were left behind in their home states. With the abolishment of feudalism, these former nobles no longer enjoyed their hereditary rights or titles. Wanting to restore their previous rank and privilege, they now seized their opportunity. One after another, ambitious men rose in revolt all over the empire, and the old feudal families reasserted their claims. Able descendants of earlier rulers from the former six states (Yan, Zhao, Qi, Chu, Haan, and Wei) crowned themselves kings, declared their independence, established armies, and sent their troops west against the emperor.
The Second Emperor dispatched troops to suppress the bandits, but like a brush fire, as soon as one was smothered another would spring up. The lesser brigands subordinated themselves to the better-organized armies under capable new leaders such as Xiang Yu and Liu Bang. General Wang Li (Meng Tian’s second in command at the Great Wall) lost a crucial battle against the rebel general Xiang Yu and was captured.
Unaware of the smoldering turmoil within his empire, the Second Emperor, after Li Si’s death, promoted Zhao Gao to the post of prime minister. All affairs of state were decided by him. He was now so powerful that he began to have designs on becoming the emperor himself. Only one man stood between him and the thro
ne. On September 27 of the third year of the Second Emperor’s rule (207 B.C.E.), Zhao Gao decided to test his authority on the ministers to see whether they would yield to him. Shiji relates,
One day Zhao Gao presented a deer to the Second Emperor, all the time pointing to the animal and calling it a horse. The monarch laughed and said, “This is not a horse. It’s a deer. Why do you call it a horse?” Zhao Gao repeated that it was a horse. The emperor then turned to ask the ministers around him. Such was the terror instilled by the eunuch that most of those in attendance claimed it to be a horse. Some remained silent, but there were a few who spoke the truth and agreed with the emperor. Later Zhao Gao arranged for all those who called it a deer to be either killed or arraigned.
The emperor thought that he was zi yi wei huo, “suffering from hallucinations.” He became alarmed and consulted the grand diviner, who advised him, “Your Majesty has not been sincere enough when carrying out the suburban sacrifices in the ancestral temple during the spring and autumn. Therefore you have come to this. You must fast and purify yourself.”
The Second Emperor retired to Shanglin Park to fast but spent his days hunting and enjoying himself. One day a passerby happened to wander into the park, and the emperor accidentally shot him with an arrow and killed him. Zhao Gao ordered the magistrate of Xianyang, who was his son-in-law Yan Yue, to bring charges. (Since eunuchs were unable to have children, it was common for them to adopt children as their sons and daughters.) Then he admonished the emperor, saying, “The Son of Heaven has killed an innocent man for no reason. Such actions are unacceptable to Heaven. You must go far away and make sacrifices to ward off evil.”
The Second Emperor retired in seclusion to Wangyi Palace in the remote countryside.