Zhao Gao

Biography

Family background and early years

Zhao Gao's background is disputed. According to the "Biography of Meng Tian" in the Records of the Grand Historian, he was a distant relative of the Zhao royal house. His mother was mutilated as punishment for a crime and placed in the yinguan, an institution of the Qin government associated with persons who had undergone punishment or rehabilitation; Zhao Gao and his brothers were born there and occupied a low social position. Zhao Gao himself, however, was physically strong and well versed in legal procedure. Qin Wang Zheng heard of his ability and promoted him exceptionally to Director of the Imperial Carriages, with responsibility for the emperor's vehicles, and also ordered him to teach the young prince Huhai how to judge legal cases. Skilled at reading people and ingratiating himself, Zhao Gao won Huhai's confidence. He was once convicted of a serious crime, and Meng Yi sentenced him to death and removed him from eunuch service in accordance with the law, but Qin Shi Huang pardoned him because of his diligence and restored him to office.

The Sand Hill coup

In 210 BCE, the thirty-seventh year of Qin Shi Huang, the emperor set out on his fifth tour and fell ill at Pingyuan Ford. By the time the imperial party reached the Sand Hill platform, northwest of present-day Guangzong in Hebei, he was gravely ill. Qin Shi Huang ordered Zhao Gao to draft an edict to his eldest son Fusu, instructing him to entrust military affairs to Meng Tian and return quickly to Xianyang to preside over the funeral, effectively confirming Fusu as successor. Zhao Gao, who was on poor terms with Fusu and feared for his position if Fusu became emperor, withheld the edict.

After Qin Shi Huang died, Chancellor Li Si kept the death secret for fear of disorder and placed the coffin in a ventilated imperial carriage. Zhao Gao then persuaded Huhai to seize the succession and personally pressured Li Si, arguing that if Fusu became emperor he would appoint Meng Tian chancellor and Li Si would meet a bad end. After intense hesitation, Li Si yielded. The three men conspired to alter the imperial orders, making Huhai crown prince and issuing forged commands ordering Fusu to die and Meng Tian to be imprisoned. Fusu obeyed the edict and committed suicide; Meng Tian refused to die and was detained at Yangzhou. Zhao Gao also slandered Meng Yi and caused him to be imprisoned in the region of Dai. The party returned to Xianyang and announced the emperor's death. Huhai ascended the throne as the Second Emperor of Qin, and Zhao Gao was promoted to Director of Palace Attendants, becoming one of the emperor's closest decision-makers.

Consolidation of power and political purges

After the Second Emperor came to the throne, Zhao Gao urged him to impose harsh punishments and severe laws in order to secure the imperial position. He advised the emperor to distance himself from his brothers and from senior ministers of the previous reign, to execute offenders and those implicated with them—even to the point of exterminating families—and to replace them with loyal dependants. The Second Emperor accepted this advice and entrusted Zhao Gao with broad power over life and death.

Zhao Gao used this authority to kill enemies and political opponents. Officials such as the erudite Zheng Xian, with whom he had earlier grievances, were executed. Twelve of the Second Emperor's brothers were beheaded in the streets of Xianyang, while ten of his sisters were torn apart by chariots in Du County, and their property was confiscated. The censor Qu Gong was sent to kill Meng Yi, and Meng Tian was forced to take poison in Yangzhou. Countless princes and officials were implicated through collective punishment, leaving the court and capital in fear.

Destruction of Li Si and monopoly of power

Because Zhao Gao had accumulated many enemies through indiscriminate killing, he feared that someone might expose his crimes to the Second Emperor. He therefore persuaded the emperor that imperial dignity required ministers to hear the ruler's voice but not see him in person. The emperor withdrew deep into the palace and ceased regular court audiences, while Zhao Gao handled affairs in the middle.

Li Si was dissatisfied and repeatedly sought an audience to remonstrate. Zhao Gao took the opportunity to accuse Li Si and his son Li You of treason. The Second Emperor believed him and imprisoned Li Si. Zhao Gao subjected Li Si to severe torture until he confessed. In 208 BCE, the second year of the Second Emperor, Li Si was executed by waist-cutting at Xianyang and his three kinship groups were exterminated. Zhao Gao then became chancellor and monopolized the government.

The Wangyi Palace coup and death

In 207 BCE, the third year of the Second Emperor, Liu Bang's insurgent forces broke through Wuguan Pass. Fearing that the emperor would hold him responsible, Zhao Gao struck first and launched the coup at Wangyi Palace, forcing Huhai to die. Zhao Gao then sought to proclaim himself emperor, but the assembled officials refused to support him. He therefore installed Ziying as King of Qin. Ziying knew that Zhao Gao could not be trusted. He conspired with his son, feigned illness, and refused to appear. When Zhao Gao came personally to investigate, the eunuch Han Tan was ordered to assassinate him; Zhao Gao's three kinship groups were then exterminated.

Disputed Origins, Status and Date of Birth

Zhao Gao's origins are recorded in the sources and disputed by later scholars. The Biographies of Meng Tian in the Records of the Grand Historian call him "a distant kinsman of the various Zhao" and say that he and several brothers "were all born in the hidden palace, their mother having been mutilated under the law, generation after generation base and low"; that the king of Qin, hearing that he was strong and versed in the law of prisons, made him master of the carriage office; that he privately served the young master Huhai and taught him to decide cases; and that, having committed a great crime, he was judged to death by Meng Yi, who did not dare bend the law, whereupon the emperor, because Zhao Gao was diligent in business, pardoned him, restoring his office and rank. The term "hidden palace" is variously explained by the three commentaries to the Records: the Correct Meaning glosses it as the place where the castrated were kept a hundred days in a dark chamber; the Seeking the Obscure cites Liu's view that Zhao's father was castrated, his wife made an official slave, her later children taking the surname Zhao and all being castrated, so that "the brothers were born in the hidden palace" means the state of being eunuchs; while the Collected Explanations cites Xu Guang plainly as "being eunuchs". From this flow disputes over whether Zhao Gao was in fact a eunuch, how he became one (self-castration, natural defect) and whether the hidden palace is related to the hidden office of the Qin documents. Shen Jiaben, noting that Zhao Gao had a daughter — her husband Yan Le later killed the Second Emperor — doubted that he was a true eunuch, holding that he merely inherited the household registration of eunuchs; Ma Feibai distinguished "palace men" from "eunuchs", the former being officials and only the latter castrates. Those, such as Xin Deyong, who hold that Zhao Gao was indeed a eunuch rely, besides the Records' "palace man" and "eunuch register", on the "inner" in his titles master of the inner carriage office and inner chancellor, and on Han-dynasty usage, such as Fan Kuai's rebuke to Liu Bang that "does Your Majesty not know the affair of Zhao Gao?", and Jing Fang's warning to Emperor Yuan that "with Shu Diao and Zhao Gao government grew daily more disordered and bandits filled the mountains". As to his birth, no date is recorded; some scholars, reckoning back from Zhao Gao's own words that "I am but a menial of the inner palace, and had the good fortune to enter the Qin palace by the writing brush, having managed affairs for more than twenty years", and comparing the Han statutes from Zhangjiashan on the progression of scribal students through the offices of scribe, clerk, and scribe of the secretariat to master of the carriage office, place his entry into the palace in the twelfth year of King Zheng of Qin at twenty-three, hence a birth about the forty-ninth year of King Zhao of Qin and a death in the third year of the Second Emperor at fifty-two, becoming chamberlain at fifty and chancellor at fifty-one. A widely repeated "revenge theory" derives from Zhao Yi's Qing collection, citing the Seeking the Obscure as saying that Zhao Gao "was a prince of the house of Zhao, and grieving that his state had been destroyed by Qin, swore revenge and had himself castrated to enter the palace, until he killed the Qin descendants and destroyed their realm"; but the passage Zhao Yi cites is not in the extant Seeking the Obscure and contradicts it, so the theory lacks historical basis.

The Coup at Shaqiu

In the thirty-seventh year of the First Emperor (210 BC) the emperor, past fifty, fell ill on his fifth tour. He "hated to speak of death, and the ministers dared not speak of it", but as he worsened he wrote a sealed letter to the eldest son Fusu saying "join the mourning and bury me at Xianyang", in effect confirming him as heir. The letter was sealed and left "in the office of the master of the inner carriage, Zhao Gao, who managed the tallies and seals, and was not given to a messenger"; on the bingyin day of the seventh month the emperor died at the Shaqiu platform. Because Zhao Gao was on bad terms with Fusu and feared for his position should Fusu succeed, while the young Huhai was ignorant and easy to control, he secretly held back the testament. Li Si, "fearing disorder among the princes and the realm since the emperor had died abroad", concealed the death, placed the coffin in a warm carriage with a trusted eunuch riding beside it, and had food offered and memorials received as before, "the eunuch conveying from the carriage that the memorials were approved", so that only Huhai, Zhao Gao and five or six favourites knew. Zhao Gao first urged Huhai to take the throne; when Huhai hesitated, he said that "without the chancellor's help the thing cannot be done". Knowing that Li Si came of common stock, had served only because he could not bear poverty, and lived in constant fear for his future, he went to him and said that "the letter and the seals given to the eldest son are all with Huhai; who shall be heir lies in the mouths of your lordship and myself". Li Si, shocked, refused, saying that such words of ruin were not for a subject to speak; Zhao Gao then asked how he compared with Meng Tian in ability, counsel, merit, freedom from resentment and the eldest son's trust, and said that if the eldest son succeeded Meng Tian would surely be chancellor and Li Si would not carry his marquis's seal home. Li Si yielded, and they plotted to forge a decree making Huhai heir and wrote another letter to Shangjun charging Fusu and Meng Tian with disloyalty and impiety and ordering them to die, sealed with the imperial seal. Fusu wept and would have killed himself; Meng Tian, suspecting a trick, urged him to ask again before dying, but the messenger pressed, and Fusu said that a father who gives his son death need not be asked twice, and killed himself, while Meng Tian refused and was imprisoned at Yangzhou. Zhao Gao then slandered Meng Yi, saying that the late emperor had long wished to raise a worthy heir and Meng Yi had opposed it, so that he should be killed; Meng Yi was detained in Dai. On the road north, with the heat and the stench, Zhao Gao had a picul of salted fish loaded to confuse the smell; only at Xianyang was the death announced and a splendid funeral held, and Huhai took the throne as the Second Emperor.

The Second Emperor and the Purges

The Second Emperor sought luxury, touring east to the sea and south to Kuaiji in his first spring, having the First Emperor's inscriptions recut with the names of attending ministers, then reopened the Epang Palace, conscripted fifty thousand men to guard Xianyang, and let none within three hundred li eat the grain, "the laws growing ever harsher". Uneasy about his own legitimacy, he told Zhao Gao his wish to enjoy life while he could; Zhao Gao, whose own plot would not bear exposure, answered that "this is what a worthy sovereign may do and a benighted one may not", warning that the princes and ministers all suspected the Shaqiu affair, that the princes were the emperor's elder brothers and the ministers the late emperor's appointees, and that he himself trembled daily. He advised harsh law and collective punishment, the extermination of the great ministers and the distancing of kin, the enrichment of the poor and the ennobling of the base, and the placement of the emperor's own men in office; Huhai agreed, and the slaughter of ministers and princes began, six princes being killed at Du. The young master Ying remonstrated, citing the kings of Zhao, Yan and Qi who killed their loyal ministers and lost their states, and warning that to kill loyal ministers and raise men without principle would shake confidence within and alienate the warriors without; Huhai did not heed him. Meng Yi was made to kill himself by the censor Qu Gong, and Meng Tian, pressed at Yangzhou, sighed that he had done no wrong to Heaven and died without crime, then, reflecting that the wall from Lintao to Liaodong could not but have cut the earth's veins, took poison. Twelve of Huhai's brothers were killed at Xianyang and ten princesses torn apart at Du; the princes Jianglü and his two brothers, imprisoned in the inner palace, cried to Heaven that they were guiltless before killing themselves; and the young master Gao, seeing his brothers die and fearing for his clan, asked to be buried with his father, at which Huhai was delighted, showed the letter to Zhao Gao asking whether this was not extremity, and was answered that a subject with death on his mind has no leisure for plots, and he paid a hundred thousand cash for the burial.

Withdrawal into the Palace and the Destruction of Li Si

To block discussion and keep the emperor in his hand, Zhao Gao declared that "the Son of Heaven is called zhen, for he should not be heard", advising Huhai to decide affairs within the palace with himself at his side, so that "the Second Emperor remained constantly within the forbidden palace, deciding all matters with Gao", and power passed largely into his hands. When Li Si wished to remonstrate and could not get audience, Zhao Gao pretended to say that the troubles in the east grew while the emperor busied himself with the Epang Palace and useless dogs and horses, that being of low station he dared not speak, and that "this is truly your lordship's business; why do you not remonstrate?" — promising to tell him whenever the emperor had leisure. Knowing Huhai's dislike of interruption at his pleasures, he sent word to Li Si whenever the emperor was feasting with his women that "the emperor has leisure; you may memorialise", and Li Si came to the gate three times over. Huhai, furious, said that when he had leisure Li Si never came, but always when he was at his pleasure, "does the chancellor think little of me?" Zhao Gao at once insinuated that Li Si had shared in the Shaqiu plot and gained nothing, hoping for a kingdom; that his eldest son Li You, governor of Sanchuan, was of the same district as the rebel Chen Sheng, so that the rebels passed freely while the city did not attack them; and that "the chancellor abroad is more powerful than Your Majesty". Huhai had the matter of Sanchuan investigated. Li Si, realising the trap, memorialised against Zhao Gao, citing the precedents of Zi Han in Song, Tian Chang in Qi and Han Qi in Han, and saying that Zhao Gao had "wicked and seditious ambitions and treacherous conduct" and that unless the emperor took thought he would rebel. Huhai answered that Zhao Gao was a former palace man, unchanged by safety or danger, promoted for loyalty and kept in office for good faith, and asked to whom else he should entrust himself; Li Si replied that Gao was a base man, ignorant of principle, insatiable in greed. Huhai privately showed the memorial to Zhao Gao, who said sadly that "the chancellor fears only me; when I am dead he will do what Tian Chang did", after which he grew more reckless. When Feng Quji, Li Si and Feng Jie asked that the Epang Palace works be halted and the frontier garrisons lightened, Huhai raged that they could not suppress the rebels and wished to undo the late emperor's work; Feng Quji and Feng Jie killed themselves "that ministers and generals be not shamed", and Li Si was imprisoned and subjected to the five punishments. Zhao Gao had him beaten daily until he confessed falsely, and though Li Si memorialised from prison that he had served as chancellor more than thirty years and listing his supposed "crimes", Zhao Gao had the memorial thrown away, saying that a prisoner might not memorialise, and sent more than ten retainers disguised as censors, ushers and palace attendants to interrogate him in turn, beating him whenever he told the truth, until when the emperor's own men came he dared not change his story and confessed. Huhai, reading the confession, said that but for Zhao Gao he would have been betrayed by the chancellor. In the seventh month of the second year of the Second Emperor Li Si was subjected to the five punishments and cut in two at the waist in the Xianyang market with his clan to the third degree, saying to his middle son as he went that he wished they could again lead the yellow dog out of the eastern gate of Shangcai to hunt hares.

Calling a Stag a Horse, the Wangyi Palace Coup and His Death

After Li Si's death the emperor made Zhao Gao inner chancellor, all matters great and small decided by him, and he came to think little of Huhai. On the jihai day of the eighth month of the third year, wishing to rebel but fearing the ministers would not follow, he first tested them: bringing a stag to the emperor he said "this is a horse"; the emperor laughed and said the chancellor was mistaken, it was a stag, and asked those about him, some of whom were silent, some said horse to flatter Zhao Gao, and some said stag, "whereupon Gao secretly had those who said stag punished under the law, and afterwards the ministers all feared him". Huhai, thinking himself bewitched, consulted the diviner, was told that his sacrifices and purifications had been unclear, and withdrew to the Shanglin park to fast. When Zhang Han surrendered to Chu with two hundred thousand men and the Duke of Pei took Wuguan and privately approached Zhao Gao, Zhao Gao, fearing the emperor's anger, pleaded illness and stayed from court. He conspired with his son-in-law Yan Le, governor of Xianyang, and his brother Zhao Cheng, saying that the emperor would not heed advice and now, with matters desperate, would lay the blame on his house, and that he wished to replace the emperor with the young master Ying, who was humane and frugal and praised by the people. Yan Le came with more than a thousand officers and men to the gate of the Wangyi Palace, bound and beheaded the captain of the guard, entered shooting, and the attendants, taken by surprise, fled or resisted and were killed, several dozen dying; Zhao Cheng and Yan Le entered and shot at the emperor's curtains. The emperor called for his attendants, who were too frightened to fight, only one eunuch remaining; asked why he had not told him earlier, the eunuch answered that he had kept silent and so survived, for had he spoken he would long since have been killed. Yan Le upbraided the emperor for arrogance and slaughter, saying the realm had turned against him and he must decide for himself; the emperor asked for a princedom, then for a marquisate of ten thousand households, then to be a commoner with his wife and children, and Yan Le answered that he was commanded by the chancellor to destroy the tyrant and dared not report his words, and the emperor killed himself. Zhao Gao assembled the ministers and princes and reported the killing, took the seal and wore it, intending to proclaim himself, but the officials silently refused; he therefore declared that Qin had been a kingdom, that the First Emperor had ruled the world and taken the imperial title, but that with the six states restored and Qin's land small the empty title would not do, and that the king should be king as before, and set up the young master Ying as King of Qin. Ying, who knew Zhao Gao's crimes, plotted with his two sons to plead illness and, when Gao came in person, to kill him; after five days of fasting he sent no one, and Gao came himself, saying that the ancestral temple was a grave matter and the king must come; thereupon Ying killed him in the fasting hall and put his clan to death to the third degree in Xianyang.

His Work on Writing and Later Legends

Zhao Gao also worked on writing. According to the bibliographical treatise of the History of the Han, "the six chapters of Yuanli were composed by Zhao Gao, master of the carriage office", with Li Si's seven chapters of Cangjie and the grand astrologer Humu Jing's seven of Boxue, all derived from the great seal script of the scribe Zhou with some simplification, the so-called small seal script; after the Han arose the village masters combined the three into the Cangjie Chapters of fifty-five chapters of sixty characters. The modern scholar Li Kaiyuan therefore calls Zhao Gao "a first-rate calligrapher and philologist and a specialist in the law", adding that he was tall and powerful, a superb horseman and driver and of unusual martial skill, "a rare man of both letters and arms in the Qin palace". In Feng Menglong's novel he appears as a young attendant reminding the king to draw his sword against Jing Ke, and is rewarded with a hundred yi of gold, and is later enfeoffed after the unification, both being fiction. Of his tomb two sites are claimed: one north of Zhaogao village in Xiaoshan township, Haixing county, Hebei, where in May 2006 a great mound of some six mu was found and judged by local experts a possible tomb of Zhao Gao; and a mound called "the old stronghold" in Zhaoluo village, Zhifang township, thirty li east of Ruzhou in Henan, which the local people call the tomb of Zhao Gao.

Major Activities

Sand Hill coup

Zhao Gao was a central planner of the Sand Hill coup. He withheld Qin Shi Huang's final edict, persuaded Huhai and Li Si to cooperate, altered the imperial orders so that Huhai became crown prince, and forged commands ordering Fusu to die and Meng Tian to be imprisoned. These actions radically changed the political trajectory of the Qin dynasty and became a major turning point in its decline.

Palace purges

Once in power, Zhao Gao encouraged the Second Emperor to apply harsh punishments and severe laws, and helped eliminate the Meng brothers, members of the imperial clan, Li Si, and other senior officials, while placing his own dependants in positions of power. Successive purges weakened the foundations of Qin rule and alienated the court and wider political elite.

"Calling a deer a horse"

After Zhao Gao had monopolized power, he is said to have presented a deer to the Second Emperor while calling it a horse, in order to test the obedience of the court. The emperor laughed and asked those around him what it was. Some remained silent, some flattered Zhao Gao by agreeing that it was a horse, and others stated plainly that it was a deer. Zhao Gao later punished those who had contradicted him. Thereafter the ministers no longer dared oppose him. The episode became a classic idiom for deliberately reversing truth and falsehood.

Wangyi Palace coup

In 207 BCE, after Liu Bang broke through Wuguan Pass, Zhao Gao feared punishment and launched the Wangyi Palace coup, forcing Huhai to die. He failed in an attempt to take the throne for himself, installed Ziying instead, and was ultimately assassinated on Ziying's orders.

Later Judgments and the "Revenge Theory"

Zhao Gao has always been held the author of Qin's ruin, and later judgments are largely negative. Li Si said of him that he had "wicked and seditious ambitions and treacherous conduct, like Zi Han in Song, with private wealth like the Tian in Qi, practising the perverse ways of Tian Chang and Zi Han and threatening the sovereign's authority, with the ambition of Han Qi under the king of Han". The tradition of Jia Yi's essay on Qin attributes its fall to his "deceiving the late emperor with disloyalty and bad faith and setting up the Second Emperor". Cao Pi's Discourses say that "Yi Li and Fei Ji slandered from lack of favour, Jiang Chong and Fen Feng worked sorcery from guilt; the deceit of Gao and Si was greed for power, the delusion of Gong and Chong was desire for rank, all taking their victims from among their own flesh to accomplish their treason". Fan Ye, on the calamity of eunuchs, wrote that "mutilated men do not think of living but of dying, and are mostly prone to evil, never returning to the right". Chen Shou held that "of old, with a strong Qin and a weak sovereign, Zhao Gao grasped the handle of power, monopolised the court and made favour and wrath his own, so that men were cowed and none dared speak; the disaster at Wangyi followed and the ancestral house was burned, a shame to this day and a warning for ever". Wang Fuzhi called him "a murderous impostor of a eunuch", furnished with "the art of cruelty and slaughter", so that "Zhao Gao's awe over the world and Huhai's own seclusion in the deep palace" followed; others have said that the First Emperor's road to disorder lay in employing Zhao Gao, and that the calamity of eunuchs is like poison and wild beasts, and that the baser sort among them "fawn with fair words, flatter their lords, steal the administration and poison the people". Some scholars argue on two sides: Li Kaiyuan praises his calligraphy, law and martial gifts, yet holds that the palace coups he contrived deepened Qin's internal disorder and that his slander and slaughter cost the state many civil and military servants and hastened its fall. As to the "revenge theory", Zhao Yi's Qing collection cites the Seeking the Obscure as saying that "Gao was a prince of Zhao, and grieving that his state had been destroyed by Qin swore revenge, castrating himself to enter the palace until he killed the Qin descendants and ended their realm", and later verse has celebrated him as the avenger of a hundred thousand dead Qin victims and a prince of the house of Zhao; but the passage is not in the extant Seeking the Obscure and conflicts with it, so the theory lacks foundation. Other scholars suggest his forebears may have been a branch of the Zhao royal house held hostage in Qin, in a position like that of a Qin prince; and still others reject both the Qin and the Zhao royal descent, holding that even if his "Zhao" came from one branch, he had lost all connection with the Qin house, the Zhao royal theory being even less credible, and by the term "hidden palace" inferring a family of official slaves.

The Corruption of Qin Law and Its Fall

What Zhao Gao did in power ran counter to the spirit of Qin institutions. Qin had been founded on the principle that "all matters are decided by law", yet Zhao Gao taught the Second Emperor to "make the law severe and the punishments cruel, having the guilty punished with their kin and even their clans", so that the law became an instrument for destroying opponents; and by insisting that "the Son of Heaven is called zhen, for he should not be heard" he had the emperor withdraw into the palace, hollowing out the court's practice of deciding affairs in the presence of the ministers. Li Si, memorialising from prison in self-justification, recalled the Qin policy of "lightening punishments and reducing taxes to win the people's hearts, so that all the people bore the sovereign in mind and would not forget him even in death", whereas under the Second Emperor "those who taxed the people heavily were called able officials and those who killed many were called loyal ministers", the opposite of the founding principle. In trying Li Si Zhao Gao sent more than ten retainers disguised as censors, ushers and palace attendants to interrogate him in turn, turning judicial procedure into a means of entrapment; and afterwards he "secretly had those who said stag punished under the law", removing any who displeased him under legal pretext. Law used for private ends and authority founded on terror destroyed the Qin legal tradition within a very short time.

The Immediate Author of Qin's Fall

The Records of the Grand Historian have Li Si foresee the fall of Qin at his execution: "the rebels now hold half the realm, yet his mind is not yet awake, and with Zhao Gao at his side I shall surely see the bandits reach Xianyang and the deer wander in the court." Qin fell soon after, exactly as he said. Zhao Gao first killed Fusu, Meng Tian and Meng Yi, then twelve princes, ten princesses and many ministers, and then Li Si, so that within a few years Qin's supporting civil and military servants were nearly all gone; Zhang Han's surrender to Chu with two hundred thousand men out of fear of the court was likewise bound up with the collapse of discipline at court. With the Second Emperor reopening the Epang Palace, conscripting fifty thousand guards for Xianyang and letting none within three hundred li eat the grain, popular resentment deepened. Later discussions of Qin's fall therefore usually name Zhao Gao with the Second Emperor as the immediate cause of a dynasty that ended in its second generation.

The Qin Court after His Death

After Ying killed Zhao Gao, "the Gao family was put to death to the third degree and paraded through Xianyang", and Ying took the throne as King of Qin. He had already observed that Qin had been a kingdom, that the First Emperor had ruled the world and taken the imperial title, but that with the six states restored and Qin's land small an empty title would not do, and so he laid aside the imperial style to contract and defend. Yet Qin's foundations had been consumed by Zhao Gao's years of purges, and after only forty-six days the Duke of Pei reached Bashang, where Ying, in a plain carriage and white horses, a cord about his neck and the imperial seals and tallies boxed, surrendered by the side of the Zhi road, and the Qin dynasty ended. Zhao Gao's death and the fall of Qin came almost together, and the consequences of his monopoly and misrule continued to show themselves for some time after.

Personal Relations

• Several brothers of Zhao Gao, names unknown, who were likewise born in the yinguan.
• Zhao Gao's mother, who was punished for a crime and placed in the yinguan.
• Huhai: Zhao Gao served as Huhai's instructor in legal judgment and later conspired with him in the succession coup.
• Li Si: co-conspirator in the Sand Hill coup, later framed and killed by Zhao Gao.
• Qin Shi Huang: recognized Zhao Gao's ability and appointed him Director of the Imperial Carriages, with additional responsibility for the imperial seals.
• The Second Emperor Huhai: the ruler installed with Zhao Gao's help and later forced to die by him.
• King Ziying of Qin: installed by Zhao Gao but soon arranged Zhao Gao's assassination.
• Fusu: Zhao Gao forged the order commanding him to die.
• Meng Tian: Zhao Gao framed him; he was imprisoned and later forced to commit suicide.
• Meng Yi: Zhao Gao slandered him, leading to imprisonment and execution.
• Li Si: Zhao Gao framed him for treason, leading to his execution by waist-cutting at Xianyang.

Historical Assessment

Qin / contemporary

• Ziying said that Zhao Gao "assisted the First Emperor in bringing All Under Heaven under control with the written law," but that he later "acted contrary to right and carried wrongdoing to the extreme," ultimately bringing death and extermination upon himself and his kin, according to a speech attributed to Ziying in the Records of the Grand Historian, "Basic Annals of Qin Shi Huang."
• Qin officials were described as being so afraid of Zhao Gao that "none did not fear him" and they dared not speak openly, according to the "Biography of Li Si" in the Records of the Grand Historian.

Han period

• Sima Qian described Zhao Gao as coming from a family that had "for generations been lowly" but as being "strong and versed in legal procedure." He attributed to Zhao Gao the fraudulent enthronement of Huhai and the destruction of members of the imperial house, presenting his actions as a major factor in the fall of Qin in the Records of the Grand Historian.
• Jia Yi criticized Zhao Gao for deceiving the First Emperor and establishing himself in the Second Emperor's reign through disloyalty and bad faith; in the Discourse on the Faults of Qin, Zhao Gao's perverse conduct is presented as accelerating the dynasty's collapse.

Tang and Song periods

• Sima Guang wrote that Zhao Gao taught the Second Emperor to use harsh punishments and severe laws and to kill members of the imperial house and senior officials, treating Zhao Gao's treachery as an important cause of the Qin collapse in the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance.
• Liu Zongyuan criticized Zhao Gao as a eunuch who threw Qin government into disorder, describing the resulting harm in extremely severe terms in discussions associated with his "Discourse on Feudalism."

Modern period

• Lü Simian regarded Zhao Gao's disorder as one of the greatest causes of the Qin collapse and argued that his monopolization of power caused the dynasty to destroy its own defenses in History of the Qin and Han.
• Qian Mu wrote that Zhao Gao, despite being a punished man, exercised the power to enthrone and depose rulers; by disrupting the established legal and institutional order, he distorted the original Qin system, in Outline of National History.