Unlike Chu’s king, King Zhaoxiang of Qin must have been vastly encouraged by the success of his arms in Hubei. Qin’s star was clearly in the ascendant; its resources had been further augmented; and from the middle Yangzi to distant Shanxi its territories now wrapped themselves around the Yellow River’s ‘warring states’ in a maw-like embrace. But despite every strategic advantage, King Zhaoxiang’s final triumphs were dearly bought. As already noted, appalling slaughter accompanied the defeat of Zhao, Wei and Han (the Jin successor states) in the 250s BC. Even the 256 BC overthrow of the ancient house of Zhou was not without its bloody aftermath in that six years later the last Zhou king, now a pensioner of Qin, was put to death on suspicion of plotting a comeback.
In the previous year, 251 BC, but of natural (if long-overdue) causes, old King Zhaoxiang of Qin had himself died. In quick succession his son and then his grandson succeeded. When the latter died in 247 BC, the succession passed to this latter’s presumed son, the thirteen-year-old Zheng, who would become the First Emperor. But because of his age, Zheng did not actually take up the reins of power – or ‘receive the cap of manhood and put on the girdle and sword’ – until 238 BC.
Royal longevity being an important factor in the stability of any dynasty, this interlude of seldom uncontentious successions, plus a nine-year minority, could well have been fatal to Qin’s prospects. Disappointed court factions mounted rebellions, outlying ‘commanderies’ wavered in their allegiance, and the surviving ‘warring states’ hastened to take advantage. But fortune, no less than unrivalled wealth and a compliant populace, favoured Qin. The rebellions were suppressed and the external attacks heavily punished. ‘At this time’, says the Shiji, referring to Zheng’s accession in 246 BC,
Qin had already annexed the regions of Ba, Shu and Hanzhong [the ‘middle Han’ river] and extended its territories to Ying [the Chu capital], where it set up Nan [‘Southern’] Province. In the north it had taken possession of the area from Shang province east, which comprised the provinces of Hedong, Taiyuan and Shangdang, and east as far Xingyang…setting up the province of Sanchuan.
These northern acquisitions extended up to the steppes of Mongolia and gave Qin command of more than half the lower Yellow River basin. They were further extended during Zheng’s minority as Qin generals took some thirty more cities and set up yet another new province.5
Thus when young King Zheng came of age in 238 BC, Qin was in effect already supreme. It possessed over half of its future empire and regarded most of the surviving states as inferiors or vassals. Apart from the massacre of a suspiciously approximate 100,000 in Zhao in 234 BC, the Shiji is unusually reticent about casualties during this final phase of unification. Presumably they were not significant. Zheng himself characterised his campaigns as essentially corrective – ‘to punish violence and rebellion’. The object was no longer annihilation but annexation. Han and Zhao’s submission was followed by that of an already fractured Wei in 225 BC, of the displaced and enfeebled Chu in 223 BC, and finally of Yan in the extreme north-east and Qi in the Shandong peninsula in 222–221 BC. ‘Thanks to the ancestral spirits, these six kings have all acknowledged their guilt and the world is now in profound order,’ gloated the victor.6
It remained only to mark the achievement by a suitable upgrading of King Zheng’s title. Deliberations were held and a form of words meaning ‘Greatly August One’ was proposed. Zheng, acutely aware of his newly won precedence, had a better idea. ‘We will drop the “Greatly”, keep the “August”, and adopt the title used by the emperors of high antiquity [that is the mythical Five Emperors], calling ourselves Huangdi or August Emperor.’
An official proclamation immediately confirmed the new designation: from now on there were to be no more posthumous names; emperors were to be known only by the numerical titles they inherited. ‘We ourselves shall be called First Emperor [Shi Huangdi], and successive generations of rulers shall be numbered consecutively, Second, Third, and so on for 1000 or 10,000 generations, the succession passing down without end.’7 But posterity would decline to be bound by this ruling. One of the First Emperor’s most sensible innovations proved to be one of his least regarded; the sequence would stop at ‘Second Emperor’.
QIN’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION
On his accession a ruler’s first responsibility was to his lineage – past, present and to come. In honouring his ancestors he anticipated his becoming one of them and so demonstrated the legitimacy of his succession and that of his heirs. To this end, plans for a suitably imposing tomb for the then teenage Zheng had been drawn up as soon as his father’s funerary rites were consummated. The plans were probably revised and extended as he advanced to manhood, kingship and august emperorship, by when a truly spectacular funerary work was in prospect. Meanwhile his parents were exalted, with his father being given the accolade of ‘Grand Supreme August [One]’, despite the ban on posthumous titles. His mother, who was still very much alive, posed a different problem. She had first to be rehabilitated, in fact rescued from an infamous affair that threatened the very legitimacy that the young emperor was so determined to emphasise.
It so happened that during Zheng’s minority the state had been run by a group of veteran statesmen and generals under the direction of the able Lu Buwei, chancellor to Zheng’s father. Unusually, indeed scandalously by the standards of Confucian ‘gentlemen’ accustomed to regard influence as their own prerogative, Lu Buwei owed his position not to scholarship but to trade. Though a highly successful businessman, he still ranked as a merchant, one of the most despised professions throughout the Xia states and a heavily penalised one under Qin’s ‘legalist’ regulations.
Contempt for such an upstart may account for the Shiji’s decidedly racy biographical note on Lu Buwei. Like most of Qin’s ministers, he was not a native of that state, and before arriving there in c. 251 BC had enjoyed the favours of a celebrated concubine. Her name is not mentioned, only her ‘matchless beauty and great skill in dancing’, which attracted other admirers, including the then crown prince of Qin. The crown prince prevailed on Lu Buwei to part with her, ‘she concealed the fact that she was already pregnant’, and her baby, a son born in the fullness of time, had therefore been assumed to be the offspring of the Qin crown prince. Meanwhile the crown prince had succeeded as king of Qin; the matchless concubine had been recognised as his official consort; and her infant had been declared heir apparent. This was the young Zheng. If the story was true, the future First Emperor was an impostor. Illegitimacy could, and had been, rectified by making his mother a royal consort; but there could be no redemption for the issue of a barely mentionable relationship between a common concubine and a market trader.
Nor was that the end of the affair. When the thirteen-year-old Zheng succeeded on the death of his father, his mother, now Dowager Queen and soon to be Dowager Empress, resumed her relationship with Lu Buwei. He, though, seems to have tired of her attentions and grown anxious lest the affair become public.
He therefore searched about in secret until he found a man named Lao Ai who had an unusually large penis, and made him a servant in his household. Then, when an occasion arose, he had suggestive music performed and, instructing Lao Ai to stick his penis through the centre of a wheel made of paulownia wood, had him walk about with it, making certain that the report of this reached the ears of the Queen Dowager so as to excite her interest.8
It did. Her Majesty’s interest was royally excited and Lao Ai, the stud, found himself the unwitting beneficiary of this none-too-subtle ploy. Accused of some misdemeanour, he was sentenced to a mock castration (only his whiskers and eyebrows were removed) and then consigned