His Dynasty Collapsed Within Three Years of His Death
Chin Shi Huang was buried in his massive tomb, along with all his wives and concubines who had no sons. His unification of China would prove enduring, but the Chin Dynasty which he founded would not: it lasted for only three years after his death. His second son and successor, who assumed the throne as Chin Ershi Huangdi, whose name means “Second Chin Emperor”, was nowhere near as capable as his father had been. As a result, China went to the dogs during his reign.
Soon after Chin Ershi ascended the throne, China descended into chaos and was engulfed in civil wars, as multiple rebellions erupted throughout the realm. One of them had humble beginnings, but turned into a major uprising that overthrew the Chin dynasty. It began with a platoon of draftees who found themselves stuck in the mud during a rainstorm, prevented from reaching their assigned military station.
One of the recruits asked what the penalty was for being late. Under the Chin’s draconian Legalism decrees, the penalty for being late was death. So he asked what the penalty was for rebellion. He was told that the penalty for rebellion was also death. “Well“, he told his comrades, “we are already late“. So the recruits slew their officers and launched a rebellion.
Faced with such uprisings all across China, the new emperor was indecisive. He turned to a trusted palace eunuch for advice, elevated him to prime minister, then leaned on him so much that he effectively became the eunuch’s puppet emperor. Acting on the eunuch’s advice, the emperor ended up taking measures that resulted in the execution of many of the Chin’s most capable officials, and alienated the rest.
As a result, the Chin government was unable to act effectively to tamp down the various armed bands challenging its authority in the recently unified China. That ineffectiveness was exacerbated by Chin Ershi’s tendency to punish officials who brought him bad news, particularly about the growing rebellions. So wary officials sent him fake news instead, with rosy but fanciful reports, describing made up successes against the various rebel bands.
It all came crashing down in 207 BC, when rebel forces utterly crushed a Chin army at the Battle of Julu, killing over 200,000 of Chin Ershi’s troops. Five months later, rebels captured another 200,000 Chin troops, and executed them by burying them alive. When Chin Ershi finally became aware of the seriousness of the situation, he tried to punish his eunuch prime minister for steering him wrong. The latter, however, beat him to the punch, and engineered a palace coup that ended in the emperor’s death, bringing Chin Shi Huang Di’s Chin Dynasty to an ignominious end. It was succeeded soon thereafter by the Han Dynasty, which ruled China for the next four centuries.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Sources & Further Reading
Ambrose, Tom – The Nature of Despotism: From Caligula to Mugabe, the Making of Tyrants (2010)
Borges, Jorge Luis – The Wall and the Books
Clements, Jonathan – The First Emperor of China (2006)
Smithsonian Channel – The Deadly Attempt to Assassinate Qin Shi Huang
Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe, Part II (1994)
Huang, Ray – China: A Macro History, 2nd Edition (1987)
Lewis, Mark – The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2009)
Listverse – 10 Bizarre Tales of The First Emperor of China’s Quest For Immortality
Neinenger, Ulrich – Burying the Scholars Alive: On the Origin of a Confucian Martyrs’ Legend
Travel China Guide – Emperor Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor of China