Chapter 3 Chapter 3 A Dictator, Four Great Projects

If we look through the unearthed Qin bamboo slips, we can see many cases of catching robbers!Even Liu Bang, the director of a police station, was fortunate enough to be forced to become a robber in the Qin Dynasty, hiding in the Dangshan area, never daring to go home. This makes us wonder, why did the Qin Dynasty, with such an efficient government function, force so many people to be displaced and become robbers? Alas, Qin Shihuang should be blamed for not doing a good job in this matter. Qin Shihuang himself was a rare workaholic in ancient times. Ban Gu, the author of "Hanshu", said that he held meetings during the day and approved documents at night, all of which were written by himself.As for what the subjects are busy with?engage in engineering.Qin Shihuang's greatest hobby was engineering.

First, build the Great Wall.Because of the construction of the Great Wall, the number of civil servants conscripted is often between three and four hundred thousand.The Great Wall is not for people here.Sometimes when the man is tired and sits down to catch his breath, his foreman will come over and ask, "Why don't you work?" "After finishing the work just now, my hands are shaking with exhaustion." "Hand trembling is fine, then go over there and sift the sand!" This kind of inhumane dialogue could be seen everywhere at that time, turning the construction site into the hall of hell for the people.Finally, at the foot of the Great Wall, "the dead are innumerable" and "the bones of the dead are pillars", which is very tragic.In the end, at great cost, they created the eighth wonder of the world - the Chinese dragon.

The second item is to repair the Chi Road.With Xianyang as the center, a road extending in all directions was built for horse-drawn carriages. The specification is that the road is 70 meters wide. The furthest reaches Gansu, east to the coast, north to Inner Mongolia, south to Hunan, Anhui, Zhejiang and other places.In addition, there is a special military road called "Straight Road", which is 700 kilometers long and more than 30 meters wide, and it is more than one meter above the ground like a highway. The whole project was completed in only two and a half years.Starting from Xianyang, the road goes northward to the Xiongnu area to support Meng Tian's army.Once there are police in the north, the army can be mobilized from the Xianyang area to the front line within a week.Although it is a bit inferior to the lime concrete roads of the Romans, the ground is also very solid. Many road surfaces have been preserved to this day, and no weeds grow on the hard roads.

Third, build a palace.Qin Shihuang launched the Efang Palace project, and its main building can seat 10,000 people.The palace gate is made of magnets to prevent terrorists from entering with iron weapons.In front of the palace stood twelve bronze giants. It is said that Efang Palace "repressed for three hundred miles", which is unlikely.However, with Afang Palace as the center, the palace complex of the Qin Dynasty spread out in four directions, reaching Lishan Hot Spring in the east, the canteen where the ancestors of Yongcheng ate in the west, Xianyangyuan in the north of Weibei, and Zhongnan Mountain in the south of Weinan. , are all buildings of the Qin Dynasty, a total of 300 buildings, basically all over the core area of ​​Guanzhong, enough to cover more than 300 miles.Later, Xiang Yu entered the pass and burned for three months before the palaces in the pass were completely burned.Of course, there are four hundred schools outside the customs.

These palaces are not just for the enjoyment of Lao Qin alone. "Historical Records" makes it very clear that he thought that "Xianyang has a lot of people", so he started to overhaul the palace and moved 80,000 families to live in it. It seems that this belongs to Qin. The "housing project" of the times. The first three projects are all public welfare, but this fourth project is for Lao Qin alone - repairing the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in Lishan Mountain (ordinary people will not be able to live in it even if they have no houses to live in). The Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang is said to be more than 120 meters high during the Three Kingdoms period (20 meters lower than the Khufu Pyramid).Now this small earth mountain has been exploited by historical forces, and it is still sixty-five meters high, with lush vegetation on the top and a circumference of one mile at the bottom.At the beginning, in order to minimize disturbance to the people, Qin Shihuang used reform-through-labour prisoners ("prisoners") when repairing his mausoleum instead of conscripting civilian husbands. The civilian husbands stayed on other national projects and farmland as much as possible. (Liu Bang's mausoleum is also not far away. It is 32 meters high today, Lu Zhi's mausoleum is also 32 meters high, and Han Wudi's mausoleum is 47 meters high. The construction of these mausoleums is an inevitable project in the era of imperial power. as they are bound to be stolen).

In addition to the four major civil engineering projects mentioned above, Qin Shihuang also had two major military projects: one was that Mr. Meng Tian led an army of 300,000 to drive away the Xiongnu in the north, and captured a large area of ​​land in Hetao and the north; Lu attacked Lingnan and even occupied northern Vietnam.However, the indigenous Yue people in Lingnan quickly started guerrilla warfare: they usually hid in the woods and killed them when they saw the opportunity, so that Wei Tuju and his gang did not dare to disarm for three years and kept fighting.Attacked by the guerrillas, a total of hundreds of thousands of Qin soldiers lay down their bodies and bleed and sacrificed hundreds of thousands of people. Finally, they barely captured Guangdong and Guangxi and expanded the territory of the Qin Dynasty to the coast of the South China Sea.

It can be said that the Qin Dynasty paid a great deal of effort and price in order to achieve the unification of China. According to Liu An, the king of Huainan in the Han Dynasty, Wei Tuju's army went out for a long time and wasted heavily.So when Chen Sheng and Wu Guang revolted, the Qin Dynasty was unable to call this army back to suppress it.The northern anti-Xiongnu army was also exhausted, or at least restrained, and it was impossible to return completely, which eventually led to the collapse of the Qin Dynasty.If they are arranged in the relatively newly occupied Qichu area where there are still many unstable factors, they can at least play a deterrent and flame-retardant role.

But the Qin people were greedy for external expansion.The military arrangement of the Qin people, which was greedy for the outside and the inside for the inside, sent two large armies, the north and the south, to go far away to grab the stalls. The income was not much, and the family was left unattended. The cost was extremely high, and it was a wrong decision. In fact, things like fighting the Huns can be postponed for decades, until the people's livelihood is prosperous and the country is stable.In short, the two major military projects and the four major civil engineering projects mentioned above were all urgent tasks that led to the subjugation of the Qin Dynasty.

The 800,000 troops of the northern and southern armies are really huge, equivalent to one-third of the active soldiers in modern China and one-half of the American soldiers. At that time, the population of the Qin Dynasty was less than 3% of modern China ( Only around 30 million, equivalent to the population of Chongqing).Such a huge military service can only increase the labor burden of the people. However, looking at it on the other hand, with the mere population of Chongqing, it has completed the huge projects of driving the Xiongnu to the north, covering the Wuling Mountains in the south, building the Great Wall, and driving roads. In any case, the enterprising spirit from the government to the people in the Qin Dynasty is really commendable. .

The excess wealth created by human labor must always be spent again.Even if you eat desperately and wear desperately, what you use is limited, so what do you do with the excess?It had to be used in project engineering, and Yize was passed down to future generations.The Qin Dynasty overhauled the Great Wall, built the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, and Emperor Sui Yang overhauled the canals. It is also a good thing to turn the grain that could not be stored for a long time into the immortal Great Wall and canals, and turn them into lasting resources for future generations to use slowly.The so-called "the bows left by the Chu people, and the Chu people pick them up" is a great regret for the Chu people who lost their bows, but there is no regret or loss for the Chu country as a whole.Similarly, building the Great Wall and the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang was a pain for the people at that time, but it is a winner for us in future generations.The so-called harm in a moment, the merits of a lifetime.Just like the pyramids in Egypt, it was a painful thing to build at the time, but now they are earning extra money for the Egyptians to travel.

At least it's better than the people of the whole era who messed around and didn't do anything serious. But later facts proved that the projects of the later generations of the Qin Dynasty also cost a lot at that time, even at the cost of subjugation. In the previous Shang and Zhou dynasties, the law stipulated that adult men should volunteer for the country for one month and three days every three years, from the age of twenty-three to fifty-five.And the Qin Dynasty added an average of two years and one month of service every three years. Specifically, it was as follows: in the first year, it was produced at home to produce some food (to meet the needs of the three years), but it had to go out to do labor for one month. month, and the next two years will be all forced labor.Such a continuous cycle, a cycle of three years.And the service period has also been extended to sixteen to sixty years old.In other words, if a farmer in the Qin Dynasty lived to be sixty years old, he would have to serve the country for a total of 10,250 days of labor and military service, that is, he would have to spend 28 years on the construction site!In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, it was 297 days (less than a year).Therefore, Dong Zhongshu said that the hard labor of the Qin Dynasty was "thirty times that of the ancients" - of course, this does not rule out the possibility of Dong Zhongshu's alarmist speeches and the possibility of using the past to satirize the present (the arrangement of the Qin Dynasty was to persuade Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was also doing great things) .If what old Dong said is true, then half of his life will be spent in other places sifting sand and smashing stones. This kind of heavy labor will only cause "resentment at home". And those who stayed at home and farmed did not have a good time.Farming needs to pay grain and tax, which is justified, but the key is how much to pay.After the adjustment of history, the traditional tax standard of Chinese agriculture is one-tenth, and sometimes it is only one-thirtieth when encountering a benevolent emperor.But the Qin Dynasty was unconventional, and reached two-thirds ("receive too half of the gift", according to the Han Dynasty person Wu)-this is simply unreasonable!As high as seven to twenty times the traditional level, the so-called "twenty times the ancient" (Dong Zhongshu words).People really have no way out.Therefore, in the state of Qin, "Men are not able to farm enough for food and wages, and women are not enough to weave enough clothes." People are exhausted and cannot support themselves, let alone pay the astronomical proportion of taxes.As a result, "Qin Fu collects death, exhausts people's financial resources, gangs of thieves rise together, and the dead look at each other"-people can't pay taxes, so they have to flee and become robbers. Note that this tax percentage is not calculated based on the actual output - that's fine, I don't work, so I pay less tax.In fact, it is based on the general output of the land, and the government estimates an output to collect taxes.No matter how well you do, pay this amount!Haha, that would be infuriating!But don't think that this is Qin Shihuang's badness. All the emperors of all dynasties have counted in this way. However, why did the Qin emperor set a tax rate that was twenty times higher than that of other emperors?He didn't know that the "protection fee" was too much, and everyone was going to flee. Why did they flee to the territory of other bosses?Or if there is no place to escape, everyone will revolt! Qin Shihuang also had no choice.You think, he has engaged in so many major national projects, all of which cost money. The Great Wall, Chidao, and 800,000 soldiers need to consume a lot of materials and food. But why did Qin Shihuang have to "work hard" and engage in so many big projects?Doing fewer projects will alleviate people's anguish and resentment, and take a step back to open up the sea and the sky?Alas, there is no way, Qin people have to engage in these projects!It's like having obsessive-compulsive disorder.This is also out of a kind of helplessness. As the founder of China's first unified dynasty, Qin Shihuang has many unspeakable secrets and great challenges: Although the Qin Dynasty unified China in form, the people of the six countries are not convinced, and they are used to the historical fact of long-term division, which is beneficial to unification Still hazy, hesitant about the new social system.The historical inertia of division is so strong that some people engraved the old slogan of "Qin Shihuang dies and divides".This requires that the new regime must do something to establish its authority among the people.The first thing to do for the unified dynasty is to make achievements, build the Great Wall, build mausoleums, attack the Huns, establish a successful and great image of the government, stop the inertia of division in history, and consolidate the fate of the new dynasty.This is like the fact that after the reunification of New China in 1949, it was hostile internationally, and many countries did not yet recognize the legal status of the Chinese government.So at that time, it was necessary to smelt steel and make atomic bombs to show outsiders, "catch up with the Premier League and the United States" and gain international recognition.It is also necessary to launch satellites into the sky and manufacture 10,000-ton hydraulic presses to strengthen the public's trust in the new government. The mausoleum built by Qin Shihuang is not only for personal enjoyment, but also, as the history books say, "no majesty without magnificence" is to give the people of the six countries a kind of shock and confidence so that they can accept the new government of "magnificence". Lead them to continue on the unified path.We cannot simply say that Qin Shihuang built his mausoleum and palaces and built works purely to satisfy his personal desire for pleasure. It is unfair and superficial to simply attribute the problem to personal morality like "the thieves in the world are ruthless and tyrannical in order to serve their own desires." The Qin people's vigorous and vigorous actions and large-scale projects are not only to establish government authority, but also have something to do with the traditional "spirit of meritorious service" of the Qin people. Qin has always been a pragmatic and ambitious country.They were originally a small country in the western frontier, but they reformed their methods and aspired to the world, and used the principle of rewarding merit as a means of motivating officials and the people.Under the strong guidance of the successive Qin governments, the persistent and enterprising "spirit of meritorious service" overflowed above the temples and spread among the villages.The so-called "deeds of merit", we can understand it as "doing meritorious deeds", which means that something must be done.To win glory with merit, to win the title of land and house. The persistent pursuit of meritorious goals made the energy of the whole society of Qin State explode to a high degree, focusing on great social efficiency, and finally defeated the six countries through long-term competition.After the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, the "spirit of meritorious service" of the Qin people has not disappeared.But there are no more battles to fight. How can people "do things for meritorious deeds to win the title", so let's engage in large-scale construction and external expansion.So there was a lot of artificiality and military operations, and finally there were too many things to do, and it got out of control, and it reached the point where the empire and the people could not bear it, and the empire collapsed rapidly. The spirit of meritorious service and the rise and fall of the Qin Dynasty can be said to depend on success and failure. At the same time, it can also be said that Qin Shihuang and his government were eager to make great achievements, and they were also the general representative of the Qin nation's meritorious spirit. In addition, the great feat of annexing the six countries further stimulated Qin Shihuang's appetite.At that time, people commented on him: "After the Emperor Qin annexed the world, he wanted to do what he wanted"-that is, whatever he wanted to do, he could achieve it, so his appetite was enlarged.Qin Shihuang thought that whatever he wanted to do, he would be able to do it. Finally, he used the power of the people lightly to build the Great Wall, the Afang Palace, attack the Xiongnu, and attack Wuling. We say that there is nothing wrong with Qin Shihuang's enthusiasm for "work", which is better than doing nothing and picking up girls all day long.But Qin Shihuang violated the basic law of "doing according to one's ability".In the early years of a dynasty that was established after a long war, he was supposed to rest and support the people, but he made great achievements. Qin Shihuang probably never imagined that the consequences of being greedy for meritorious service and developing civil and military projects would be so serious.Let's call this a great success. The same is true for Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He was very happy, resorted to military affairs, and exhausted his financial resources. Finally, the population dropped by half, and the mountains were full of thieves. The corvee is thin, and the people rest." The Han Dynasty almost followed in Qin's footsteps. In short, if Qin Shihuang had been able to sympathize with the people and recuperate, the Qin Dynasty would never have been so short-lived. At the same time, we can see that those big-name emperors such as Qin Huang and Han Wu, who have left traces of great achievements in history, have to take the risk of exhausting the world's financial resources and even turbulent society.It seems that being a celebrity is not easy!Matter is indeed conserved. If you don’t pay, you won’t gain. It's as if the gangsters charge too much protection fees on a street, which will make the street more and more depressed, and the gangsters will have no source of income.This was the case in such an era. The common people had no way out, so they fled from the "street" of the Great Qin Dynasty.This is the so-called "scattering of the common people" (Dong Zhongshu's words) in the history books. People are "dead" (run away), and the black boss can no longer collect taxes on this "street", so he must not allow these people to run away.So a law came out at that time called "the law of arresting death".The pavilion chief and the police were sent to arrest the "dead".How will the dead be punished after they are caught? Generally speaking, after being caught, you have to "whip him fifty times", that is, beat him fifty times with a bamboo board. , some popular hit the back).From the perspective of the ancients, the punishment of fifty floggings does not seem to be too harsh. However, these people who have a criminal record of fleeing, the next time they recruit husbands and soldiers, they will be recruited first.For example, the 500,000 troops sent by Qin Shihuang to fight in Nanling first recruited those who had escaped criminal records (sinners, dead people, businessmen, son-in-law). If a dead person fled for a long time and was caught after running for a month, he would be fined with a shield.If this guy is more powerful and he is caught after running for a year, he will have to endure the punishment, that is, his beard and sideburns will be shaved off.If a man with a bare chin was walking on Qinchao Street, everyone would point and say, "Yeah! This kid was caught as a fugitive!" It can be seen that whether it is fifty flogging, a shield or beard shaving, the Qin Dynasty's use of punishment is not as cruel as people say.Later generations misunderstood that severe punishment and harsh laws led to the collapse of the Qin Dynasty, which is actually a false statement.Perhaps when Qin II amended the law, the punishment would be harsher, but it seems that this was not the case before. By the way, King Wen of Zhou also issued an order to arrest the "dead". It can be seen that the so-called King Wen of Zhou did not come here to practice benevolence and righteousness. He also collected taxes desperately and did not allow taxpayers to escape. Lu Zi accumulated military expenditures and military resources before he began to use force against the Shang Dynasty. Although the laws of the state of Qin severely punished the dead after they were caught, if the dead fled while serving in the military, they would be sentenced to death once they were caught.Because deserters are the targets of strict crackdowns in ancient and modern China and abroad, there is nothing to complain about. For example, Roman deserters in the same period were to be crucified to death.Later, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang said that "if you die today, you will die, and you will die if you take great plans"-because they went to serve in the military. The dead have fled for a long time, so they have to eat, but they have lost their household registration and means of production, and cannot produce and work. How can they make a living? Gao Jianli in the Warring States Period, as a friend of Jing Ke, was implicated and "died"—leaved his household registration, changed his name, and worked as a bartender in a tavern. Because of his hard work, he later switched to playing the violin (ancient) .I think people are engaged in all kinds of service jobs, including the most important mining, or working for landlords, including begging. In short, there is nothing too decent. We have reason to believe that there are always some dead or widows who occasionally steal things in order to supplement their family income. Now let's talk about the life of the robber brothers in the Qin Dynasty. According to the unearthed Qin bamboo slips, these robbers (many of them are women) usually steal horses, pigs, cows, sheep, mulberry leaves, money, and public property. together. If the big robber brother—it should be the eldest sister—was caught stealing mulberry leaves, according to Qin law, she would be fined to do 30 days of hard labor.If the value of the stolen items is less than 660 yuan, they will have their faces tattooed and then sent to labor.If it exceeds 660 yuan, the nose will be cut off, and then go to labor.If you steal a cow, you will be imprisoned for one year. These punishments are actually not harsh. In Britain in the 17th century, stealing a sheep would have been hanged. Some people say that if you steal a cow, you will be imprisoned for a year, which is not harsh—boss!The relative value of a cow in the Qin Dynasty was equal to a truck today. But the Qin Dynasty would not impose capital punishment on robbers. At that time, the heaviest punishment was nothing more than for "group robbers".More than five people are counted as group robbers, and group robbers are very harmful, so the punishment is also severe: after the group robbers are caught, each person's face will be tattooed, his left toe will be cut off, and he will be assigned to be a city dan (repairing the Great Wall or something).Even bandits don't kill their heads, they just serve as Chengdan, and Chengdan's labor period is usually only four or five years, not lifelong. In short, Qin Law is not as "harsh" as various books say in unison, at least in the period of Qin Shihuang, there was no abuse of punishment.It was Qin II who later changed the law and turned the empire into a big prison and slaughterhouse. We should not imagine the era of Qin Shihuang as beheading every robber who was caught, or even beheading every ordinary person who was caught casually. Someone asked: The robber was caught, his left toe was cut off, his face was tattooed, and he was assigned to be a city guard at the foot of the Great Wall. If he doesn't work hard, can he be whipped? Haha, this is an interesting question. Or, would there be any official with a whip who would whip him up if he didn't like him?Like in the movie. The answer is: If a prisoner commits a mistake stipulated in the law during the labor process, he can be beaten! For example, the law stipulates that if Chengdan destroys public property during labor, whether it is pottery, iron, or wooden utensils, or breaks a cart, the valuation will be replaced by flogging.Ten lashes for every penny worth.If it is worth more than 20 renminbi, it is "cooked and whipped", which means that you can beat it as much as you want until it is cooked and bubbling.Sometimes he was still hungry, and his ration was reduced by half a bucket every day, and the amount decreased day by day.But this kind of punishment is by no means arbitrary. As for what kind of wrong behavior can be punished and how long it lasts, it is still difficult to figure out due to limited information.In short, you can fight but it doesn't mean you can fight indiscriminately. Another actual case unearthed on the Qin bamboo slips also illustrates this point: a doctor whipped a ghost (a reform-through-labour prisoner) for no reason, causing the ghost to flee.Then, according to the law, this doctor must be punished and serve in the government, waiting for the fugitive to be captured.If he dares to escape during his service, he will be fined with a shield after being captured.If he flees again, he will be sentenced to long-term punishment (that is, to shave his beard before serving in the military—we know that a beard was the face of a person at that time, and it was a certificate of being an official, and Liu Bang deliberately left a beautiful beard). Therefore, according to the legend, it is absolutely impossible to kill Wan Xiliang casually and fill his body in the cracks of the Great Wall! There is a question that has been bothering me: How many robbers were there in the Qin Dynasty? It should not be too rare. Once Qin Shihuang visited in micro-clothes and walked to the moat of Xianyang at night. In this very sensitive Wangji area, he even encountered robbers.It frightened Lao Qin into a "big shock".It was only thanks to a few bodyguards with high martial arts skills that they killed the robber and escaped from danger. The unearthed Qin bamboo slips also give us hints: words such as "Chu bandits", "group bandits" and "Kandong group bandits" often appear on the bamboo slips, making people feel that these bandits are like lice, hiding everywhere in the Qin Dynasty. In the seam of an increasingly stretched coat ("Kandong" is not the three northeastern provinces, but the east of Hangu Pass). But we have reason to believe that the number of robbers in Qin Shihuang's era was not too many.Take Liu Bang, Peng Yue, Yingbo and other well-known gangs of robbers as examples, all of which are no more than a hundred people, and the legal standard for "group robbers" is five people, not one thousand, which shows that the situation is not serious yet.Compared with the "group of robbers all over the mountain" in the later years of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, let's be more optimistic. Although Qin Shihuang was engaged in big projects, he knew not to directly disturb the people.Qin Shihuang has his own characteristics. He always recruits sinners, dead people, businessmen, and son-in-law, and lets these people do projects.For example, the 500,000 troops sent by Qin Shihuang to fight in Nanling first recruited sinners, dead people, businessmen, and son-in-law; the construction of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum also used criminals, so as to minimize the disturbance to the normal agricultural production of pure civilians. If all the major projects in Qin Shihuang's era were arranged in this way, then Dong Zhongshu's statement that "hard labor was thirty times stronger than in ancient times" may not be true.When admonishing the current emperor, many intellectuals did not dare to speak out, so they spoofed the "losers" such as Qin Shihuang and King Zhou.What they said about the situation in the era of Qin Shihuang may actually be the objective reality of the present (such as the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty). We all understand sinners, dead people, and businessmen, but what is a son-in-law?Being a son-in-law is a very old profession, and Jiang Ziya once did it. For example, in ancient times, a man was so poor that he chose to step in and become a son-in-law in someone else's house, and he was called a son-in-law.He has no right to inherit the property, and his status is close to that of a slave. He is a dispensable burden, called "superfluous".So first enlist this kind of son-in-law-Qin Shihuang did this out of good intentions, on the one hand to prevent the increase in the number of slaves, and on the other hand to avoid encroaching on the farming time of those who have means of production.This is thanks to Qin Shihuang's kindness. Of course, Qin Shihuang also inevitably conscripted "pure farmers", but he first recruited rich peasants on the "right side of Lu" (rich and powerful people live on the right side of Lu).This group of people has a solid foundation, even if they go out to work for a few years, they will not suddenly go bankrupt and become refugees.Moreover, the family background is thick, there are many scruples, and he does not want to make more troubles.Therefore, although Qin Shihuang made great achievements repeatedly, he was able to relatively maintain the national foundation. After the bad boy Hu Hai came to power, the situation deteriorated further.Hu Hai intensified, made great use of punishment, and used people's power to be more ruthless than his father. The rich peasants in the "Lou You" were expropriated, and all the poor people in the "Lou Zuo" were also conscripted! These poor guys from the "Lu Zuo" are not cheap - because they have nothing at home, so their ambition to rebel is so high that they don't hesitate at all.Anyone who dares to provoke them will fight desperately!