by John Man
‘You’re a modern Meng Tian,’ I said.
Not really, he said. ‘The technology of building roads across the desert is not very difficult.’ But there was one problem I had never considered – to take care of a new road is more difficult than building it, because the sand moves and covers the road. Today, this problem is solved with barriers and by anchoring the sand with plants either side of the road. But Meng Tian would have needed to plan for permanent teams of sweepers in addition to the workers used to make it.
What would that have involved? Mr Ding became thoughtful. Meng Tian would have had to solve another problem even before he started. He would need to know the best route. There were hills to avoid, streams to ford, ravines to fill in, ridges to cut through. He needed surveyors to explore all the possibilities and report back and collate all the information. How long would that take? Could fifty five-man teams survey 15 kilometres each in the course of a summer? Even if that is about right, a whole year has passed without breaking any ground.
Now what? ‘The Qin Emperor was the first to standardize measurements, like the width of chariots,’ said Mr Ding, ‘so Meng Tian would need to ensure the road was wide enough without being too wide, and firm enough without being too slow to build. I think perhaps crushed stones, like gravel, would make a good surface.’
OK, the road has to be completed as fast as possible. We know it was done within four years, from the fact that Meng Tian was commanding in the field for four years before his arrest and suicide. How many men would it take to build 740 kilometres of hard-packed road in four years?
Luckily, I could offer a few thoughts, because I had written a book on the First Emperor’s tomb and his army of terracotta warriors. I had done a very rough time-and-motion study to see how many men working over what period of time could have dug out, and then created the emperor’s tomb. As a rule of thumb, one man with a spade can shift about 5 tonnes per day, but only in conjunction with several two-man teams carrying slings on poles to cart the earth away. Sima Qian suggested a workforce of 700,000, but that is a ludicrous figure, larger than any city then in existence. How would they be housed and fed? In fact, the surprising conclusion is that the tomb could have been dug by 200 diggers shifting 1,000 tonnes a day for about ten months. Considering that work started on the tomb when the emperor came to the throne in 246 BC, there was no shortage of time – though filling it in and creating the tomb-mound after the emperor’s death would have been far more demanding.
Now apply these figures to the road. Sima Qian says that Meng Tian’s army numbered either 300,000 or 100,000, but this is such a disparity that it cannot be much of a guide. That doesn’t matter, because the numbers needed to make the road are much smaller than that.
Let’s do the sums in very round figures: 740 kilometres long, 4 metres wide and (say) 0.5 metre deep – that makes about 1.5 million cubic metres of earth to dig up, combine with gravel, and replace. If workers can remove 5 tonnes, or 3.5 cubic metres, per day, and if they can replace it in the same amount of time, the job can be done with 2,400 workers in about two years – not four – even allowing for bad weather, winter and engineering works, like cutting descents into ravines, filling in the gullies at the bottom, and perhaps making a few wooden bridges.
That may make it sound relatively easy, but those 2,400 front-line workers needed a lot of back-up: a two-man team with a sling on a pole to carry earth away. That raises the labour-force to 7,500, operating simultaneously on different sections of the road. They all have to be fed, clothed, housed and defended. Local herders could have supplied meat, but since no rice was grown in Ordos, that would have to be carried in. There would have been horses by the thousand moving to and from Qin, rafts across the Yellow River, defence forces to be recruited and replaced, tents to be ordered and delivered. The back-up army would have numbered several more thousand, beyond the 7,500, though that’s still a long way off Sima Qian’s figure. Anyway, manpower in Qin’s new empire was not a problem; the real challenge would have been to organize it.
Meng Tian’s command of the northern frontier was brought to a sudden end by a drama played out in Qin. It involved the emperor’s death, a bizarre plot to manage the succession, and the collapse of the dynasty. The tragic consequences of this for Meng Tian explain why his conquest of the Xiongnu and the occupation of Ordos came to an abrupt end.
At the end of 211 BC, the emperor was on a tour of the east with nine ministers and unknown numbers of assistants and families, all in scores of four-horse chariots, with who knows how many troops and herds of replacement horses. Besides the emperor himself, this mass of people included the following main characters:
•Li Si, chancellor. In office for thirty-seven years and now in his early seventies.
•Huhai, one of the emperor’s younger sons (eighteenth of twenty). Aged twenty. Ineffectual.
•Zhao Gao, the villain. Transport chief who was responsible for carriages and communications. He doubled as Huhai’s law tutor, and was also the most senior of a small group of eunuch attendants.
•Meng Yi, chief minister. Zhao’s enemy. He is the brother of Meng Tian, the great general guarding the northern frontier and building the Great Wall.
The villainous eunuch Zhao Gao and Meng Yi loathed each other. Zhao Gao had once been accused of committing a crime, probably corruption of some kind. Chief minister Meng Yi had Zhao tried and condemned. Zhao was a senior official, but as a good Legalist, Meng Yi argued for the death penalty. Zhao, as young Huhai’s tutor, was a slippery lawyer, and persuaded the emperor to pardon him. Zhao never forgave, and nursed a bitter resentment against both Meng Yi and Meng Tian.
This immense retinue – a government on wheels – worked its way south-east to the Yangtze, downriver by boat, then cross-country again for 250 kilometres to the sacred mountain of Kuaiji, near Shaoxing, and finally north along the coast for some 700 kilometres. By now it was the summer of 210 BC. The emperor set off for home.
After some 500 kilometres, suddenly, at a place called Sand Hill on the flat and river-rich expanses of southern Hebei, he fell ill with some unspecified disease, and went downhill fast.
Fearing the end was coming, he despatched Meng Yi home, with orders to make life-saving sacrifices along the way. Then he turned to the succession, a matter he had been avoiding and no one else had dared mention because he hated talking about death. He had exiled his eldest son Fusu to the northern frontier under Meng Tian as a punishment for criticizing the execution of 460 Confucian literati, but Fusu was still his heir. The emperor wrote a peremptory letter: ‘When mourning is announced, go to the capital Xianyang and arrange the funeral.’ Few words, yet a huge order – work on the tomb to be resumed, subsidiary pits dug, horses and concubines and officials designated for suicide or execution, the Terracotta Army to be made ready for burial, all the correct rituals to be organized.
By implication, this confirmed Fusu as the next emperor. There was another implication: having been seconded to Meng Tian, he would have the empire’s toughest army at his back.
Soon after handing the letter over to his communications chief and senior eunuch, Zhao Gao, the First Emperor died.
With his death, his top officials faced a problem. So far, not many people knew what had happened. The emperor’s hold on his new estates was tenuous. That was why he was making this long journey, to show his restless people that the empire was there for keeps. What might the reaction be when they knew he had died – and died, moreover, far from Xianyang and the mass of his armies? Revolution loomed, perhaps an end to the Qin empire, and back to the bad old days of eternal wars.
This was one of those rare moments when history held her breath. Not even Prince Huhai knew the emperor was dead. The only ones who did were the eunuch chief of carriages, Zhao Gao, the chancellor Li Si, and a few other trusted eunuchs. To tell or not to tell? The high stakes, the few characters involved, their moral dilemmas, their fears, the rising tension of the next few days – once again, we are in the r
ealm of high drama.
As far as I know, there is no film about what happened next. There should be, there could be, because Sima Qian wrote the script, or at least some powerful dialogue. The villain is Zhao Gao, who, as a eunuch in charge of eunuchs, was head of a group suspected through all Chinese history of being malign and self-serving. Real events and outcomes provide a sound historical framework, but it is Sima Qian’s invented dialogue and characterization that fill it with life.
It was eminent, trustworthy, elderly Li Si who took the first step, perhaps with the best intentions: to gain time to work out the best policy. He secretly had the body placed in the imperial carriage, which no one could enter without the permission of the attendant eunuch. Imagine Li Si, Zhao Gao and Huhai in adjacent carriages, hemming in the emperor’s along the narrow mud roads as the great procession moved slowly westward. Ministers continued to deliver state papers for the emperor’s approval, cooks delivered food. Inside, a second eunuch placed the emperor’s seal on the papers, and handed them out. For a couple of days – it could hardly have been more given what happens to dead bodies in the height of summer – business continued as usual.
Zhao Gao still had not handed the emperor’s last letter to a messenger. He had a motive to delay, because he hated the whole Meng family. If the letter was sent, then Fusu would take over, Fusu who had defended the Confucian scholars and criticized his own father. And what then? Out would go the long-standing chancellor Li Si and minister Zhao Gao, their extensive families and all their retainers. If they were lucky, they would be allowed to commit suicide; if not, their deaths would be very unpleasant. It was Zhao therefore who took the next crucial step in protection of his own interests.
He strode up or down the line to Huhai’s carriage and broke the news to him. The emperor’s dead, he said, and there are no orders securing the position of any prince, except Fusu. If Fusu becomes emperor, ‘you will be without so much as a foot of territory. What will you do?’1
Huhai was too young and too distraught to act. It’s obvious what I have to do, he said. Nothing. There’s nothing I can do, nothing at all.
Not so, said Zhao Gao, and laid out for him the decision before them. ‘At this moment the decision of who shall take control of the empire lies with you, me and the chancellor alone. I beg you to think of this! To make others your subjects or to be a subject of others, to rule men or be ruled by them – that is what is at stake.’
Huhai, still the good son, hesitated. An elder brother betrayed, a father’s edict ignored by ‘a man like me, so lacking in ability’ – it is unrighteous, it is unfilial, the empire would never consent, the altars would not accept my sacrifices …
Zhao Gao, once the prince’s tutor, seized his former pupil, shook him, and snarled sense and treachery together in his face. Other princes have done worse, he said, actually killed their fathers, and no one said they lacked virtue! ‘Virtue does not trouble with niceties! Only dare to be decisive and the gods and spirits will step aside! I beg you to see this through!’
Seeing he was on the verge of winning, he changed tack. Look, he said, we have to see the chancellor about this.
But how is that proper, argued querulous Huhai, seeing as how the death is still hidden, the mourning rites not yet performed?
‘Now is the time!’ shouted Zhao Gao. ‘Now is the time!’
And at last Huhai buckled. Zhao Gao locked him into the plot by giving him the emperor’s letter. He then sought out Li Si and brought him up to date. Now that Huhai had the letter, ‘The choice of an heir apparent depends solely on your say, my lord, and mine. What do you intend to do?’
There followed a series of exchanges in which Zhao Gao convinced the upright Li Si to back his treacherous scheme. My lord, consider, said Zhao. If Fusu were to rule, he would be backed by Meng Tian and his border army. ‘Can you compare with Meng Tian in ability, merit, strategic planning, allies, or friendship with the emperor’s eldest son?’
Li Si admitted that he was no match for Meng Tian.
Zhao Gao pressed his point. If Fusu became emperor, Meng Tian would be his chancellor, and ‘you, my lord, will be impoverished’. Now consider Huhai: kind-hearted, generous, reserved, punctilious, respectful, an ideal emperor. He, not Fusu, should be the heir. ‘At this moment,’ he concluded, ‘the fate of the empire hangs on Huhai, and I am able to have my way with him.’
Li Si was in an agony of indecision. ‘There were those who changed heirs, who fought their brothers, who put their kinsmen to death, and the results were turmoil, death, a kingdom turned into a wilderness. Don’t talk to me of plots!’
‘Listen!’ sad Zhao Gao. ‘If you permit this chance to slip away, then the disaster that will extend to your sons and grandsons is enough to make the blood run cold. The skilful man turns disaster into blessing. How will you proceed?’
Li Si wept and sighed in distress – ‘Alas! That I alone should face such troubled times!’ – but at last he too came on board.
And the conspiracy that Sima Qian refers to as the Sand Hill Plot moved forward.
The three destroyed the original letter, concocted an imperial edict making Huhai heir, and faked a letter to Fusu in the name of the emperor, saying: While I have been touring the empire and making sacrifices, Fusu and Meng Tian have been campaigning with several hundred thousand to no purpose. Moreover, Fusu has criticized and slandered me on many occasions. ‘Fusu has not acted as a filial son. I present him with a sword so he may settle the matter for himself.’
As for Meng Tian, ‘as a subject he has acted disloyally. I present him with the opportunity to take his own life.’
Off went the letter carried by a trusted messenger on horseback, accompanied by a troop of fast horsemen. It was a 500-kilometre gallop to Meng Tian’s HQ, which, according to local folklore, was at Suide, almost due north of the capital and just over halfway to the Yellow River, in the middle of Ordos. It would take them a week or so to get there.
Fusu wept on reading the fake letter, but accepted it at face value. He was only prevented from immediate suicide by Meng Tian, who pointed out there was perhaps something fishy going on. They had both been appointed to guard the frontier. This was a ‘weighty responsibility’; yet here comes this letter, delivered out of the blue. They should at least get confirmation.
Fusu thought this would show an unfilial lack of trust, and committed suicide.
Meng Tian, however, said he needed to know the order was genuine. Of course, the messenger could not possibly allow such an action – it would delay things by two weeks – so he had the general and his entourage of officers arrested. They were taken to a prison some 60 kilometres south-east of the Great Wall fortress of Jingbian. Only now could a message be sent back to the conspirators that all was well: Fusu dead, Meng Tian in jail.
So Huhai came to the throne as the Second Emperor. His top adviser was, of course, Zhao Gao, the king-maker, the instigator of the Sand Hill Plot. Huhai was weak. ‘The chief ministers are unsubmissive,’ he complained. ‘The various officials still have great power, and the other imperial princes are certain to contest my rule. What can I do?’
Zhao Gao proposed a Stalinist solution: unleash a reign of terror. Make the laws sterner and penalties more severe! See that persons charged with guilt implicate others! Wipe out the chief ministers and sow dissension among your kin! ‘By doing so you can strike terror into the empire as a whole, and at the same time do away with those who disapprove of your actions.’
‘Excellent!’ said the Second Emperor.
Six princes were put to death, and three others, protesting their innocence, chose to fall on their own swords. Sima Qian also mentions ten princesses killed by being torn apart by chariots. This could all be so, because many graves have been discovered in the pits of the Terracotta Army, most of young men and women in their twenties. Fear spread from the imperial family to the population at large.
Zhao Gao, now lord high executioner, was free to turn on his old adversaries, the Meng
brothers and their families. Meng Yi, accused of opposing Huhai’s accession, was asked to commit suicide. He naturally denied the charge, and delivered one of his own in a long memo that ended, ‘One who governs by the Way does not put to death the guiltless.’ It did him no good. Zhao Gao ordered his execution.
Meng Tian, still in prison after his arrest on the northern frontier, was confronted by an envoy demanding that he copy Fusu and commit suicide. He too wrote a memo, which the envoy refused to pass on, saying ‘I do not dare to report your words to the emperor.’
At this Meng Tian despaired. Sima Qian gives him a tragic death, and a highly imaginative one. How do we know it is imaginative? Because he uses virtually identical words when describing the death of a previous Qin general, Bai Qi, who in 260 BC had killed ‘450,000’ prisoners. In both cases, Sima Qian was using his criticism of the generals and their emperors as an oblique way to criticize his own emperor, Wu, for acts that were (as we will see) comparable in their ruthlessness. In a word, this is history as propaganda.
Still, it’s a good story. Like a tragic hero dying on stage, Meng Tian ‘heaved a great sigh and said, “What crime have I committed before Heaven? I die without fault!” After a long time he added: “Indeed I have a crime for which to die.” ’ In building the Great Wall, and presumably the Straight Road, ‘I have made ramparts and ditches over more than 10,000 li, and in this distance it is impossible that I have not cut through the veins of the earth. This is my crime.’
True, this might be considered a crime, because it ignored the practices of feng shui, which would have called for a careful study of the supernatural influences that would have shown whether construction was auspicious or not. But this did not deserve a death sentence.