Between 229 and 222 BC, Qin Shihuangdi (known at the time as King Cheng of Ch'in province, or the 'Tiger of
Ch'in'), renowned to be 'humble when times were difficult, swallowing men whole when times were good', used
mounted troops with crossbows to attack each of the six kingdoms, which he soon controlled. He declared
himself Qin Shihuangdi (or Ch'in Shih Huang Ti), First Emperor, and divided the old states of the federacy into
prefectures and districts. To quell unrest he moved 120,000 of the most influential families in his realm to his
capital city,
Hsienyang (
Xinyang) where he had a palace with walls 70 miles in circumference and 270
pavilions (he slept in a different one each night to throw off the attempts of any would-be
assassin), each
connected by secret passageways.
While being widely known as the
Overlord who ordered the construction of
The Great Wall of China which
reportedly took one million lives to build, his greatest project was even more extreme and telling, namely his attempt to
eradicate all
history under his new realm. He
longed to be the
founder of his
Empire, not just its
leader, so in 213 BC, just years before he passed away,
he ordered (on pain of
slavery at building
The Great Wall, that's where much of the labor came from) the public
destruction of
every book, scroll or written page in
China, save one copy of each, which would belong to him exclusively and with which he would be
entombed. He is also have said to have burned alive 460
Confucian historians in his attempt to
annhilate China's
history before his rule. The idea being if all
knowledge and
record of the
past were erased, then history itself would begin with him.
Not until sixty years after his death did the
historical record begin to be restored, even then a great
deal was lost.
1 It became the tradition of generations of indignant Chinese scholars to '
befoul the
Emperor's grave', which has over the past ten years slowly begun to be uncovered (Qin Shihuangdi's body,
according to legend, floats atop a giant pool of
mercury within the giant hill-sized
tomb; apparently one of the
clues to its discovery was
mercury poisoning among local villagers).
Sources:
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Wall and The Books",
A Personal Anthology (1967)
Cotterell, A.
The First Emperor of China (NY : 1981)
Ding & Bloodworth.
The Chinese Machiavelli (London : 1976)
Macintosh, A. "The First Emperor",
The Infinite in the finite (Oxford : 1995)
Notes:
1. Later,
Emperor Lin-ti (172 AD) wanting to prevent such a
cataclysm from ever being possible again,
began to have many
Confucian classics and histories carved into 8ft. tablets before the National College, until
the public found out the cost at which this was being done and they smashed the tablets in protest. (fr. Drogan,
M.
Biblioclasm (1989, Littlefield, MD)