Qin Shihuangdi
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| Qin Shihuangdi ( 秦始皇 帝 , Qín Shǐhuángdì ) | |
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| Family name : | Ying ( 嬴 , Yíng ) |
| First name : | Zheng ( 政 , Zhèng ) |
| Reign: | 247 BC Chr. To September 10th 210 v. Chr. |
Qin Shi Huang Di ( Chinese 秦始皇 帝 , Pinyin Qín Shǐhuángdì - "first exalted god emperor of Qin" , actually Ying Zheng ( Chinese 嬴政 , Pinyin Yíng Zhèng ); * 259 BC in Handan ; † 10. September 210 BC in Shaqiu ) was the founder of the Chinese Qin Dynasty (221–207 BC) and the Chinese Empire .
Ying Zheng was born during the Warring States Period , when seven states fought for supremacy in China. His homeland Qin was not only one of the wealthiest, but had been around since 288 BC. Also the largest of the Chinese empires. It also had the most efficient domestic organization a generation before Yíng. The Qin empire was largely shaped by the considerations of legalism , which places the collective above the individual and regards reward and punishment as the key to maintaining power. After the early death of his father, Ying Zheng ascended the royal throne at the age of 13. From 230 BC BC he subjugated all warring states in several campaigns and thus brought about the unification of China, whose first emperor he named himself Qin Shihuangdi. Together with his chancellor Li Si , who unreservedly advocated legalism, he built a state of officials that allowed him complete control of the empire. The numerous reforms and norms he introduced were associated with forced labor and ruthless tyranny, which cost the lives of millions of his subjects. For this reason, its reputation in the modern People's Republic of China is still extremely controversial.
Qin Shihuangdi is today one of the most well-known Far Eastern rulers in western cultures due to its numerous uses in films, novels, plays and the like. The discovery of the terracotta army in front of his mausoleum also contributed to this .
Explanation of the name
Three different family names have been passed down from the first emperor: Qin, the traditional clan name of the royal family; Zhao, possibly a nickname of some kind, since he was born in Zhao State ; and Yíng, which is by far the most common name. Since his birth fell in the month "zhēng", the first month of the Chinese calendar , he was given the nickname Zhèng.
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After conquering the other six empires and unifying China, he chose a new name to differentiate himself from his predecessors and adversaries. The name Qin Shi Huangdi means first heavenly emperor of Qin and is made up of the following components:
- Qín (秦) was the name of his empire and the ruling dynasty he founded . Originally the word was the name of a rice variety and was later also used for the valley in which it grew. The roots of Qin State lay in this valley.
- Shǐ (始) stands in translation for beginning , first or beginning .
- Huángdì is a combination of two words: Huáng (皇, literally shining, exalted ) is part of the names of the legendary Three Sovereigns mentioned in Sima Qian's writing Shiji . Dì (帝, literally Kochab , later meaning supernatural being, God ) can be found in the designation of the so-called Five Emperors (wǔ dì), who mythologically ruled after the Three Sovereigns. The name Huáng Dì originally meant something like shining pole star and referred to the star Kochab , which at that time (221 BC) took the place of the pole star, but has left this position again due to the precessional movement of the earth. Today's Pole Star is a different star. The reference to Gottkaisertum is this: "Just as the entire night sky rotate around the North Star (Kochab) so quite Qin (China) about the Heavenly Emperor." So the name Huangdi received the figurative meaning of sublime God or even in the case the rulers' titles of heavenly emperors .
In Chinese mythology , the three sovereigns and five emperors stand as perfect rulers who had great power and long life. Huáng also means splendor or sublimity and dì refers to the supreme God in heaven, who created the world. Qin Shihuangdi, who had united almost the entire world known in China at that time, the combination of these words seemed appropriate, as they titled him as "First exalted god-emperor of Qin" or "First godlike exalted emperor of Qin". Above all, however, it was important to him to go down in the annals as the first emperor. He decreed that his successors should refer to themselves as " Exalted God Emperor Second Generation " (二世 皇帝Èrshì Huángdì ), "Exalted God Emperor Third Generation" (三世 皇帝Sānshì Huángdì ) and so on, and assumed that his dynasty would last 10,000 generations would. The description for 10,000 years is wànsuì and has the same meaning as infinite , which shows that he wanted a never-ending empire.
At the same time, the first emperor abolished posthumous titles , as these contradicted his view of filial piety . The first empire was officially called the State of Qin, as this had expanded over the other empires. For this reason, contemporaries referred to Qin Shihuangdi only as the First Emperor, since the addition "Qin" was superfluous. When around 202 BC When the entire empire was under the control of the Han Dynasty , it was named the State of Han. Therefore, it was necessary to add the word Qín to the name of the first emperor in the colloquial language, since otherwise it would have been implied that it was the first emperor of the Han dynasty. The addition Qín no longer referred to the state, but to the short-lived dynasty.
In Shi Ji , which was one of the few sources about the emperor for a long time, this is called Qín Shǐhuáng. In China, this term is still the most widely used today, while Europeans and Americans mostly speak of Qin Shihuangdi.
Life
childhood
Ying Zheng was born in 259 BC. Born in Handan , the capital of the state of Zhao . His father Zichu was the youngest son of Zhaoxiang , King of Qin , and was held hostage in Handan at the time. It was a contemporary political custom to exchange daughters as wives and sons as hostages after an alliance between two states to keep the peace. Ying Zheng's mother was a concubine who originally served the wealthy merchant Lü Buwei . However, he had handed it over to Zichu immediately after he had come to the court.
After a few months, Zichu, the concubine, Lü Buwei and Ying Zheng returned to Qin. With the help of skilful intrigues and diplomacy, Lü Buwei succeeded in changing the succession so that the reigning King Zhaoxiang appointed the formerly rejected Zichu as his successor. Zhaoxiang died in 250 BC. After 56 years of rule. His successor, despite the change in the line of succession, was initially Xiaowen , who, however, died three days after his coronation. He was succeeded by Zichu (later known as Zhuangxiang ), who appointed Lü Buwei as his chancellor. The rule of Zhuangxiang lasted only three years, since he was 247 BC. Chr. Died. The legitimate heir and successor was now Ying Zheng, who had not yet reached the age of majority and was therefore under the age of majority. On behalf of Zheng, Lü Buwei led the absolute government for more than nine years. 238 BC Ying Zheng officially took over the affairs of state, while Lü Buwei remained his chancellor.
King of Qin
In the same year, Ying Zheng and his court in Xianyang , the capital of Qin, managed to avert an impending conspiracy led by the noble Lao Ai . Lao Ai was the queen mother's secret life partner and had illegally fathered two sons with her. He planned to put the elder on the throne, but knew that the plan would soon be made public. So he stole some royal seals that allowed him to mobilize the troops of certain districts. With this private army he stormed the palace in a surprise attack, but was stopped by soldiers loyal to the king there. As a result, the king had Lao Ai cut into four and executed twenty other people, including the traitor's entire family. His two half-brothers were murdered and the Queen Mother was placed under house arrest. The following year, Lü Buwei was dismissed as an alleged confidante of the conspiracy and later sent into exile. On the way to the place of exile, the former Chancellor is said to have committed suicide with poison.
Immediately after the foiled conspiracy, the king of Qin launched a campaign in the eastern neighboring kingdom of Han , which began in 230 BC. Was subjected to. Allegedly, Zhèng commanded an army of up to 600,000 soldiers, which was unusually large for Chinese standards at the time and far exceeded the army strength of the other empires. The number of soldiers, however, was not the only reason for Ying Zheng's military success. The military order and organization established by his predecessors, which set new standards under him, was largely responsible for this. From the orientation of the clay soldiers of the terracotta army, the battle order of that time can be reconstructed today. The Qin army was led by three rows of crossbowmen . They were followed by three horse-drawn chariots , from which the noble commanders gave their orders. Behind the wagons the infantry marched in rows of four, making up by far the largest part of the army. It consisted mainly of force-recruited farmers without any special combat training. The most important weapon was the crossbow, the bronze-tipped arrows of which hit targets 300 meters away. Further armament included lances, halberds and bronze swords. The soldiers' weapons and leather armor were also coated with varnish to make them waterproof. The armor and helmets were made of limestone flakes and weighed 18 kilograms. It is estimated that a stone cutter took 14 to 18 days to make them. References to the individual workshops were stamped into the majority of the weapons according to the following pattern:
- 17th year (of royal rule) , state workshops, foreman Yu, worker Diao, series zi, number 59
This marking enabled the inspectors of the army, who also checked the quality of the weapons, to follow the producers of rejects , especially since swords, lances or the like were often produced in series.
In the ranks of the army, the principle of the group of five also applied. In this, each soldier was responsible not only for himself but also for four comrades. If one member of a group escaped, the other four were executed as a punishment. This threat strengthened the solidarity and bravery of the soldiers. Ying Zheng also overruled the feudal order with its rules of honor and mercy that had prevailed until then. This was shown, among other things, by the fact that he was 228 BC. During the campaign against Zhao , north of Qin , the country where he was born, 10,000 captured enemies were killed. The officers of the Qin army only achieved social advancement through their success on the battlefield and not, as before, because of their family status. Ying Zheng managed to conquer Zhao. The remaining states, which now recognized the danger posed by Qin, made assistance pacts in order to secure themselves militarily.
In 227 BC The king of Yan state dispatched the assassin Jing Ke to the palace of Ying Zheng to assassinate him and to end the hegemonic efforts of Qin. Jing Ke carried a map of Ying Zheng's conquests and the severed head of a disgraced general in Qin as a sign of friendship. A knife was wrapped in the card as a murder weapon. It is not entirely clear whether he threw it at the king or whether it was a duel. In the end, however, the assassination attempt failed, and Jing Ke was executed with the ceremonial sword by Ying Zheng, the only one allowed to carry a weapon at court.
The regions of the Warring States were known at the time of the military conflict for the production and use of iron weapon components. The state of Qin was generally backward in weapons technology, but was ultimately able to annex all adversaries. During the excavations of the terracotta army of his mausoleum, for example, very few iron but many bronze weapons came to light, even though the clay warriors were all once elaborately equipped with real weapons. Within only nine years, Qin's armies subjugated all six competing states in great conquests under King Zhèng: Wei , lying to the east, fell in 225 BC. Chr. Chu in the southeast, the largest of Qin of the seven kingdoms, two years later and on the Yellow Sea expansive Yan 222 v. A little later, Zhèng took with Qi in today's Shandong province , the last independent empire. So in the year 221 BC The centuries-old utopia became reality: "Everything under heaven" ( Chinese 天下 , Pinyin Tianxia ) was united under one ruler.
First Emperor of China
After his victory over all enemies, King Ying Zheng of Qin had himself called Qin Shihuangdi, "First exalted god- emperor of Qin", and thus founded the Chinese Empire . As one of the first measures, he decreed that no one in the country except soldiers were allowed to carry weapons, and he ordered all bronze weapons of the defeated armies to be brought to Xianyang. There they were melted down and, in addition to several bells, twelve 30-ton colossal statues were made that were erected in the capital. The Chinese Yuditu Empire Map was introduced.
Qin Shihuangdi's rule was extremely contradictory. On the one hand, he unified the country and introduced numerous reforms; on the other hand, he was a ruthless and totalitarian tyrant who pursued his goals with hitherto unknown severity, to whom the individual citizen was nothing and tens of thousands of his subjects into forced labor sent.
Between 220 BC BC and 210 BC Qin Shihuangdi made five inspection trips of several months to all parts of his empire to see for himself that his policy was being implemented, and covered more than 9,000 kilometers. The train consisted of dozens of sedan chairs, several hundred soldiers and just as many servants. The emperor himself hardly left his litter and only spoke outside through a cloth that was hung in front of a small window. In order to irritate potential enemies, several trains of the same kind passed through the country at the same time. Often times even the soldiers didn't know whether they were actually guarding the emperor. One of the frequent destinations on these trips was the Pacific coast, which fascinated the emperor, who came from the mountainous Qin and which he visited in 219 BC. First reached in his life.
During his eleven years as emperor, Qin Shihuangdi escaped at least two assassinations. The first failed in 218 BC. When his train was attacked by "bandits" on an inspection trip. However, they mistakenly attacked a fake litter and were soon overpowered by the soldiers. Two years later, one night, dressed like a citizen and only accompanied by four bodyguards, he went for a walk through his capital. Presumably he wanted to check the mood of the population and the work of the officials incognito. On this tour there was another attack by "bandits", who, however, were knocked down at the last moment by the bodyguards. The subsequent twenty-day manhunt suggests that this was again a conspiracy. Even the first assassination attempt is now commonly assumed that it was by no means a spontaneous attack, but rather a murder plot.
Reforms and norms regulation
The empire owed numerous reforms to Qin Shihuangdi and his advisors - primarily Li Si , the Chancellor who followed Lü Buwei . Many of them, however, reflected the overall order of his rule and, at the same time, his desire to maintain complete political, economic and social control over the country.
The empire was divided into 36 command offices and around 1,000 districts, which were administered by civil servants. These had to record all events in their area of responsibility. For example, they were obliged to register the amount of rain and the area of the irrigated area, as well as to document storms, droughts, insect pests, floods and other natural disasters. The officials had to ensure that no wood was felled in the forests, no fish was poisoned, no dams were built, no bird nests were collected, and no traps and nets were set up between the second month of spring and the end of summer. In addition, they were responsible for ensuring that the amount of seeds specified by the emperor was carried out on the fields. They were required to make an annual report on all these occurrences and to send it to the capital before the eighth month. Successful civil servants were given the opportunity to climb the 18-level hierarchy. The ranks included, for example, “Exempt from forced recruitment”, “Fifth rank adviser” and “First rank dignitary”.
Qin Shihuangdi ordered the construction of a 6,800 kilometer network of roads through his empire. Particularly noteworthy were the “Straight Road”, which led over 800 kilometers as a dead straight line from the Yunyang Summer Palace near the capital north to deep into Inner Mongolia , and the “chi dao”, which connected Zhifu on the east coast with Xianyang. These highways served the army as routes and merchants and traders as the most important connections. The fact that all roads led more or less directly into the capital contributed to the rapid centralization of the empire. The middle lane of each street was reserved for the emperor and selected members of his family.
Following the five-element doctrine , the emperor saw himself as like water because he had smothered the fire of wars. Since the number assigned to water was six, this was of great importance in various regulations. So the emperor ordered that the square hats of ministers, advisers, courtiers and clerks should measure six fingers in height. The peasants' carts were also six feet long; six feet corresponded to the standardized length measure bu, about 1.38 meters. Trees were planted along every street of the empire at a distance of five bu.
During the reign of Qin Shihuangdi, the width of the axles of the wagons and the amount of grease with which the individual wheels could be lubricated were also specified. The emperor regulated how the topknot had to fit men, what shape the mustache had to have and how the clothes of his subjects could be cut. A standardization also took place in the area of weights as well as length and hollow dimensions. If an officer measured the wrong weight, this offense was punished with a heavy fine. More extensive violations of the regulations were punishable by chopping off parts of the body or death.
One of the most important reforms of Qin Shihuangdi was the standardization of the various currencies . In the course of the unification of the empire, he introduced round coins valid throughout the empire. These had a square hole in the middle so that they could be pulled on a string. Following on from models from Qin and other old states, they survived into the 20th century. As early as the Han dynasty, however, the coins no longer indicated the weight of the precious metal, but only the face value and the epoch name of the respective emperor.
He then left on the advice of Li Sis the writing system along the lines of writing standardize Qin. As a result, about a quarter of all characters were lost; the remaining ones were written much more simply. The emperor did not succeed in abolishing the local dialects, but the uniform script became a foundation of Chinese culture .
Arbitrary rule and major construction projects
As King of Qin, Qin Shihuangdi already pursued a policy of violent despotism and legalism, according to which the individual citizen counted for nothing, had to submit to the benefit of the empire and only the people as a collective mattered.
In the first year of his reign, the king commissioned a mausoleum, on which the majority of convicted criminals worked. After the end of the armed conflict, those soldiers who could not return to their old jobs lost their jobs. Most of them were employed as workers on the major construction sites of the empire. On the one hand, the emperor ordered his grave to be enlarged appropriately, and on the other hand, it began around 220 BC. The planned expansion of the Great Wall of China , which was supposed to secure the northern borders of the empire against marauding nomadic tribes . In order to have a sufficient number of workers at all times, the emperor passed a law according to which all male farmers between the ages of 17 and 60 could be forcibly recruited for one month a year. If the demand increased, the period could be extended as required. It soon became apparent that even with this decree, not enough people were required to be committed. For this reason the soldiers and officials in the individual regions of the Reich began to order members of other professional groups to go to the construction sites for alleged offenses and under flimsy arguments. These measures meant that in many parts of the country only women and children lived and the economy almost came to a standstill due to the lack of trade.
Around 300,000 forced recruits are said to have worked on the Great Wall of China, which measured a good 4,100 kilometers at the time of Qin Shihuangdi's death, and 700,000 are believed to have worked at the Qin Shihuangdis mausoleum near the capital. In addition to the burial mound, this tomb has numerous large pits with grave goods. These include a good 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers who were supposed to accompany the emperor as a protective army in the afterlife and were a novelty in that previously only miniature armies were used as grave equipment. After the work was completed, the designers of the plant and the workers were buried alive on the orders of the emperor to prevent them from revealing any knowledge about the structure of the plant.
Numerous large construction projects were also carried out in the capital Xianyang on the orders of Qin Shihuangdi. In the city emerged within ten years between 220 BC. BC and 210 BC Around 270 palaces, parks and pavilions. In 212 BC Construction work began on the new imperial palace, the Epang Palace . However, according to recent research, it could not be completed before Qin Shihuangdi's death. Only the terrace measuring 675 meters in length and 112 meters in width and the main hall on it were built.
The third major canal project realized under Qin Shihuangdi and in connection with the southern expansion was the Lingqu Canal , along with the Zhengguo Canal and the Dujiangyan irrigation system . The Xiang (tributary of the Yangtze River ) and the Li Jiang (tributary of the West River ) were connected to it. This created a waterway with which goods could be transported without interruption from northern China to what is now Guangzhou . The canal is still navigated today and was of importance not to be underestimated for a country that had no natural north-south waterway, whose geography was unfavorable for coastal shipping and land transport was expensive.
213 BC The emperor initiated the burning of books and the burial of scholars alive , which his chancellor Li Si justified with the following words:
- “These scholars do not learn from the present, but from the past, thereby criticizing our time and confusing the black-haired people. When they hear that an imperial order has been issued, they debate it according to their doctrine. At court they criticize him in their hearts; outside they talk about it in the streets. Discrediting the ruler is one way to get famous. They guide their students to defend against them. If things like this are not forbidden, the ruler's power above is weakened and parties are formed below. I therefore ask that all historical records that are not from the Qin Empire be burned. Except for the copies that are in the imperial court academy, all songs, documents and all writings of the hundred schools that anyone in the empire has dared to keep are to be brought to the governors and commanders and burned. Anyone who dares to discuss the songs and the documents is to be executed in the marketplace. Those who use the old system to criticize the new one should be executed along with their families. Officials who hear about these crimes or know about them without prosecuting them should be punished in the same way as these criminals. Thirty days after this decree was passed, anyone who has not burned their books will be punished with a brand on their face and forced labor. The only exceptions are books on medicine, oracles and agriculture. "
Today, numerous writings from the time before the book burning have survived. However, there are no conclusions as to how many copies, consisting of bamboo or wooden strips tied together, existed before, so that the effectiveness of the action is difficult to measure. What is certain, however, is that part of China's historical, literary and philosophical knowledge disappeared forever. In denial of the book burning, but also out of a lack of understanding of the allegations made against them, about 460 scholars protested after Qin Shihuangdi had executed.
The first emperor took over the regulations of legalism that had already existed in Qin and expanded them further. Several dozen laws regulated the correct behavior of the citizens and set penalties and rewards. All "black-haired" - as such the farmers were derogatory - were divided into groups of five families. Each resident was therefore jointly responsible for the actions of the others and had to report any misconduct. The principle was:
- “Anyone who does not denounce a guilty party is hacked in two; he who denounces a guilty party receives the same reward as he who beheads an enemy in battle. "
This forced self-surveillance, but also the permanent presence of soldiers and officials in all the larger settlements, enabled Qin Shihuangdi to exercise his power in the smallest village. The applied pure form of legalism - this direction in Chinese philosophy from the Warring States period - was only realized by the Qin Dynasty. The contempt for scholarship led to extensive book burnings during this period. There were collective punishments , such as executions and heaviest slave labor, not just for those who violate laws but also, for example, the closest relative to punisher. Along with his short dynasty, so too did his form of legalism, although this world of thought persisted and continued to exert influence.
In order to nip any opposition in the bud, the emperor very often ordered large-scale resettlements. For example, after his victory in 221 BC. Over 120,000 noble families from the battered empires were forcibly settled in the northeast of the capital Xianyang . Two years later, 30,000 families were relocated to the Shandong Peninsula , and in 213 BC. Numerous "unreliable officials" were deported to the northern and southern borders of the empire. In the last three years of his rule, he ordered the relocation of 110,000 other families. However, these measures often had the opposite effect: from around 212 BC onwards. There were more and more revolts in the empire. Not only those who were affected by the resettlements took part in this, but also forced laborers and parts of the oppressed population who tried to fight for more freedom in revolts.
Of the estimated 30,000,000 inhabitants of the First Chinese Empire, well over 2,000,000 died as a result of execution or forced labor under the rule of Qin Shihuangdi.
Religiousness and fear of death
Qin Shihuangdi was evidently a religious man who trusted in the work of gods and spirits. This is evident, among other things, from the fact that during his inspection trips he visited the sacred mountains on the Shandong Peninsula and its surroundings, which were traditionally considered the places where one could be closest to heaven and the gods. He had earth altars poured on the peaks and prayed. It is known, for example, that the emperor celebrated the Feng sacrifice in honor of heaven on the Tai Shan and the Shan ritual in honor of the earth on the Liang-fu. During the descent from the latter mountain, the imperial train was caught by a storm and Qin Shihuangdi was forced to take shelter under a tree. After the storm subsided, he awarded the tree the honorary title of Dignitary Fifth Rank.
The failed attacks made Qin Shihuangdi fearful of death. He was of the opinion that death, too, was conquerable and that it had the right to achieve immortality. On one of his inspection trips in 219 BC, the emperor heard BC on the Shandong peninsula for the first time from the legendary "Islands of Immortality" ( Penglai Islands ). He immediately equipped a 3,000-strong ship expedition led by the sage Xu Fu, who came from Zhifu Island, to provide him with the elixir of life . Seeds and tools were brought along as exchange objects for the residents. The expedition never returned - presumably knowing that if they returned without the elixir they would be executed. According to a legend, which is considered unhistorical, this troop is said to have landed in Japan and founded the Japanese empire .
The ruler now listened more and more to shamans and alchemists and spent huge sums of money in state money to follow their advice. The so-called healers advised him to take mercury-containing agents made by them in order to overcome death and become immortal. To improve the absorption of the mercury by the body, they often mixed their potions with dough. The supposed miracle cures, however, presumably without the knowledge or intention of their preparers, accelerated the emperor's mental and physical decline. In the years from 214 BC Chr. Symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning , which is now called Minamata disease , appeared; the steadily progressive damage to the nervous system increased Qin Shihuangdi's paranoia to extremes.
In 215 BC BC the emperor equipped a second expedition to the Penglai Islands. This was also unsuccessful, but the participants returned five years later. One participant in the group apologized for their failure and justified the failure with a giant fish that would have blocked the journey. He asked that the next time crossbowmen be sent with him to kill the fish, which the emperor approved.
Qin Shihuangdi's last government act recorded in the annals is also closely related to his fear of evil spirits who want to kill him. It is said that on his fifth inspection trip he had a dream in which he wrestled with a sea god in human form. A scholar who was called in interpreted and interpreted the dream to the effect that although the emperor had prayed and sacrificed sufficiently, the evil spirits still existed. They have to be driven out so that the good spirits can gather. From then on, the emperor carried a crossbow with him, with which he shot a large fish on the coastal mountain Zhifu.
Death and succession
Qin Shihuangdi died on September 10, 210 BC. During his fifth inspection tour near the settlement of Shaqiu . Since he was very afraid of death all his life and ultimately did not want to believe that he would and could die, he never wrote a last will. As he died, however, he remembered his eldest son, Prince Fusu, whom he had transferred to the Great Wall as a punishment after he protested against the execution of the scholars who opposed the book burning. With the lines
- "Come to Xianyang to attend my funeral and bury me!"
he appointed him his successor. However, the message was never delivered to a messenger by Chancellor Li Si . Instead, the Chancellor and Head Eunuch Zhao Gao sent forged imperial decrees to the Crown Prince and his General Meng Tian , demanding that they immediately commit suicide for alleged offenses, which they did. It is believed that Li Si wanted to prevent Fusu's accession to the throne because he was convicted on the advice of the Chancellor. Li Si feared that his powerful position in the state would have been weakened under an Emperor Fusu and that he could face reprisals .
Li Si and Zhao Gao decided to keep the emperor's death a secret for as long as possible, fearing that news of his death could lead to uprisings among the oppressed population and the slave laborers. A eunuch was placed in the imperial sedan chair to speak in place of the deceased, and Li Si, like all the weeks before, entered the locked sedan chair every day to discuss state affairs. This deception succeeded due to the very withdrawn life of Qin Shihuangdi, who liked to remain hidden and had almost never left the litter. Only a small group of people was informed about the circumstances, including Huhai , the youngest son of the emperor and the only one of his sons who was allowed to accompany him regularly on his travels. Li Si and Zhao Gao initiated him and presented him with their plan to succeed his father. When the decomposition of the corpse, which was still in the litter, began, Li Si, on "orders of the emperor", ordered a cart with dried and rotten fish to be pulled behind each litter. This succeeded in masking the smell of decay.
After about two months of travel, they reached the capital, Xianyang, and announced the death of Qin Shihuangdi there. The first emperor of China was then buried in the mausoleum. Also included in the tomb were all those concubines who had given him no children.
A little later, Prince Huhai, who from then on called himself Qin Er Shi , ascended the throne as "Second Supreme God Emperor of Qin". The empire his father had left him, however, was not strong enough to last any longer. Immediately after the burial of Qin Shihuangdi, uprisings and revolts broke out in all parts of the country, with the help of which the people tried to free themselves from the oppression. The new emperor with weak leadership failed to bring the situation back under control, and he became a puppet of Zhao Gao, who had previously won the power struggle against Li Si and had him executed. Finally, after only three years of reign, Qin Er Shi committed suicide under pressure from the eunuch, and his nephew Ziying came to power as Sān Shì Huángdì. During his reign, which lasted just 46 days, he succeeded in murdering Zhao Gao. A little later, however, he had to cede the empire to the rebel leader Xiang Yu , who had the entire imperial Qin clan executed and razed the capital Xianyang, including the imperial court academy with all its books and documents. This ended the Qin dynasty in 206 BC. The line of rulers, which Qin Shihuangdi said should last 10,000 generations, broke after the third. Xiang Yu was beaten by Warlord Liu Bang only a few years later. This reunited all of China and soon afterwards appointed himself the new emperor and founded the Han dynasty as Han Gaozu , which was to rule China for the following 400 years.
family
Not much is known in Shi Ji about the Qin Shihuangdis family . All we know is that, as mentioned above, he was the son of King Zhuangxiang and a concubine and had several brothers and half-brothers. He himself became the father of about twenty sons. The best known are the Crown Prince Fusu († 210 BC) and the youngest son Prince Huhai (* 231 BC; † 207 BC). A simplified family tree of Qin Shihuangdi illustrates his family relationships:
| Xia Ji | Qin Xiaowen | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zichu ( Qin Zhuangxiang ) | concubine | Lao Ai | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concubines | Qin Shihuangdi | Half brother | Half brother | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ??? | Fusu | Huhai ( Qín Èr Shì ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziying (Sān Shì Huángdì) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Assessment throughout history
“What was so special about Qin Shihuang? He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried 46,000 scholars alive. I have already countered certain democrats: You think you can offend us if you call us Qin Shihuang, but you are wrong, we have surpassed Qin Shihuang a hundred times! You call us despots - we like to admit these qualities, we only regret that you lag behind the truth so much that we have to supplement your allegations! "
Qin Shihuangdi's reign was viewed very critically in retrospect. While many other rulers - including European ones - who acted like him and sacrificed tens of thousands of people for the purpose of establishing their empire, were often glorified by subsequent generations, this was not the case with him. The chroniclers of the Han Dynasty , which began four years after the death of the first emperor, described him as a ruthless and despotic tyrant and disapproved of the suppression of Confucianism that he initiated , which in later centuries became the main state doctrine of the following dynasties. However, it was not only common at that time for newly strengthened dynasties to present the previous ones negatively in order to legitimize their own power. The statesman and poet Jia Yi (* 201 BC; † 169 BC) wrote The Mistakes of Qin, a treatise in which he listed theses and arguments for the weakness and rapid decline of the Qin dynasty. Among other things, according to him, the ruthless pursuit of power was responsible. In this context, he referred to Confucius , who took the view that the strength of a government is largely based on the support of the people and the righteous attitude of the ruler. At the end of the document was the list of the Ten Crimes of Qin , which the author compiled to explicitly refer to certain tyrannical actions of Qin Shihuangdi. This enumeration became the standard argumentation of Confucian historians when they wanted to justify the collapse of the first empire or find sentences derogatory to the emperor. The work of Jia Yi was often copied and had a great influence on the politics of its time, as it was seen as a classic illustration of Confucian teachings.
During the years of the Yuan Dynasty , which marked the Mongol rule over China, many Chinese scholars drew parallels between the first great Khan of the Mongols , Genghis Khan , and Qin Shihuangdi. They saw similarities in what was considered brutal and dishonorable warfare.
It was only in younger years, during and after the fall of the Qing Dynasty , that Chinese historians were able to expand the boundaries of historiography and gain new perspectives. This was favored by the political suppression of Confucianism, which, in the view of the state leadership of the Republic of China, represented an obstacle on China's path into a modern world. At the time of the Japanese occupation of the country during the Second Sino-Japanese War , the leading historian of the Kuomintang , Xiao Yishan , highlighted Qin Shihuangdi's role in driving the nomads back from the north, and particularly praised him for the construction of the Great Wall. Ma Feibai , another historian of the time, published a revisionist biography of the first emperor in 1941 under the title Qin Shi Huangdi Zhuan . In this work he described him as "one of the greatest heroes in Chinese history" and compared him to Chiang Kai-shek , as he believed to discover many similarities in the careers and politics of the two.
After the communists came to power under Mao Zedong in 1949, the first emperor was reinterpreted and reassessed. This prescribed view was a combination of traditional and modern views, but fundamentally critical. This became clear in September 1955 in the publication Complete History of China , which represented an official outline over the centuries. The work described the emperor's most important steps on the way to unity and standardization, which were therefore in the interests of the leadership group and the merchants, but not of the nation or the people. The decline of the Qin dynasty was justified by Marxist theories: The peasant rebellion was an uprising against oppression - a revolt that undermined the dynasty, but was doomed to failure because one agreed to emergency solutions with "landlord class elements".
From around 1972, the official view of Qin Shihuangdi changed again radically in the People's Republic of China and his dynasty was reassessed. It all started with the writer Hong Shidi , who published a new biography with Qin Shi Huang . This was published by the state printing works, since the book should be accessible to a broad mass as required reading. 1,850,000 copies were sold within two years. The changed official historiography saw Qin Shihuangdi as a far-sighted ruler who overcame division, created the first unified and centralized state in Chinese history and discarded the past. The first emperor had no qualms about using violent methods to prevent a counter-revolution . Unfortunately he was not as careful as he should have been, because after his death hidden enemies of the state would have come to power and used them to restore the old feudal order. Personal attributes of the emperor, such as his striving for immortality, however, mostly took a back seat in this new interpretation of his rule. To complete this new official view, an article authored by Luo Siding and entitled On Class Struggle in the Qin-Han Period appeared in 1974 in Hongqi magazine , the theoretical organ of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee . It said that the reason for the decline of the Qin dynasty was the lack of completeness and thoroughness in Qin Shihuangdi's “dictatorship over the reactionaries, even to the point of allowing them to weave their way into organs of political authority and usurping important positions ” .
Most western historians only began to come to terms with the rule of the first Chinese emperor in the 20th century. They noted that he had overstrained the natural resources of his empire through his “megalomaniac” building projects and thus caused or at least contributed to the decline of his own dynasty. In addition, they point out that as a result of the ubiquitous state bureaucracy that drove back trade, no middle class could develop. However, one researcher found that the year 221 BC Looking back
- "By far the most important year in the history of China up to the revolution in the 20th century"
was. However, Qin Shihuangdi's rule was also successful. The emperor formed one of the largest and most populous empires of his time in terms of area and some of the regulations and reforms he introduced, although the way in which they were implemented was severely criticized, in part still existed until the beginning of the 20th century. Even today, for example, the administrative division of the People's Republic of China into provinces and districts in some parts of the country is reminiscent of the division into command offices and districts at the time of the Qin dynasty. The American historian Michael H. Hart included Qin Shihuangdi in his The 100 list published in 1978, which, in his opinion , lists the 100 most influential personalities in human history. The first Chinese emperor was listed at rank 17.
The sinologist Klaus Mühlhahn of the Free University of Berlin looks historically a humanitarian progress because, unlike common in the former traditions, he refused to be buried with his entire court. The terracotta army was as lifelike as possible, and the animals were only images.
Qin Shihuangdi in fiction
Qin Shihuangdi has found its way into the entertainment culture of modern times to a far greater extent than any Chinese emperor after him. If it was known to scientists over the centuries, it did not move into the general public's field of vision until the 1970s. This is not least related to the terracotta army, which was discovered in 1974. Since the actual burial mound of his mausoleum is still untouched, it offers a breeding ground for numerous speculations about its content, which are reflected in the various books, feature films and cartoons or computer games.
theatre
Some directors who wrote plays for the theater were inspired by Qin Shihuangdi. This is how the Great Wall of China took place in the pacifist work . A farce by Max Frisch , which premiered on October 10, 1946 under the direction of Leonard Steckel at the Schauspielhaus Zurich , a thoroughly critical view of the emperor as the protagonist. During the Korean War , the play Song of the Yi River was created based on the failed assassination attempt by Jing Ke. In the course of the play, Qin Shihuangdi is portrayed as a brutal tyrant and invader of foreign states, while Jing Ke appears as a knightly warrior. One of his sentences in the piece was:
- "Tens of thousands of injured people are all my brothers in arms."
Qin Shihuangdi is also the main character in The First Emperor , an opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun , which premiered on December 21, 2006 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City . During this world premiere, the Spaniard Plácido Domingo played and sang the emperor .
Visual media
In television and cinema films, too, the first emperor was sometimes the central point or starting point for the determining plot. For example, the Hong Kong- based TV broadcaster Asia Television Limited (ATV) produced a 63-episode drama series under the title The Rise of the Great Wall - Emperor Qin Shi Huang during the 1980s . It was the most expensive project of the station to date and showed the life stages of the first emperor from his birth to death in chronological order, whereby the title song could already be understood as a summary. It read “The land shall be under my foot; nobody shall be equal to me ".
The Emperor and His Assassin , a film by director Chen Kaige , which was released in 1999, shed light on the identity of Zichu (Zhuangxiang), the alleged heartlessness of the first emperor towards his servants and the assassination attempt by Jing Ke, which is related in the film with an infidelity in the emperor's youth. The film left the viewer to answer the question of whether or not Qin Shihuangdi's motives were meritorious. In the same year, Bob Bainborough portrayed the emperor in the episode The Not-So-Great Wall Of China of the second season of History Bites on the Canadian television channel History Television. Three years later,in Hero , Jet Li embodiedan unnamed assassin who seeks to kill Qin Shihuangdi, but who is ultimately convinced of his ideology and becomes one of his subjects. In 2005 Jackie Chan playeda double rolein the film The Mythos : a modern archaeologist and a general under the emperor. Actress Kim Hee-sun played a Korean princess who was forced to marry Qin Shihuangdi.
In 2006 the Discovery Channel produced a documentary film about the emperor. In this work entitled The First Emperor: The Man Who Made China and broadcast on British Channel 4 , James Pax played the protagonist. In the same year, the National Geographic Channel, west of Shanghai, shot a similarly edited documentary entitled Secrets of China's First Emperor: Tyrant and Visionary . In the spring of 2007 it ran like a storm over China: The Secret of the First Emperor on ZDF . In 2008 director Andreas Gutzeit directed the two-part documentary The First Emperor of China .
Also in 2008, Jet Li took on the role of Qin Shihuangdi, who is the villain there, in the fantasy film The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor . Unlike six years earlier in the movie Hero , where Li played a nameless man who was supposed to kill the same Emperor Qin Shihuangdi. As in the previous films in the mummy series, archaeologists are once again awakening a kind of mummy - that of the "Dragon Emperor" or Qin Shihuangdis - and are forced to prevent the latter from creating an invincible army (the terracotta soldiers brought to life) who he wants to conquer the entire world.
In 2011, the historical film White Vengeance was made in a Chinese production . The lavish film is about two brothers who get caught up in the political and armed conflicts of Qin Shihuangdi and finally experience first hand or are directly involved in the development of how Qin Shihuangdi becomes the sole ruler of China.
Most recently, Qin Shihuangdi was portrayed as a young king in the TV drama "The King's Woman". It is a Chinese television series from 2017 with the two actors, Dilraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang. The story comes from the novel The Legend of Qin: Li Ji Story. The series aired on Zhejiang TV every Monday through Wednesday from August 14th to October 4th, 2017
Computer games
Since the mid-1990s, several computer games for PCs and various game consoles also dealt with the subject of the first Chinese emperor. Either he himself was one of the protagonists standing in the background or it was the player's task to find their way around the realm of Qin Shihuangdi, to build it up or to undertake adventures.
The game Qin: Tomb of the Middle Kingdom , published in 1995 by SouthPeak Interactive , has a fictional archaeological expedition as the main storyline, the aim of which is to explore the tomb of the first emperor. In the game Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix , developed six years later by Kronos Digital Entertainment , the horror genre's successor to Fear Effect , one of the scenario locations is the Qin Shihuangdi's mausoleum and in the Prince Of Qin game published by Strategy First in 2002 , the player slips into it Person Fu-sus. Contrary to the actual history, he does not die, but has to fight for his birthright to the throne in the course of the game and at the same time look for reasons for his father's death.
In the same year, Sierra Entertainment developed The First Emperor - Rise of the Middle Kingdom , which completed the City Building Series and in which the player acts as the emperor's lead architect and for him a capital, the Great Wall, a mausoleum and the terracotta army must build. However, the time span in which these events actually took place is not observed. The game Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Imperial Crypt by LucasArts , released a few months later, is about the fictional American archaeologist Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr., known by the nickname Indiana Jones from the adventure films of the same name, who invades the Imperial Crypt in the 1930s to rescue a valuable artifact and comes into conflict with the Nazis and a Chinese triad in the process . In the fourth part of Sid Meier's Civilization , Civilization IV , which appeared in 2005, Qin Shihuangdi is one of the two rulers who can be chosen for China, alongside Mao Zedong . In Civilization V I he is also the head of the Chinese faction. The figure of Qin Shihuangdi is also recited in the computer game Atlantica Online , developed by NDOORS and later taken over by NEXON - there he plays a key figure for an instance that is modeled on his mausoleum with the famous terracotta army and can be contested by a guild in the game . Qin Shihuangdi's terracotta warriors or characters clearly inspired by them appear as opponents of the player in the role-playing game Jade Empire and Titan Quest .
literature
Qin Shihuangdi has found its way into various novels and stories, of which only a few are to be reproduced here as examples. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote The Wall and the Books, a positive essay about the emperor. The book was published in 1952 in the Inquisitions work and deals in a thoughtful manner with the contrast between the large-scale building measures on the one hand and the destruction (using the example of the book burning) on the other, both of which shaped the rule of Qin Shihuangdi. In the end, Borges tried to formulate a statement about the aesthetic experience of this rule.
The novel Lord of the East , published in 1956, deals with a romantic relationship between the Emperor's favorite daughter, who flees with her lover. In this story, Qin Shihuangdi acts as a barrier between the couple. In the book The Bridge of Birds , published in 1984 and part of the Master Li trilogy by author Barry Hughart , the emperor is described as a power-hungry maniac who gained immortality after his heart was removed by an Old Man of the Mountains. In the same year Jean Levi published his historical novel The Chinese Emperor . While the politics and laws of the state of Qin are discussed at the beginning, the content changes into the fiction in which the terracotta soldiers were created by robots to replace fallible people.
In addition, a manga called " Kingdom " appears, which is loosely based on historical events. So far 569 chapters have appeared.
exhibition
- Qin - The immortal emperor and his terracotta warriors (March 15 to November 17, 2013 in the Bernisches Historisches Museum )
literature
- Cornelia Hermanns: The emperor's clay warriors. Qin Shi Huangdi and the search for eternal life. Drachenhaus Verlag, Esslingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-943314-00-7 .
- Denis Crispin Twitchett , Michael Loewe (Eds.): The Cambridge History of China. Volume 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires. 221 BC-AD 220. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1986, ISBN 0-521-24327-0 .
- Chris J. Peers: Ancient Chinese Armies. 1500 - 200 BC (= Men-at-arms Series. 218). Osprey Publishing, London 1990, ISBN 0-85045-942-7 .
- Peter-Matthias Gaede (ed.): The great book of archeology. Expeditions to mythical worlds. Gruner and Jahr, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-570-19436-1 , pp. 104-131.
- Michael Straehle: Book burnings and censorship in ancient China and their consequences. In: Announcements of the Association of Austrian Librarians. Volume 56, 2003, ISSN 1022-2588 , pp. 41-47, online (PDF; 98 kB) .
- Rolf wedding slip : The unification of the empire under the First Emperor Qin Shihuangdi. In: Xi'an. Imperial power in the afterlife. Grave finds and temple treasures from China's old capital. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-3605-5 , pp. 27–31.
- Sima Qian : The First Emperor of Qin. In: Gregor Kneussel (transl.): From the records of the chronicler ( Shiji ). Beijing: Publishing House for Foreign Language Literature, 2015, ISBN 978-7-119-09676-6 , Vol. 1, pp. 3–81.
- Frances Wood : The First Emperor of China. Profile Books, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84668-032-8 .
- Frances Wood: China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. St. Martin's Press, New York NY 2008, ISBN 978-0-312-38112-7 .
- Maria Khayutina: Qin. The immortal emperor and his terracotta warriors . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-03823-813-3 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Qin Shihuangdi in the catalog of the German National Library
- Johannes Eberhorn: Qin Shihuangdi - the first emperor of China . In: Planet-Wissen.de , November 8, 2018
Remarks
- ↑ a b c All figures come from traditional Chinese historiography, in which the information is often greatly exaggerated for propaganda reasons. Peers points out that the average size of the Chinese armies (for the great kingdoms, during the final phase of the Warring States) is closer to 100,000 to 200,000 soldiers
- ↑ rkk.ar.tum.de
- ↑ Heinz-Wilhelm Kempgen: On the monetary history of the state Qin: cloth money-coins-gold. From the beginning to 207 BC 2007, pp. 3–43.
- ↑ Gaede (2003), p. 123.
- ↑ Derk Bodde : The state and empire of Ch'in. In: The Cambridge History of China. Volume 1 The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC-AD220. Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-24327-0 , p. 65.
- ↑ Gaede (2003), p. 126.
- ↑ Matthew Battles: The World of Books: A History of the Library . Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-538-07165-9 , pp. 44 .
- ↑ The Art of Governance: The Writings of Master Han Fei . Translated from Old Chinese by Wilmar Mögling. Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1994.
- ^ Richard Wilhelm : In: Laotse Tao te king. chinese philosophy. first edition. 1999, ISBN 3-404-70141-0 , p. 189.
- ↑ Chinese 與 喪 會 咸陽 而 葬. Shiji 6.44
- ↑ Kenneth Lieberthal refers in the second edition of his book Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform , published in 2004 , WW Norton, New York NY, ISBN 0-393-92492-0 , to this quote, which was published in 1961 on page 195 of Mao Zedong sixiang wan sui! was read.
- ↑ Gaede (2003), p. 131.
- ↑ deutschlandfunk.de
- ↑ Qin - The immortal emperor and his terracotta warriors. In: BHM.ch. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Qin - the first emperor of China and his terracotta warriors in Bern. In: MuenzenWoche.de. May 23, 2013, accessed October 26, 2019 .
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Zhuangxiang |
King of Qin 247–210 BC Chr. |
Qin Er Shi |
| - |
Emperor of China 221–210 BC Chr. |
Qin Er Shi |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Qin Shihuangdi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ying Zheng; 秦始皇 帝; Qín Shǐ Huángdì |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | first emperor of China |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 259 BC Chr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 10, 210 BC Chr. |
