A series of drastic reforms put the Qin State on the road to dominating the world, and Qin Xiaogong did not lose his trust. According to the original "Recruitment Order" agreed that "the guests and ministers have the ability to make strange plans to strengthen Qin, I will respect the officials, and share the land with them", the Shangluo area was given to Gongsun Martingale as a fief, so far, the name of Gongsun Martingale has also become "Shang Marting" in the thousand-year history of China. And his governing philosophy and ideological system have also become a "Book of Shang Jun" that is enough for successive kings to think about and read repeatedly.

In the "Treatise on the Passage of Qin" by Jia Yi, a political commentator, writer, and prince of Changsha in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, there is only less than a description of this huge reform that will be remembered in the annals of history: "When it was the time, the Shang monarch Zuozhi, the internal law, the cultivation and weaving, the repair and defense of the war tools, and the external balance and fight the princes." So the Qin people surrendered and took beyond the West River. ”

However, behind the few words of understatement, what a breathtaking bloody storm is hidden, and under the plain and straightforward crosses, how magnificent waves are buried. Perhaps, only the majestic Hangu Pass and the silent green mountains can be seen clearly. The thick sand of time permeates the long river of time, making the eyes of the chasers who try to look at the rainbow blind, and no matter how much blood has flowed at that time, when posterity opens the dusty annals of history, only a little sporadic and dry red stains can be faintly seen.

The sensitivity of the Chinese to the land has not declined much since ancient times, and no matter how much the sages attached importance to human nature, they would always put "under the whole world, it is not the king's land" before "the shore of the land, it is not the king's courtier". Maybe it's really just "giving up and taking beyond the West River", however, the handover and transfer of power in this land must be soaked in blood and fire and burned all over the wolf smoke.

Finally, the Qin Empire, which had never been able to truly qualify for the world, completed nirvana in this painful change. As Tan Sitong said in later generations:

"The law changes in all countries are made from bloodshed, and today China has not heard of anyone who shed blood because of the law changes, and the reason why this country is not prosperous. Yes, please start with the same heirs. ”

In China, it is not that no one has shed blood for the change of the law, and under the iron fist of Qin Xiaogong and Shang Ying, I don't know how many people have fallen in pools of blood. And it is this dripping blood that has become the fuel of Nirvana, so that this flame is enough to burn everything. Subsequently, several generations of Qin Jun worked hard, because they understood that if they could not use enough strength to control this chariot that had begun to run wildly, then they would definitely be crushed to pieces by this ruthless wheel.

It wasn't until the Qin State became the first feudal dynasty that a new era began. However, the Qin Dynasty, which has always followed the decrees of the Shang monarch, appeared a faint king, and then, when Xiang Yu lit the fire that did not go out for several months, the magnificent Afang Palace became a martyr of the system. Among them, is it just because Zhao Gao, Li Si and others are playing favoritism, and the second Hu Hai is mediocre and incompetent?

It is true that the fall of the Qin Dynasty is inseparable from the sinners of these countries, but there are also countless dynasties with faint kings in Chinese history, and only the Qin Dynasty is so short-lived, which has its own unique reasons. In the process of the fall of the Qin Dynasty, many factors played a decisive role. During the Warring States Period, the vassal states fought for hundreds of years, fought each other, the people were boiling, and the Qin Dynasty, which finally seized power, was also a tyrannical expropriation, and the public was angry and difficult to commit, and the national contradictions covered various fields such as economy, administration, ideology, etc., under the joint force of these factors, a palace coup d'état became the first to ignite the riot and sweep the entire dynasty.

The rudiments of militarism derived from ultra-nationalism doomed this chariot to not be able to easily stop its advance. Because the draconian laws themselves limit the development of the productive forces and the progress of production technology. Managing and regulating a vassal state and controlling and balancing the whole world is obviously by no means the same concept. When the war subsided, after militarism lacked an outlet for foreign expansion, its boring and backward way of life inevitably collided fiercely with the increasingly progressive level of social thought. And when there is a foreign enemy, it is completely possible to turn this huge pressure into a powerful force that continues to expand. And Qin Shi Huang did exactly that.

As for the first emperor, the remnants of Fen VI, Zhen Chang Zhi and Yu Yu, swallowed two weeks and died the princes, performed the supreme and controlled Liuhe, and whipped the world with the beating and fluttering, and vibrated the four seas. Take the land of Baiyue in the south, thinking that Guilin and Xiangjun are the counties; The king of Baiyue, bowed his head and tied his neck, and entrusted his subordinates. It was to make Meng Tian build the Great Wall in the north and guard the fence, but the Huns were more than 700 miles; The Hu people did not dare to go south and herd horses, and the soldiers did not dare to bend their bows and complain.

- "On the Passage of Qin"

The princes of the world had already been wiped out under the iron hooves of the tiger wolf Qin army, and the violence that was so excessive that there was nowhere to vent was soon poured away by the Qin Dynasty towards the Xiongnu in the north and the minority areas in the south. Subsequently, the first fatal problem of the Qin Dynasty arose: the spoils of these two wars were not enough to satisfy this wolf-like Qin army, and the barren grassland desert and the poisonous southern jungle were obviously not good fiefdoms.

The armies and people who did not get the expected reward were a little restless, because the overall wealth of the country was only so much, and it was not enough for everyone to get a satisfactory reward. And this time, what everyone got by fighting desperately is no longer the rich and fertile land of China, and the wealth obtained in this land cannot meet everyone's expectations at all. On the contrary, the sergeants thought that they were no different from the Qin army during the period of opening up the territory and sweeping the Six Kingdoms, they also threw their lives on the gambling table, and they also won a tragic victory, but when it came to the cup, they found that the money on the table was much less.

The Qin Dynasty's decree itself advocated the prohibition of orders and the use of life by the whole people, and its foundation was based on clear rewards and punishments. Now that the bounty is not enough, there will be more and more dissatisfied people. At this time, the biggest decision-making mistake of the Qin state appeared: the state did not abide by the previous rules, but did not want to adjust the old rules because they could not adapt to the new situation, but further increased the demand and punishment of the old rules to suppress and control the emotions of the army and the people at the bottom.

The construction of the Afang Palace was not just Qin Shi Huang's arrogance and indulgence in pleasure, but after he found that he could no longer vent the excess energy of this huge violent group, he did not choose to use this surging power to improve production technology and productivity, and then to calm the class contradictions by creating more social wealth, but instead used this excess power for further national projects. This is enough to make the lower classes, who were already not rewarded for their expectations, even more angry.

Just like in the United States during World War II, Roosevelt chose to establish a foreign enemy and began to carry out large-scale state-level engineering construction before the social contradictions in the United States were about to erupt violently. Then, waiting for this foreign enemy to be destroyed by his own army, and the pressure of the people with nowhere to release became the motivation to continue building the country.

Qin Shi Huang's actions were clearly a step behind Roosevelt: the Qin dynasty failed to establish a foreign enemy that the people believed would gain enough to gain from defeat, or that they would perish if defeated. On the contrary, in terms of the amount of labor in the construction of the national project, it is heavy enough.

The Great Wall was not the most popular project of the Qin dynasty to defend against the invasion of the northern minorities, but the construction of the Afang Palace and the imperial mausoleum for the sake of the king was the heavy pressure that brought the entire state system to collapse. Although the construction of the Great Wall has also caused a backlash from some people, after all, for most people, it is still worth it to ensure the safety of living space. The onerous work to meet the needs of the emperor was completely out of touch with the interests of the lower class groups, which had the greatest power in society.

As a result, although the construction of the Great Wall is difficult, it is still ongoing, and the construction of the Afang Palace and the Imperial Mausoleum has made the people's grievances boiling.

At this time, the second serious decision-making mistake of the Qin Dynasty appeared:

Abolish the way of the first king, burn the words of a hundred schools, and fool the head; Famous city, kill heroes; Collect the soldiers of the world, gather the Xianyang, sell the blade, cast the twelve golden people, and weaken the people of the world.

- "On the Passage of Qin"

Controlling the mind so that the entire country has no other ideological system and interest classes except for the cultivators who are responsible for logistics and the army that kills the enemy is one of the important means by which the Qin state can transform into the Qin dynasty. However, a war horse can win the world, but a war horse can never rule the world. A high-pressure administrative and judicial system, when the scope of management is relatively narrow, can indeed play a role in controlling the mind and stabilizing the situation, however, only the Qin State adopted such an ideological system, while the six countries that were exterminated by conquest did not. At the level of ideology and ideology, the power of swords, guns and killings is obviously somewhat inadequate.

When the people of the Qin State mingled with the people of the Six Kingdoms back then, it was certainly not enough to completely cut off the ideological exchanges by simply burning books and severely punishing the law, and of course, it was even more powerless to prevent this kind of collision based on ideology. When the ideological system of the Six Kingdoms and the Hundred Schools of Thought began to impact the original thinking mode of the Qin State, the Qin Dynasty chose to deal with it by means of blockage and elimination, rather than using diversion and assimilation.

Moreover, the Qin Dynasty's decision to confiscate the world's weapons and cast them into gold was completely a loss project that cost the people and money. The effect of controlling civilian force and intimidating the people's will at the beginning of its policy decision has not been able to achieve the desired effect at all after it has been truly implemented. Because the decision-makers of the Qin Dynasty ignored one of the most important factors, and the most important factor that should be considered in this decision: the force that can shake the foundation of the dynasty does not come from the weapons themselves, such as swords, guns, halberds, and good bows and crossbows, but from the people who use them.

In an era of backward military science, a warrior armed with a sharp weapon and a certain level of military training could defeat at least three or five civilians without any military equipment and foundation. With the integration of unified and efficient combat sequences, it will also have more lethality and control. However, even if all the people of Qin were soldiers, their total population would never be equal to three to one-fifth of the country's population, and besides, the loyal and elite troops would be even fewer under this huge base.

At a time when it is impossible to regulate the power of the entire country through guidance and dissolution, it is even more difficult to rely on force alone, and the descendants of the Qin Dynasty are constantly depleted in the campaign to unify the six countries, and with the defeat of the remnants of the army of the six countries by absorbing and reorganizing them, they can barely continue to maintain an armed force of sufficient size. However, this mixed force itself is destined to have a certain degree of blending, collision and mutual influence between the troops of the former Qin State and the subordinate departments of the Six Kingdoms.

In the early days of militaristic expansionist policies, its model of encouraging military merit was also able to bridge the rift between mixed troops. And when the "rewards" in the clear distinction between rewards and punishments cannot be honored, this kind of conflict originating from different ideological systems will expand indefinitely, one after another, and greatly weaken or even disintegrate the combat effectiveness of the army. After all, the soldiers of the Six Kingdoms are not killing machines that only know how to wield butcher knives, even if their dissatisfaction cannot completely lead to mutiny and splitting, it is enough to make the fighting will of the local army of the Qin State be violently impacted from the level of thinking, and after the accumulation of this impact force reaches a certain level, the ideological system of all the people are soldiers and the whole country is at war will be smashed by the hammer of this invisible civilization and thinking.

And when the ideology that sustains the whole country collapses completely, people no longer trust those in power, and with it, all classes will begin to doubt the legitimacy of the entire law itself, and the legitimacy of exploitation and enslavement by the interests of the ruling class. People began to think about what they meant to exist other than being killing machines or farming tools. After all, the current decree constantly objectifies and instrumentalizes the people, and this is only enough to cover the original Qin state, and the people who believed and accepted the decree in the earliest days are not enough to resist the impact of the advanced ideological system from the East. When different classes began to find their own existence values different from those demarcated by the government, the entire social system of the Qin Dynasty had begun to collapse and destroy completely irreversibly, even if Hu Hai and others thwarted Chen Sheng, Wu Guang and the subsequent uprisings of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, they could not stop this double impact from the material and ideological levels.

Therefore, it is not that the decree itself has produced enough influence to determine the rise and fall of the dynasty, but that the entire Qin Dynasty has not been able to update and change the decree in the direction that suits the situation in the face of the changing situation, but has further expanded and strengthened the defects and weaknesses of the decree itself. The so-called need for heavy canons in troubled times does not mean that there is no need for the death penalty in prosperous times, and if the entire judicial administration system cannot follow the needs of the times and the situation to keep changing, then the destruction of the entire dynasty is inevitable.