11. A Megalomaniacal Emperor
To keep the nobility in check, Chin Shi Huang kept those he favored in the capital. He controlled them with pensions and fancy titles, and thus transformed them from an uncontrollable warrior class into dependents and tame courtiers. He then abolished all aristocratic titles and ranks, except for those created and bestowed by him, and had the rest of the nobility killed or put to work. As a matter of fact, Shi Huang put everybody to work. With unchecked power and the resources of an entire empire to draw upon, he grew megalomaniacal. He launched huge projects with massive amounts of forced labor, such as his tomb, whose construction required the toil of 700,000 laborers for 30 years.
The famous Terracotta Warriors site, discovered in the 1970s and now open to tourists with its thousands of life-size statues, is but a fraction of Shi Huang’s gigantic tomb complex. The bulk of it is yet to be unearthed. Millions more labored to dig canals, level hills, make roads, and build over 700 palaces. The biggest project of all was the Great Wall of China. It did double duty: kept the northern barbarians out, and the Chinese who sought to flee Shi Huang’s heavy taxation and oppressive rule, in.
