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I A_cm_r msro_. 19
Huang, and lasted with its five Rulers less than fifty
years, he is-the one outstanding feature in its brief history:
The Duke of Ch'in who destroyed the House of Chou
was named Chao Hsiang I_ _ He reigned but five
years, and his son Hsiao W_n ::_ _ who followed him
reigned but three days. It is chronicled of Chuang
Hsiang _ _ the son of the latter, who also succeeded
him, that before his grandfather had claimed the royal
prerogatives, he, Chuang Hsiang, fell in love with the
beautiful wife of a crafty merchant whom he met, and
who subsequently became his prime minister. This
woman, already pregnant, he persuaded the husband,
Lu Pu Wei t_ ;_q _-2, to part with; she became his
wife and in due course gave birth to a son, who, the
offspring of this wily merchant ambitious of mind and low
of morals, was destined to unite the rival States of China
into one great Empire. While still a youth the evidence
of his mother's immoralities, and his real father's con-
nivance therein, compelled him to banish her, and
ultimately to quell a revolt raised by his father, the end
of which was the suicide of the latter. Gradually overcoming
all baronial opposition he became absolute in
the enpire, altered the laws, changed the system ot
government, destroyed or sought to destroy all books
that upheld the glories of the past, and generally brought
a force to bear on a paralysed nation that none dared to
withstand.
Inflated with his success he styled himself Shih Huang
Ti _nn _ ;_', The First Emperor, his son was to take
the title of Erh Huang Ti, or Erh Shih Huang Ti