The so-called "merit is greater than that of the Qin Emperor and Han Wu", which means that in terms of cultural and martial arts, the kings of the past dynasties did not have the right of Qin Shi Huang.

Among the literati and politicians of the past generations, there was no shortage of people who praised Qin Shi Huang. For example, Sang Hongyang, a famous minister of the Western Han Dynasty, affirmed in his treatise that Qin Shi Huang's merit in unifying China was that "merit is like a hill and a mountain, and his name will be passed on to future generations."

Tang Taizong Li Shimin said: "In modern times, those who expand the frontier are only the Qin Emperor and the Han Wu. 」

Li Bai, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote in the poem "Ancient Style": "The king of Qin swept the Liuhe, and looked at He Xiongzai! Clearly judged from the sky, roughly driving the group of talents. Collect troops and cast gold, and Hangu is open to the east. Minggong will be Jiling, looking at Langya Terrace. 」

Tang Dynasty thinker Liu Zongyuan pointed out in his famous work "On Feudalism" that Qin Shi Huang's abolition of the feudal system and the establishment of the county system conformed to the objective and inevitable trend of historical development. 」

In 1913, Zhang Taiyan, a thinker in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, wrote a book on the Qin Dynasty that praised Qin Shi Huang, saying, "Although the four and three emperors and the six and five emperors were not enough, they were not as good as Bilong. 」

Liu Yimou, a pioneer of modern Chinese historiography, commented in A History of Chinese Culture: "The legal system of the First Emperor's era was indeed a great spirit, and the rule of China for thousands of miles with a single government was the evolution of the form of the solid state, or the evolution of the ideology of the time. "The year of Gai Yingzheng's reign as the emperor is the end of the first two thousand years, and it is also the starting point of the next two thousand years, which can not be said to be a major key to history. However, although Qin had the merit of unifying its operations, it failed to implement its policy of unifying its planning. All the politics of Qin are to be carried out by the Han Dynasty. The Qin people started it, and the Han people did it. 」。

Chairman Mao's evaluation of Qin Shi Huang was also very high. He said, "Qin Shi Huang was an expert on the past and the present. "Confucius and Mencius are idealists, Xunzi is materialism, and they are the 'leftists' of Confucianism. Confucius represents slave owners and aristocrats. Xunzi represents the landlord class. 」

He also said, "In Chinese history, it was Qin Shi Huang who really did something, and Confucius only spoke empty words. "We should be fair. Qin Shi Huang was much greater than Confucius, but he was scolded for thousands of years. "Qin Shi Huang was the first person to unify China. Not only did it unify China politically. Moreover, it unified the Chinese script and various Chinese systems. For example, weights and measures, some systems have been used ever since. China's former feudal monarchs have not surpassed him, but they have been scolded by some people for thousands of years

I am in favor of Qin Shi Huang and not in favor of Confucius. Because Qin Shi Huang was the first to unify China and unify the written language. Build wide roads. Don't engage in a country within a country. With the centralized system, the central government sends people to various localities to change them every few years. There is no need for a hereditary system. 」

Historian Guo Moruo presented Chairman Mao's "Ten Batches of Books", and Chairman Mao said after reading it: "Persuade the monarch to scold Qin Shi Huang less, and burn books to discuss Confucianism. The soul of the ancestral dragon is still dead, and the scientific name of Confucius is Gao Shizhen. Hundreds of generations have practiced Qin politics and law, and "Ten Batches" is not a good article. Familiar with the Tang Dynasty's "Feudalism", Mo Congzi Hou returned to King Wen. The politicians of the past generations were accomplished, and those who were in the early stage of feudal society were all legalists.

These people advocate the rule of law, and if they violate the law, they will be killed, and they advocate the importance of the present and the past. Confucianism is full of benevolence, righteousness and morality, and a belly of male thieves and female prostitutes, all of which advocate the importance of the past and the present. 」

On some occasions, Chairman Mao even said that he himself was "Marx plus Qin Shi Huang". But Chairman Mao was not entirely sure of Qin Shi Huang, and he also said: "Qin Shi Huang, as a historical figure, should be divided into two. Qin Shi Huang's progressive role in the process of historical development should be affirmed, but after the unification of the six countries, he lost the enterprising aspect, was complacent, indulged in pleasure, begged for immortals, repaired the palace, brutally oppressed the people, wandered around, spent time, bored Chen Sheng, Wu Guang rose up, and opposed the tyranny of Qin, including against Qin Shi Huang, which is also completely just. 」

Zhong Che said in his evaluation of the emperors of the past dynasties: In the history of the world, among the emperors who created huge empires, there is no one who ranks as Qin Shi Huang, because whether it is Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, Alexander the Great of the ancient Macedonian Empire, or Julius Caesar of the ancient Roman Empire, their empires have long ceased to exist, and their influence on the world is far from being comparable with Qin Shi Huang. In fact, even during their reigns, their reorganization of the unity of the empire was far less than that of Qin Shi Huang.

In the face of criticism of Qin Shi Huang's tyranny, some historians have pointed out that it is necessary to distinguish between the "violence" of Qin Shi Huang's personal nature and the "violence" of the times, society, and system.

Because of the "tyranny" promoted by Qin Shi Huang, many of them had to use violence to complete drastic and huge social changes, and this kind of "violence" was in essence the "violence" of the times, society, and system that arose in the context of great transformation and great change, and had little to do with Qin Shi Huang personally.

There is no historical objection to the tyrannical and harsh Qin government, and the misery of the common people's life of slavery to the tyrannical Qin, especially in the time of the First Emperor, and the positive evaluation of the Qin Dynasty or Qin Shi Huang mainly focuses on the meaning of "unification" and "centralization" for later generations. "Unification" and "centralization" are important for maintaining stability, but they make it very difficult to change society by preventing the process of self-improvement, often at the end of which the old ruling group is eliminated by violent means to create a new one.

However, due to the deep-rooted concepts of "unity" and "centralization", the new ruling clique will soon repeat the mistakes of the old clique. As a result, there was an obvious cycle of prosperity and decline in Chinese civilization. In making a positive assessment of Qin Shi Huang, we cannot ignore the shortcomings of the system he designed.

Qin Shi Huang was an autocratic and dictatorial, tyrannical monarch, harsh punishment and extravagant life, and became a symbol of tyrant in Chinese culture.

The Qin Dynasty died in just 15 years after unifying the world, and it also ushered in more than 2,000 years of autocratic rule in China, which had a far-reaching impact. In the pre-Qin period, the cultural and ideological explosion of a hundred schools of thought was extinguished after the Qin Dynasty.

The Qin Dynasty used highly organized government agencies to manage the people and resources, and used harsh punishments to ensure the enforcement of government decrees (failure to reach the destination on time and all of them were executed, which was the direct cause of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's rebellion).

Qin Shi Huang promoted the Legalist doctrine of "rule of law", while successive Chinese rulers from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty onwards promoted Confucianism with benevolence and moderation as the core. Moreover, Qin Shi Huang's extreme measures of burning books and pit Confucianism offended the people of the world (i.e., the intellectual class). Therefore, Qin Shi Huang often appears as a negative example in various essays and historical books.

Qin Shi Huang's construction projects, including the Great Wall of Qin, Qin Chi Road, Lingqu, Afang Palace and Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, were extremely large-scale, and the whole country was mobilized to build them, and many documents have condemned many deaths and injuries during the construction of the project.

Judging from the archaeological discoveries of the ruins of Afang Palace and the Mausoleum of the Qin Emperor, a large amount of labor and materials were occupied to satisfy the personal vanity of Qin Shi Huang.

On the other hand, some projects have also enabled the further development of transportation in various places, which will contribute to transportation, economy and trade, national security and the integration of various ethnic groups in the future. Therefore, whether these projects are great or too large has always been a point of contention among historians.

For the Great Wall, some people pointed out that the Great Wall built at that time was not the Great Wall seen today (the Great Wall was built by the Ming Dynasty today), and the main purpose of the Great Wall of Qin was to mark the boundary line with the Xiongnu defense base, and the first emperor still sent Meng Tian to send 300,000 troops to attack the Xiongnu.

Not long after Meng Tian's death, the Xiongnu easily crossed the Great Wall of Qin, not only recovering the original lost territory, but also occupying Yan and Dai counties. It can be seen that whether the Great Wall itself was meaningful in later wars against nomads is still a topic of debate, but at least in the time of Qin Shi Huang, its role was minimal except for wasting national power.

In the process of destroying the Six Kingdoms, Qin Shi Huang filled the palace maids of the destroyed countries into his own palace ("Historical Records" Qin Shi Huang Benji VI: "Qin every time he broke the princes, he wrote and put his palace room, and made Xianyang in the north of Hanshang, south of Wei, from the east of Yongmen to Ling, Wei, and the palace house belonged to the Zhou Pavilion. The bells and drums of the princes and beauties are obtained to fill it. 」）

After the death of Qin Shi Huang, Qin II ordered all the palace maids who had no children to be buried, and after Qin Shi Huang was buried, he closed the tomb door and buried the craftsmen ("Historical Records" Qin Shi Huang Benji VI: "The second said: 'The first emperor and the harem are not childless, and it is not appropriate to go out. All of them are ordered to die, and the dead are many. The burial has been down, or the craftsman is the machine, Zang knows it, and Zang is heavy. After the big event is completed, it has been envied, envy in the middle, envy the door outside, close the craftsman Zang, and there is no return. 」）

From the above two paragraphs, it can be imagined that the palace maids and craftsmen who were martyred by Qin Shi Huang were really "countless". It was Qin II who carried out, but did you know that it was not Qin Shi Huang's meaning?

In addition, at present, archaeological discoveries have found that there are a large number of burial pits, burial pits, and slave burial pits in the tombs of the Qin Emperor. From the burial pit, a pit of rare birds and animals and a pit of copper chariots and horses were excavated, which were painted and decorated with a large amount of gold and silver, and the work was quite gorgeous and exquisite. The martyrs in the burial tombs, both men and women, were killed and buried together. From the burial pit is densely arranged, and the pit is buried with kneeling terracotta figurines and horse bones, which are about the stables of the court and the servants who kept horses. The tyranny of Qin Zheng can be seen.

There is no shortage of literati who have criticized Qin Shi Huang in the past, such as:

Jia Yi, a thinker of the Western Han Dynasty, pointed out in "On the Passage of Qin": "One husband is difficult and seven temples are lost, and the body is dead, and he is the laugher of the world, why not? From the point of view, the unity of safety and danger is far from the same. 」

Sima Qian, a historian of the Western Han Dynasty, wrote in the "Historical Records of Qin Shi Huang Benji": "The king of Qin harbored a heart of greed, practiced the wisdom of self-exertion, did not believe in meritorious heroes, did not favor the people, abolished the royal way, established private rights, banned documents and tortured laws, first deceit and then benevolence, and took tyranny as the beginning of the world. The husband and wife are both highly deceitful, and the stable one is noble and obedient, and this statement is different from the guard. 」

The Tang Dynasty writer Du Mu commented in "A Fang Gong Fu": "The heart of one person is the heart of tens of thousands of people. Qin loves luxury, and people also miss his home. However, how to take all the coins, use them like mud and sand in the world, dare not speak and dare to be angry. The heart of a single husband is becoming more and more arrogant

Those who destroy the six countries are not Qin, and those who are Qin are not Qin, and those who are Qin are not the world. If the people of the six countries love each of the six countries, it will be enough to reject Qin; if Qin regains his love for the people of the six countries, he will be the king of the third generation for all eternity, and whoever will be wiped out will be destroyed? The Qin people will not have time to mourn for themselves, and the descendants will mourn for them; and the descendants will mourn for them without learning from them, and the descendants will also mourn for the descendants. (To be continued......)