Qin Er Shi (Hu Hai)

Qin Er Shi, "Second Generation Emperor of Qin," was the title taken by Hu Hai (died 207 BC), a younger son of the First Emperor whose three-year reign ended in the dynasty's destruction. He had been tutored in law by the eunuch Zhao Gao and was the only son accompanying his father on the final imperial tour in 210 BC. When the emperor died at Shaqiu, Zhao Gao persuaded Hu Hai and the chancellor Li Si to conceal the death, forge an edict compelling the heir apparent Fusu to suicide, and install Hu Hai on the throne.

The reign that followed is described in the Shiji as a regime of terror directed by Zhao Gao through a compliant sovereign. Numerous imperial princes and princesses—Hu Hai's own siblings—were executed on fabricated charges, along with senior officials, including eventually Li Si himself, who died by public mutilation in 208 BC. Construction of the Epang palace and the imperial mausoleum continued, and the legal severity and labor exactions of the previous reign were intensified rather than relaxed. How much initiative belonged to the young emperor and how much to Zhao Gao cannot be securely judged: the surviving account was composed under the Han, whose historians had every reason to depict the last Qin court as both vicious and absurd, and the second emperor functions in it largely as a cautionary cipher.

Rebellion began within the first year. The uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in 209 BC spread across the former eastern kingdoms, and although the Qin general Zhang Han initially won significant victories, the revolt regenerated under leaders including Xiang Yu and Liu Bang. The court's response was hampered by its own atmosphere of fear; the Shiji's famous anecdote of Zhao Gao presenting a deer to the court and calling it a horse, to identify officials who dared contradict him, is set in this period.

In 207 BC, with rebel forces approaching the passes and the general Zhang Han defected to Xiang Yu, Zhao Gao moved against the emperor he had created. Soldiers under Zhao Gao's son-in-law stormed the palace, and Hu Hai, abandoned by his attendants, was compelled to take his own life. Zhao Gao installed Ziying, a member of the imperial family, with the diminished title of king of Qin; within weeks Zhao Gao was dead and within months the dynasty was as well.