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Yet, all deductions made, Tsin Chi Hwangti stands forth as a great ruler and remarkable man. The Tsin dynasty only survived its founder a few years. Hwangti's son Eulchi became emperor, but he reigned no more than three years.
He had started life as a beadle; joined Ts'in Shi Hwangti's army, and risen to be a general; created himself after the emperor's death Prince of Han; and now had the honor to inaugurate, as Emperor Kaotsu, the greatest of the Chinese dynasties. In the two-fifties strong barbarous Ts'in had swallowed unmanly worn-out China, and for half a century had been digesting the feast.
The disturbances that followed Hwangti's death were a fresh inducement to these clans to again gather round a common head and prey upon the weakness of China, for Kaotsou's authority was not yet recognized in many of the tributary states which had been fain to admit the supremacy of the great Tsin emperor.
By Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time, any notions that were wild, extravagant, and gorgeous were Taoism; which would hardly have been, perhaps, had there been a Taoist organization behind them; although it is not safe to dogmatize.
Moungtien, beloved by the army, and at the head, as he tells us in his own words, of three hundred thousand soldiers, might have been the arbiter of the empire; but a weak feeling of respect for the imperial authority induced him to obey an order, sent by Eulchi, Hwangti's son and successor, commanding him "to drink the waters of eternal life."
The men of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up: Dr. H. A. Giles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse, and his book a forgery of Han times. Well; people did forge ancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing so; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity of any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time.
He seems to have been a wise prince and to have been the first of the great emperors. His grandson, who was also emperor, continued his good work and earned the reputation of being "the restorer or even founder of true astronomy." But the most famous of Hwangti's successors was his great-grandson Yao who is still one of the most revered of all Chinese rulers.
Ts'in Shi Hwangti's empire was many times the size of Wu Wang's; so he was in a much better position to reward the deserving. We must remember that he was no heir to a single sovereignty, but a Napoleon with a Europe at his feet.
Caesar's triumph came just two centuries after Ts'in Shi Hwangti's accession; Kublai Khan the Turanian, who smashed China, came just about as much before Mohammed II the Turanian, who swept away the last remnant of Rome. In the first cycles of the two there is a certain difference in procedure.
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