As China's first great unified dynasty, the Qin Dynasty can be said to have been born great and died in a nest. Yu Lie, the sixth emperor of Fen, qin shi huang spent 10 years to unify China. However, the Qin Dynasty lasted only 15 years, and the world fell apart and died, and the Ying clan was destroyed and the clan was destroyed. So, why did the Qin Dynasty die? Is it because of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's uprising? Is it because Liu Bang Xiangyu destroyed Qin in two ways? And so on.
In 2005, scholars accidentally found a large number of Qin Jian in an ancient well in Liye Town, Longshan County, Hunan Province's Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. After rescue excavations, a total of more than 36,000 bamboo tablets were found. The semi-wet vacuum environment is the easiest to preserve cultural relics, so these bamboo janes are in very good condition.
After identification, these Qin Jian are all archives and official documents of Qianling County, Qindongting County, including ancestral ancestral agricultural Jane, place name mileage Jane, household registration Jane, etc. Among them, it also includes a document called "Qianling Officials's Chronicle", which details the number of fixed personnel, the number of missing personnel, the number of envoys of officials, and the number of "seeing officials" in Qianling County at a certain period.
Through this document, scholars realized that the Qin Dynasty seemed to have a serious problem, that is, the extreme shortage of civil servants. According to Zhu Jian, the actual number of personnel in Qianling County at this time was 101, while the number of people "seen in the county court" was 51. The documents show that the insufficient number of officials is Lingshi, Shifu, The Headmaster, The Official, and the Chief Official. There are 28 people in the order, no vacancies, and 10 envoys. The staff is 10, the number of vacancies is 2, and the number of envoys is 3. The principal is 6 people, and 4 people are missing. There were 53 officials, 7 were missing, and 22 were envoys. There are 3 long officers and 2 people are missing. It can be seen that except for Ling Shi, the number of other types of officials in the county is less than half of the fixed number.
As we all know, the Qin law is extremely strict, and the work of officials is not only heavy but also harsh. From catching thieves to checking the breeding of cattle, officials must be responsible at all times. If the tasks assigned by the government are not completed, the officials will face fines, dismissals, and even punishments such as exile and beheading.
So, was the "lack of officials" in the Qin Dynasty a common phenomenon throughout the country? In my opinion, this is entirely possible. We can see this from the Zizhi Tongjian.
First of all, we can find that all the Qin criminals hunted down by the imperial court were never caught by local officials. Even local officials will join these anti-government elements.
Taking Zhang Liang as an example, he assassinated Qin Shi Huang in Bolangsha, but he easily escaped, and he could not be caught after many years of hunting. After that, he hid in Chen Di, colluded with anti-Qin elements in various countries, and even exonerated Xiang Bo, a murderer in the Chu state.
Take Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu as examples. Xiang Liang had killed people and committed capital crimes, and as a result, he fled to Huiji like no one else. When it came to the meeting, Xiang Liang went around entertaining guests under the eyes of the county sheriff and recruiting anti-government forces. The Sheriff did not react in any way.
Another example is Liu Bang, who escorted criminals from Pei County to Lishan Mountain in the last year of Qin Shi Huang to build the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. As a result, halfway through, the prisoners escaped more than half of the way. In desperation, Liu Bang had no choice but to fall into the grass in the Mangzhong Mountain, and made a living by robbing his family and robbing the house. However, Peixian County, which was close at hand, did not carry out any crusades and suppression against Liu Bang.
At the same time, let's look at the experience of Qin Shi Huang. He experienced many assassinations and curses in his life, but not once did he catch the real culprit. One night, under the protection of four samurai, he went out on a patrol, only to encounter robbers in the palace and was almost killed. However, the murderers were not caught; during a trip, Qin Shi Huang found a meteorite and wrote "The First Emperor died and divided the land". Although Qin Shi Huang traced the perpetrator everywhere, he was never able to find it.
From here, we can see that the Qin Law is indeed harsh and even just. But it just can't be implemented. Laws are empty but cannot be effectively enforced. In my opinion, this is likely to be related to the extreme shortage of clerks in the Qin Dynasty.
Take Chen Sheng Wuguang, who lit the flames of the late Qin Dynasty, as an example. At that time, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang and their party had 900 people, but there were only 2 officers with swords in charge of escorting them, and there were not enough manpower and deterrence, which was basically equivalent to decoration. If Chen Sheng and Wu Guang wanted to make trouble, they could easily subdue the 2 people and take away their weapons.
Take Liu Bang as an example. As a grassroots civil servant of the Qin Dynasty, he had to escort more than a hundred prisoners to Lishan alone, and he could not prevent the prisoners from fleeing. And if the prisoners fled too much, Liu Bang himself would be questioned. Therefore, Liu Bang did not do two things endlessly, and simply reversed.
In short, in my opinion. The phenomenon of lack of officials may have been widespread throughout the Qin Dynasty. During the Qin Dynasty, the Qin law was effective. This is because the territory of the Qin State is not large, and the Qin Law has been implemented for more than a hundred years, and enough officials have been trained to fully meet the needs of the rule of law.
After the Qin state unified the world, it did not hesitate to roll out the rule of law throughout the country, and it would face a serious problem of lack of officials. Because the unification of the Qin Dynasty was too fast, it was simply too late to recruit and train enough officials.
Because the work cannot be done and the manpower is insufficient, there will be two extreme situations. On the one hand, it is inaction, complete laziness, and even turning a blind eye to the local anti-Qin elements and resigning itself to it; on the other hand, it is
A thorough one-size-fits-all approach
, the Extreme Tyranny of the Qin Law, in fact, this is also another form of laziness.
The latter kind of tyranny was extremely harmful to the rule of the Qin Dynasty. During the Qin II period, there was a terrible scene in which "those who are deep in taxation are ming officials, those who kill people are loyal subjects, those who are punished are half of the Tao, and the dead are accumulated in the city, and the Qin people are terrified and confused." That is, the taxes are higher and higher, and the number of people killed is also increasing. The streets are crowded with lawbreakers. At the Lishan construction site, 720,000 criminals were gathered. You know, at that time, the national population was only 20 million.
Therefore, in the author's opinion, the most important reason for the death of Qin Dynasty II is that there is a group of officials who do not deserve the real name. Instead of Liu Bang, Xiang Yu, Chen Sheng, Wu Guang.
Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, and Liu Bang Xiangyu were just derivatives of the lack of officials. The rule of law in the Qin State can exist not because of tyranny, but because of justice. However, the lack of officials has wiped out the positive side of Qin Fa, which not only cannot suppress the anti-rioters, but also makes it difficult to treat the people kindly. In the end, the old nobles and the common people merged, which in turn subverted the Great Qin Empire.
In the Zizhi Tongjian, Sima Guang quoted Jia Yi's "Theory of Passing the Qin",
It is believed that the death of qin dynasty II is "a different trend of attack and defense without benevolence and righteousness". I am very impressed with this. Before the reunification of the Qin State, it was completely fine to rule the country by law, and this "legalist policy" also created the strength of the Qin State. After the unification of the Qin state, the rule of law became unsatisfactory. Because the rule of law was too advanced, it could not adapt to the environment of "transportation basically relying on walking, communication basically relying on roaring" at that time. Therefore, it is the best choice to apply the way of benevolence and righteousness, to rule the country with virtue, and to supplement it with the hegemony of the Dharma. Therefore, the Han Dynasty adopted a policy of paralleling the county and the state and deposing the Hundred Schools of Confucianism, using the royal way to mix hegemony, and finally found a rule suitable for the unified empire.