Persuade the monarch to praise Qin Shi Huang

Qin Shi Huang was a famous tyrant in Chinese history, and historians have long been determined. For half a century, however, his praise has often been loud, and his brutality against humanity seems to be considered a legitimate act. In recent years, some popular literary artists have put his image on the stage, and they have performed at home and abroad, and some people say that this is promoting peace, which is really a great irony! The author cannot but point out that such an ideological and cultural phenomenon is very abnormal.

Qin Shi Huang was glorified for his unification of China. It's worth talking about. Throughout the ages, human society has evolved from early tribes, to small countries, to the rise of large countries, to the emergence of national communities...... It can be said that moving toward reunification and world harmony is indeed the general trend of historical development. In the past era, there were two clues on the road to reunification: one was the progress of social economy, the invisible hand of the productive forces caused the integration of ideology and culture, and required regional and political unification; The first is the conquest between tribes, peoples, and nations. The former is peaceful and eternal; The latter is violent, a product of the barbaric age of human society. While conquest has had a role in advancing history, the indiscriminate use of violence is condemned at all times. The so-called "teacher of benevolence and righteousness" and "cutting down no way" in traditional Chinese culture also emphasize that violence has its moral bottom line. The kind of tyrannical regime that treats the people's lives as if they were grass and practices "no way" will be short-lived, no matter how vast the territory it reunites. How to evaluate Qin Shi Huang's unification of China? First of all, it must be explained that Qin Shi Huang was not the first person to establish a unified central dynasty in terms of establishing a unified central dynasty, and he had all established a unified central dynasty in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties before him, so it is not accurate to say that he was the first person to unify China. It would be accurate to say that Qin Shi Huang was the first person to establish a centralized absolute monarchy in China. Therefore, the most important thing in evaluating the unification of Qin Shi Huang is to see whether the centralized absolute monarchy system he created was of great positive or negative significance in Chinese history. Since the Wuxu Restoration, the mainland ideological circles have constantly criticized the centralized monarchy and absolutism represented by the Qin government, and they believe that this system is the main culprit that hinders the progress of Chinese society and history—it is this system that has stifled the ideological freedom and innovative vitality of the Chinese nation; It is precisely this system that has caused the germ of capitalism that appeared on the mainland very early to be repeatedly destroyed and unable to grow and grow. I completely agree with the critics. The Qin Dynasty unified writing and weights and measures, of course, it should be affirmed. But as Guo Moruo pointed out in the "Ten Criticisms", "this is not so much the vigorous action of one or two people, but in fact the trend of the times." Based on his own research on the Jin script of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Guo believes that after two weeks, seven or eight hundred years of natural evolution, the convergence of the languages of the countries at that time was already obvious, and the unification of Qin was a matter of course. The weights and measures of the Qin Dynasty followed the standards of the Shang Dynasty when the law was changed, and it was not formulated under the auspices of the winning government.

To evaluate the unification of Qin Shi Huang, we also need to look at what it brought to the people. Is it peace? No, it's death. Is it happiness? No, it's a disaster. The wars waged by Qin against the nations resulted in countless deaths. At that time, he also invented the method of counting the enemy's exploits by beheading the enemy, which caused the soldiers to kill indiscriminately, and the heads of women and children were also cut off to make up the number of people. According to the official history, to the 51st year of Qin Xianggong, the number of enemies killed by Qin reached more than 130,000, of which 450,000 Zhao were buried alive in the Battle of Changping, which was also appalling in that year. After the unification of Qin, the people did not get a chance to recuperate. He built a luxurious palace for himself that stretched for hundreds of miles - Afang Palace, and spent decades to build the huge Lishan Tomb, which alone requisitioned more than 70 craftsmen. In addition, more than 400,000 people were used to "build the Great Wall in the north"; More than 500,000 people, as well as countless other conscriptions, forcibly conscript no less than 3 million people every year without compensation, equivalent to more than 15% of the country's total population of about 20 million! If the old and the young are excluded, they account for one-third of the working population, and in many places there is a shortage of men, and women are recruited to replace them. This is undoubtedly a serious damage to the productive forces of society. Ying Zheng despised the royal way of Confucianism, admired the hegemony of Legalism, put Han Fei's set of "law, technique, and power" into practice, and used the harsh punishment of killing people at every turn to deter his subjects. The characteristics of Qin law are heavy and heavy punishment for minor crimes, and the death penalty alone includes more than ten kinds of beheadings (such as "law is beheaded" for those who miss the border period), killing (first being tortured and humiliated and then beheaded), car splitting (commonly known as "five horses dividing the corpse"), owl head (hanging the head to show the public), abandoning the city (executing in public in the market), waist beheading, kettle cooking, pit killing (buried alive), Yi nationality (not only razing the three tribes, but also destroying the nine tribes) and so on; Corporal punishment (piercing the face, cutting off the nose, cutting off the foot, castration, etc.) was more common, and the tortured were "innumerable", so that "the nose was cut and the foot was cut off". There are also a large number of sentences of hard labor. On the construction site of the Afang Palace, the Lishan Tomb and even the Great Wall, nearly one million prisoners were served, and most of these people died in other places without returning. According to the Qing Dynasty's "Fang County Chronicles", there was a kind of hairy "Mao Man" living in the northern jungle, whose ancestors were forced prisoners who escaped the construction of the Great Wall. Emperor Qin still cares? As long as he replied that Emperor Qin was still there, the "hairy man" was so frightened that he fled into the jungle. This terrible legend has been passed down from generation to generation, reflecting that Ying Zheng did turn the whole country into a terrible prison of "Heyi Sailu and imprisoned in the city".

Imprisoning the mind and cultural autocracy was the worst precedent opened by the Qin government in Chinese history. Qin Shi Huang respected the "Five Virtues Always Speaking" as the only doctrine believed in the whole country, and other ideas that hindered the "fixed one" were regarded as heresy and were banned. It was against this background that the "book burning and pit Confucianism" took place. In 213 B.C., the Qin Dynasty decreed that all historical books other than the Qin Records, and the "poems, books, and hundred languages" that were not collected by the doctors, should be burned, and those who did not burn for 30 days were ordered to "be the city dan" (that is, to serve the labor of building the city after the thorn face); After that, if there is any talk about poetry and books, "abandon the city", "the ancient is not the present" (i.e., the Yi tribe). Such a draconian decree suddenly silenced the whole country, and the national cultural heritage accumulated for a long time was reduced to ashes. Guo Moruo commented: "The burning of books is actually secondary, and since the late Spring and Autumn period, the vigorous spirit of free thinking has actually suffered a fatal blow because of this. In the second year of the book burning, there was an incident in which Qin Shi Huang buried more than 460 Confucian scholars, and there is a saying that those who were pitted were accused of deceiving the scholars who won the government because of refining the elixir of life, but the "Historical Records" quoted the emperor's eldest son Fu Su as admonishing him: "All living beings recite the Fa Confucius, and now they all re-enforce the Fa, and the ministers are afraid that the world will be uneasy." It shows that the main thing in the pit of Qin Shi Huang is the Confucian students who "recite the law Confucius". Judging from the fact that Ying Zheng announced the accusations of these people as "evil rumors and chaotic leaders", it can also be proved that the "Confucianism" incident echoed the "book burning" incident, and used violent means to deal with non-violent ideological speech and practiced cultural authoritarian political behavior.

The late Mr. Lin Jianming, an expert on Qin history, pointed out that Qin Shi Huang's brutality could not be explained by the ordinary "nature of the ruling class", but that he was more tyrannical and guilty more than other emperors in Chinese history. This is a question of the personality and character of the person who wins the government. Wei Yi, who had contact with Ying Zheng, left such words: King Qin is a person with "little kindness and a tiger and wolf heart", and "ambition is also light cannibalism". According to historical records, the suspicious Ying Zheng did not let others know his behavior except for a few favorites around him, so he had no fixed residence, and the palaces were connected by secret passages. One day he was in Liangshan Palace, and saw Prime Minister Li Si's chariot and honor guard from the mountain very solemn, and his face was displeased. When Li Si learned about this, he immediately reduced his ride. When Ying Zheng saw Li Si's car again, he realized that someone around him had reported the news, and ordered all the people present that day to be executed. In 211 B.C., a meteorite fell to Dongjun, someone carved on the stone "the first emperor died and divided" seven characters to vent hatred, win the anger of the government, because the perpetrator could not be caught, so the residents of the surrounding villages where the meteorite fell were all killed. These examples vividly show the "tiger wolf" of a one-man thief who completely annihilates human nature. Great dictators are always alone, and their cronies are often despicable. Qin Shi Huang eventually died in a coup d'état during the parade, and the mastermind of the coup was Zhao Gao, the only trusted chief of the guard and eunuch by his side. It is not impossible for historians to suspect that Ying Zheng died of murder by Zhao Gao and others. Hu Hai, the second emperor of Qin who came to power in a coup d'état, continued to exercise tyranny, and the fury of the people's uprising could not be contained. So, Zhao Gao staged another coup d'état to kill Qin II, and let the son of the Hu Hai brothers, Gongziying, ascend the throne. After Gongziying came to power, he killed Zhao Gao and razed his three clans, and finally had to surrender to the rebel army, and the Qin Dynasty was destroyed. It was only 15 years since the unification of Qin.

Text/Wang Yeyang