Final 1

 1 Chen She, the Self-Made King

“Since we must die in any case, would it not be better to die fighting for our country [conquered Chu against the violent and cruel Qin]?” (H1.2t) Chen She’s exquisitely rational question and his ambition led him on a wild adventure that saw him titled “Magnifier of Chu” and crowned King of a liberated Chu (H1.4t). This tiny flame sparked the overthrow of local Qin leaders (H1.4t) and the spontaneous emergence of a “countless number of bands consisting of several thousand men each.” (H1.4m). At the head of this peasant army, Chu’s new leader Chen She, the mud from his day laborer job probably still caked between his toes, marched on Zhao, Juijiang, and Wei (H1.4m) before turning his attention on the ultimate prize, Qin (H1.5t). Seemingly accidentally, he unleashed a revolution throughout the entire land, as “by this time, there were any number of leaders of the revolt attempting to win control of different regions of the country.” (H1.6m) Why was a humble peasant so successful in triggering a movement that eventually overthrew the hated Qin?

The answer lies as much in the state of the Qin regime as in Chen She himself, a regime whose cruelties and excesses, which we covered well in our discussion, triggered his desperate question above. Though he was undeniably ambitious (“swan” H1.1m), politically astute (Qin analysis H1.2tm, spares family H1.5m), devious (“fish” H1.2b), charismatic (“fame and glory!” H1.3m), and effortlessly ruthless, executing leaders and friends (Ge Ying H1.4m, Deng Yue 7m, old friend 9m), his tenuous kingship lasted only six months (H1.9t) and his life was snuffed out by a vengeful carriage driver (H1.8t). He was neither a political nor military genius, but rather an ordinary man pushed to extremes by the Qin regime. More importantly, he was identical in that respect to hundreds of thousands of other men, from day laborers like himself to conquered kings and aristocrats, all crouching low under the Qin whip, but dreaming of better times. When Chen She rose up, driven by desperation as much as by ambition, and for a brief time succeeded in his mad dream, he became a symbol of hope for others like him and they finished the task. For this, Sima Qian notes his grave was tended in gratitude by thirty families of the Han (H1.9b).  

2) Meng Tian and Other Remonstrators

The Great Wall of China is a monument to the will of the first Qin Emperor—and the way he freely spent the labor of his people (Q213m). Meng Tian built the wall for First Emperor of Qin. Interestingly, the emperor’s eldest son Prince Fusu supervised him in this task, after Fusu was exiled to the north when he remonstrated with his father over excessive use of laws and punishments against scholars. (Q58b-59t). As we know, both men died by ordered suicide, ultimately at the hands of Zhao Gao (Fusu Q190b-191t), who placed the prince’s younger and more malleable brother Prince Huhai on the throne whereupon the new Second Emperor ordered Meng Tian’s suicide (Q211b).

Meng Tian wrote a poignant death letter "because [he wished his] death to be a remonstrance.” (Q212b-213t) His younger brother Meng Yi had also been “put to death” (211b) after remonstrating against the new emperor for condemning the Meng family under false charges (210b-211tm). Finally, note that Ziyang, the brother who succeeded Second Emperor, also “remonstrated” with Second Emperor over the persecution of the Meng family (Q210m). What is this “remonstration” and what does it mean that such great men insisted on performing an act that leads to their deaths, unless one is an heir apparent?

Under Confucianism, ruler-subject relations demand obedience from subjects. Remonstration is the primary (and rarely practiced, for the dangers documented above) way that Confucianism provides for expressing dissent to rulers. Ministers and sons have, under Confucianism of that time, a positive duty to remonstrate with their rulers and fathers, which these four men did, at the cost of their lives (save Ziyang). Meng Tian confessed that building the wall “cut through the arteries of the earth” and must be his capital crime (Q213t), a notion Sima Qian clarifies by speaking of the way he “made free with the strength of the common people” (213b) or used their labor excessively in service of his emperor. Fusu, too, spoke for the common people. To the Qin dynasty’s many crimes, Sima Qian takes care to add the murders of these virtuous loyal dissenters, noting one more way the Qin refused to curb their excesses.