Titans of History

Zheng now vied for power with the other Chinese kingdoms, creating a powerful army. When he had come to the throne, Qin had been a vassal state of the Kingdom of Zhaou. In a sequence of military victories, six kingdoms fell to Zheng’s forces: the Han (230), Zhaou (228), Wei (228), Chu (223), Yan (222) and Qi, the last independent Chinese kingdom, in 221 BC. A superb commander, Zheng was also a skilled diplomat, especially in exploiting divisions among his enemies. He now stood unchallenged within a unified China. To commemorate this feat he took a new name that reflected his unparalleled status: Qin Shi Huangdi, “The First August Emperor of Qin.”

Qin Shi Huangdi now created a strong centralized state across his territories. In an extension of existing practice in the Kingdom of Qin, the old feudal laws and structures that had remained in much of China were abolished, to be replaced by centrally appointed officials and a new administrative apparatus. Standardization of the Chinese script, currency, weights and measures changed the spheres of economics, law and language, with a unified system of new roads and canals, to weld China together as a cohesive national unit.

There was, however, a price to be paid—borne by the ordinary people of China. A million men were put to work as forced labor to build some 4700 miles of roads. Qin Shi Huangdi would have his edicts carved in vast letters on mountain rock faces. As his projects of national unity became ever more ambitious, so too did the human toll they exacted. One such project was to link up the numerous independent frontier walls that barricaded northern China from the threat of hostile tribes. This effectively created a forerunner to the Great Wall of China, but it cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

At the same time, Qin Shi Huangdi was unwilling to accept any limits on his own power—in contradiction to the Confucian belief that a ruler should follow traditional rites. So he outlawed Confucianism and persecuted its adherents brutally. Confucian scholars were buried alive or beheaded; a similar fate befell the follower of any creed that might challenge the emperor’s authority. All books not specifically approved by the emperor were banned and burned; intellectual curiosity of any kind was to be replaced by unswerving obedience.

As he grew older, Qin Shi Huangdi became obsessed with his own death. He regularly dispatched expeditions in search of an “elixir of life” that might make him immortal. He grew ever more fearful of challenges to his position, and with good reason, as he was the target of several assassination plots. The emperor’s efforts to counter such a fate became ever more paranoid and bizarre. At random, servants in the imperial household would be ordered to carry him in the middle of the night to an alternative room to sleep. Numerous doubles were deployed to confuse any would-be assassins. A close watch was kept, and anyone suspected of disloyalty was instantly removed.

Ultimately, it was Qin’s pursuit of immortality that was his downfall. It was widely believed that a man might live longer by drinking precious metals, gaining some of their durability. The emperor died in 210 BC, on tour in eastern China, having swallowed mercury tablets, created by his court physician in an effort to confer immortality.

Even in death, Qin Shi Huangdi seemed afraid that he might be vulnerable to attack. Long before he died he had ordered a gigantic three-mile-wide mausoleum to be built, guarded by a full-scale “terracotta army” of over 6000 full-sized clay models of soldiers. Qin Shi Huangdi’s aim was to ensure that in death, as in life, his every whim and desire would be catered for in his huge subterranean palace. Again, the epic scale of the building project exacted a monumental cost in terms of lives lost. Some 700,000 conscripts were required, a substantial proportion of whom did not survive its completion.

The terracotta army was rediscovered in March 1974 by a group of Chinese peasants sinking a well near the city of Xian. Digging down, they stumbled upon a vast chamber containing the figures. Upon further exploration, it became clear that the individually sculpted infantrymen, cavalry, charioteers, archers and cross-bowmen were guarding the entrance to the enormous tomb of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi.

So far, only the soldiers that guard the path to the door of the tomb have been uncovered. Each is fashioned in precise detail, and each has unique facial characteristics. All of the figures face east, from where it was assumed the enemies of the eternally sleeping emperor would come. In total, the entire funerary compound fills a whole mountain, covering a site of over twenty square miles.

The scale of what remains to be uncovered is indicated by the words of ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien; c. 145–c. 85 BC), who describes the tomb thus: