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Emperors
From the First Emperor to the last Qing sovereign — how China was governed, and by whom.
The First Empires
秦汉221 BC – 220 AD3 dynastiesQin's conquests in 221 BC created a single empire for the first time; Han then held it together for four centuries and gave the Chinese their own name for themselves. The Silk Road opened, Confucianism became state doctrine, and the template of imperial rule was set.
- Qin Shi Huang Ying Zheng, 259 – 210 BC · First Emperor Qin Shi Huang was the king of the western state of Qin who conquered the six rival warring states and in 221 BC declared himself the First Emperor of a unified China. In eleven years of rule he standardised the script, the coinage, the weights and measures, and the roads, replaced hereditary lords with appointed officials, and built a frontier wall in the north. He also burned books, killed his political opponents, and consumed the last years of his life in a failed search for immortality.
- Qin Er Shi Huhai, c. 230 – 207 BC · Second Emperor of the Qin dynasty Huhai, the eighteenth son of Qin Shi Huang, reigned as the Second Emperor of Qin from 210 to 207 BC — the second and last emperor of a dynasty his father had designed to last ten thousand generations. Raised to the throne by a succession that even the ancient sources dispute, he destroyed his own family, refused to be told that his empire was in revolt, and was finally forced to kill himself by the chancellor who had made him.
- Ziying Ziying, d. 206 BC · The last ruler of the Qin dynasty, 207 – 206 BC — a king, not an emperor Ziying (d. 206 BC) held the throne of Qin for forty-six days and is counted as its last ruler, though he was never an emperor: Zhao Gao abolished the imperial title before installing him and crowned him King of Qin, on the ground that a state reduced to its old territory had no business keeping an empty name. He is remembered for one decisive act, the killing of Zhao Gao, and for the surrender that ended the dynasty — a plain carriage, a white cord around his neck, and the seals of office handed to Liu Bang.
- Emperor Gaozu of Han Liu Bang, 256 – 195 BC· founding emperor of the Han dynasty from 202 BC Liu Bang was a low-ranking village official from Pei who became a rebel in middle age and emperor of China seven years later. He lost almost every battle he fought against Xiang Yu and won the war anyway, because he could recognise better men than himself and pay what their continued loyalty was worth. As emperor he kept the Qin bureaucracy, cut the land tax to one part in fifteen, bought peace on the northern frontier with tribute and marriage, and destroyed the warlords whose help had made him. The dynasty he founded lasted four hundred years and gave its name to the Chinese majority.
- Emperor Hui of Han Liu Ying, 210 – 188 BC · Second emperor of the Han dynasty Emperor Hui of Han (Liu Ying, 210–188 BC) was the second ruler of the Han dynasty and the son of its founder, remembered less for his own seven-year reign than for the mother who governed through him — and for the gentleness that made his father judge him unfit to rule. A man whom violence made physically ill, he nonetheless put his name to the measures that settled the young dynasty's peace: lighter taxes, the repeal of the Qin ban on private books, and the walls of Chang'an.
- The First Boy Emperor of Han c. 192 – 184 BC · Third emperor of the Han dynasty The first boy emperor of Han (c. 192–184 BC) was a son of Emperor Hui, taken from his mother in infancy and raised as the child of the childless empress, then made emperor at about five under the regency of his grandmother, Empress Lü.
- The Second Boy Emperor of Han Liu Hong (born Liu Shan, then Liu Yi), d. 180 BC · Fourth emperor of the Han dynasty The second boy emperor of Han (d. 180 BC) reigned for four years under Empress Lü and was then declared — after her death and the massacre of her clan — not to be a son of Emperor Hui at all. That verdict, delivered by the ministers who had destroyed his grandmother's family, removed him and his five brothers from the imperial line and cleared the way for Emperor Wen.
Division and Reunion
魏晋南北朝220 – 5893 dynastiesAfter the Han collapsed the north was ruled by steppe peoples and short-lived kingdoms, while a refugee court held the south. It was one of the most violent periods in Chinese history and also one of the most creative: Buddhism took root and calligraphy found its voice.
- Emperor Wen of Wei Cao Pi, 187 – 226 · founding emperor of Wei Cao Pi was the second son of Cao Cao who took the step his father never dared take, accepting the abdication of the last Han emperor in 220 and founding the state of Wei. In seven years he codified the law, created the nine rank system for selecting officials, and bound the imperial clan so tightly that no prince could defend the throne when a regent's family took it; his three campaigns against Wu all failed, and on his deathbed he left the regency to three men of whom the ablest was a Sima.
- Emperor Ming of Wei Cao Rui, 205 – 239 · emperor of Wei Cao Rui, emperor of Wei from 226 to 239, was the last ruler of his house to hold power in his own hands: he held the passes against every northern campaign of Zhuge Liang, annexed Liaodong, rebuilt the law and reformed the rites, and spent as freely on palaces as his father had tried to save. Dying at thirty-six with his sons dead before him, he entrusted the regency to Cao Shuang and Sima Yi, and the armies he had spent his reign holding became the inheritance of the house of Sima.
- The Prince of Qi Cao Fang, 232 – 274 · third emperor of Wei Cao Fang was the adopted son of Emperor Ming of Wei, set on the throne at the age of eight, and for fifteen years he watched two regents fight over the government of the north until one of them shut the gates of the capital in 249 and took it. His reign ended in 254 when that man's son deposed him, and he lived twenty more years as a prince and then as a duke.
- The Duke of Gaogui Cao Mao, 241 – 260 · fourth emperor of Wei Cao Mao was a grandson of the founding emperor of Wei whom the regent Sima Shi put on the throne at the age of thirteen, and who spent his six years as a scholar-emperor in a court that no longer belonged to his family. In 260 he took a few hundred palace servants and went out with his own sword against the troops of the regent Sima Zhao, was killed in the street by an officer named Cheng Ji, and had his imperial title taken from him; the histories remember him, without any posthumous name, as the Duke of Gaogui.
- Emperor Wu of Jin Sima Yan, 236 – 290 · founding emperor of the Western Jin Sima Yan, the founder of the Western Jin, inherited the government of Wei from three generations of his family and took the throne by abdication in 265, then spent fifteen years preparing the conquest that ended the division of China in 280. His reign produced the Taikang peace, a land and tax settlement, and a register of two and a half million households, but it also produced armed princes, disarmed provinces, and a crown prince who could not govern, so that the state he had unified began to break apart within a year of his death.
- Emperor Hui of Jin Sima Zhong, 259 – 307 · second emperor of the Western Jin Sima Zhong was the second emperor of the Western Jin, a man of limited mind at the centre of a state whose edicts were written by others, who reigned for seventeen years while his empress, his ministers and eight princes used his name to destroy one another. He was carried from Luoyang to Ye, to Chang'an and back, was deposed in 301 and restored in the same spring, and is remembered for asking why the starving did not eat meat gruel and for refusing to let the blood of a courtier who died shielding him be washed from his robe.
- Emperor Huai of Jin Sima Chi, 284 – 313 · third emperor of the Western Jin Sima Chi was the twenty-fifth son of Emperor Wu of Jin, a bookish prince who stayed out of the clan wars and was made heir in 304 because he had no party of his own. He took the throne in 307 at twenty-three, spent four years trying to govern through a regent who had taken the army and the administration to the frontier, and was captured when Luoyang fell in 311; he was killed at Pingyang two years later, after being made to pour wine at the conqueror's feast.
- Emperor Min of Jin Sima Ye, 300 – 318 · last emperor of the Western Jin Sima Ye was a grandson of the Jin founder who was adopted into a collateral line, made prince of Qin as a child, and set on the throne at fourteen in a Chang'an reduced to fewer than a hundred households. He surrendered to Liu Yao in 316 after a siege that reduced the imperial granary to a few cakes of brewer's yeast, was made marquis of Huai'an, and was killed in Pingyang fifteen months later, while the era name Jianxing that he had proclaimed went on being used in Liangzhou until 361.
- Duck Huan of Former Liang Zhang Chonghua, ? – 353 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Chonghua (?-353) ruled Former Liang from 346, at sixteen, survived a Later Zhao invasion that had already taken Jincheng, and set aside the senior frontier families to give command to Xie Ai, a Dunhuang secretary whose victories at Zhenwu, Linhe and Changzui in 346 and 347 saved the corridor while losing the south bank of the Yellow River. Dying in 353, he wrote an order making Xie Ai regent for his ten-year-old son Zhang Yaoling, but his half-brother Zhang Zuo suppressed it, and within weeks both the order and the general were gone.
- Marquis of Liangning Zhang Yaoling, ? – 355 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Yaoling, son and heir of Zhang Chonghua of Former Liang, held the ruler's titles for about a month in the winter of 353, aged ten, before his father's elder brother Zhang Zuo had him deposed to marquis of Liangning. Killed in the Eastern Garden at Guzang in 355, aged twelve, he was privately named Duke Ai by the man who ordered his death, and survives in the record only because the year, the usurpation and the restoration proclaimed in his name all required him to have ruled.
- King Wei of Former Liang Zhang Zuo, ? – 355 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Zuo, the eldest son of Zhang Jun by a concubine and the elder half-brother of Zhang Chonghua, used a forged testament and the dowager Lady Ma's order to set aside his ten-year-old nephew Zhang Yaoling in 353 and take the government. In 354 he claimed the imperial title and replaced the Jin era with his own era of Peace; that change of calendar, more than any failure of administration, turned the province's officials against him, and after Zhang Guan and Song Hun rose in 355 his own guard commander speared him and a cook killed him, leaving his body in the road.
- Duke Chong of Former Liang Zhang Xuanjing, 350 – 363 · ruler of Former Liang Zhang Xuanjing was put on the seat of Former Liang in 355 at seven, by a palace faction that brought him and his grandmother out to bless a coup already won, and for eight years every order in his name came from a regent: Zhang Guan, Song Hun, Song Cheng, Zhang Yong and finally his uncle Zhang Tianxi, four of whom died in office and the fifth killed him. He was killed in 363 at fourteen and the government announced a sudden illness; the chapter preserves almost nothing but the dates on which the men around him died, which describes where power lay more exactly than any account of his rule.
The Tang Age
隋唐五代581 – 9601 dynastySui reunified the country and dug the Grand Canal; Tang turned that unity into a cosmopolitan empire whose capital at Chang'an was the largest city on earth. When Tang fell in 907, five short dynasties and ten regional kingdoms divided the country for half a century.