Zhao Gao
Zhao Gao (; ?? –
207 BC) was the chief
eunuch during the
Qin Dynasty of
China, who played an instrumental role in the downfall of the Qin Dynasty. Note that while he is referred to as a
eunuch, he was not
castrated - he was born with a sexual disability.
When Zhao was a minor official, he committed a crime punishable by death. Meng Yi was the official in charge of sentencing and he sentenced Zhao to death and removed him from the officials list as instructed by Qin Shi Huang. Zhao was later pardoned by Qin Shi Huang and returned to official status when the emperor recalled him to be a man good at his post.
At the end of the reign of the First Emperor,
Qin Shi Huang, Zhao was involved in the death of Marshal
Meng Tian and his younger brother
Meng Yi upon Qin Shi Huang's death. Meng Tian was stationed at the northern border, commanding more than 100,000 troops for the inconclusive
Huns campaign; he was a reputable general and a faithful supporter of
Fusu, the first son of Qin Shi Huang.
After the sudden death of Qin Shi Huang at
Shaqiu prefecture, Zhao and the Imperial Secretariat
Li Si persuaded the emperor's second son
Huhai to falsify the emperor's will. The fake decree forced Fusu to commit suicide and stripped the command of troops from Meng Tian. Mindful of hatred for previous sentencing by Meng Yi, Zhao destroyed the Meng brothers by issued false decree of Huhai, now the Second Emperor. He forced Meng Tian to commit suicide and killed Meng Yi via in the hand of a general.
Zhao Gao soon outmaneuvered Li Si. He made Li Si go through "
The Five Pains" which were Li's own invention, these consisted of having the victim's nose cut up, cutting of a hand and a foot, then the victim was castrated and finally cut in half in line with the waist. He also executed Li Si's family down to the third generation.
In
207 BC, rebellions rosed one after another across China. Zhao was afraid that the Second Emperor might make him responsible for the uprisings. To pre-empt this, Zhao forced the emperor to commit suicide and replaced him by Fusu's son,
Ziying.
Ziying soon killed Zhao and surrendered to
Liu Bang. The Qin Dynasty collapsed, three years after the death of Qin Shi Huang, and less than twenty years after it was founded.
One
Chinese idiom that is derived from an incident involving Zhao is "calling a deer a horse" (). In that incident, Zhao, in order to completely control the government, devised a test of loyalty of the officials. Once, at a formal imperial gathering, he brought a deer in front of the officials and called it a horse. Naturally,
Qin Er Shi disagreed, but thought Zhao was joking. Some officials followed the emperor's lead, while some followed Zhao's lead. Zhao then took steps to eliminate the officials who refused to call the deer a horse. In later idiomatic usage, the term refers to a deliberate untruth for ulterior motives.
