Jing Ke's Attempt to Assassinate the King of Qin (227 BC)

Jing Ke’s attempt to assassinate the King of Qin took place in 227 BC at the Qin palace in Xianyang, when an envoy from the state of Yan drew a poisoned dagger hidden inside a rolled-up map. The plot, organised by Prince Dan of Yan, aimed to stop Qin’s conquest of the other Chinese kingdoms by killing its ruler, the man who would become Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor. It failed by the narrowest of margins, and its story became one of the most famous in Chinese history and art.

Qin on the march

In the final decades of the Warring States period, the western state of Qin was steadily swallowing its neighbours. Under King Zheng, who had come to the throne in 246 BC, Qin conquered the state of Han in 230 BC and took Handan, the capital of Zhao, in 228 BC. Its armies now stood close to the borders of Yan, a northern kingdom centred on the area of modern Beijing.

Yan was far weaker than Qin, and its leaders saw little hope of resisting by force. Prince Dan, the heir to the Yan throne, had personal reasons for hatred as well. Sima Qian records that he had known King Zheng in childhood, when both lived as hostages in Zhao, and that he had later been held as a hostage in Qin and treated badly. He escaped back to Yan around 232 BC, determined on revenge.

The plot of Prince Dan

Dan’s adviser, the elderly Tian Guang, recommended a man named Jing Ke. According to Sima Qian, Tian Guang then took his own life to show that he would never reveal the secret. Jing Ke came from the small state of Wey, loved reading and swordsmanship, and had spent his time in Yan drinking with friends such as the musician Gao Jianli, a player of the zhu, a stringed instrument struck with a bamboo stick.

The plan needed a way to get close to the king. Two gifts were chosen. The first was the head of Fan Yuqi, a Qin general who had fled to Yan and on whom King Zheng had placed a large bounty. When Jing Ke explained the plan to him, Fan Yuqi killed himself so that his head could be used. The second was a map of Dukang, a fertile district of Yan, which Yan would appear to be surrendering.

Prince Dan obtained a sharp dagger, which was treated with poison, and assigned Jing Ke an assistant, Qin Wuyang, a young man said to have killed someone at the age of 13. The dagger was rolled up inside the map.

Farewell at the Yi River

The departure from Yan is one of the most celebrated scenes in Chinese literature. Prince Dan and his followers, dressed in white mourning clothes, accompanied Jing Ke to the bank of the Yi River. Gao Jianli played the zhu while Jing Ke sang a short song. In Sima Qian’s account its words say that the wind is moaning and the Yi River is cold, and that the hero, once he leaves, will never return. Then Jing Ke mounted his carriage and left without looking back.

The attack in the palace

In Xianyang, the King of Qin was delighted by news that Yan was offering Fan Yuqi’s head and land, and received the envoys with full ceremony. As they approached the throne, Qin Wuyang turned pale and began to tremble, and the courtiers grew suspicious. Jing Ke laughed it off, explaining that the young man from the rustic north was overawed by the Son of Heaven’s court.

Jing Ke took the map himself and unrolled it before the king. When it was fully open, the dagger appeared. He grabbed the king’s sleeve with one hand and stabbed with the other, but the king leapt back, tearing his sleeve away. The king tried to draw his sword, but it was long and stuck in its scabbard.

Jing Ke chased the king, who ran around a pillar. Qin law forbade officials in the hall to carry weapons, and armed guards waiting below could not enter without a summons. In the confusion, the court physician Xia Wuju hurled his bag of medicines at Jing Ke. Courtiers shouted to the king to push his sword round onto his back, and he was finally able to draw it and strike Jing Ke in the left thigh.

Wounded and unable to pursue, Jing Ke threw the dagger at the king. It missed and struck a bronze pillar. The king struck him again and again. Sima Qian writes that Jing Ke, sitting against the pillar, laughed and said that he had failed because he had wanted to take the king alive and force him to promise to return conquered lands. He was then killed.

Aftermath

The attempt gave Qin every reason to turn on Yan. In 226 BC Qin forces defeated the armies of Yan and Dai and captured the Yan capital, Ji. King Xi of Yan fled to the Liaodong region in the north-east. According to Sima Qian, he had Prince Dan killed and sent his head to Qin in the hope of peace, but it did not save him. Qin captured King Xi in 222 BC, ending the state of Yan, and in 221 BC completed the unification of China.

The story had a sequel. After unification, Gao Jianli worked in disguise until his skill on the zhu gave him away. The emperor, admiring his playing, spared his life but had him blinded and kept him as a musician. Gao Jianli filled his instrument with lead and swung it at the emperor, but missed and was executed. Sima Qian adds that afterwards the emperor never again allowed men from the conquered states near him. In 218 BC another would-be assassin, Zhang Liang, attacked the emperor’s procession at Bolangsha and struck the wrong carriage.

Legacy in art and memory

Jing Ke’s story is told most fully in the “Biographies of the Assassins” in Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, written around 100 BC, which presents him as a man of loyalty and courage. A closely related version appears in the Strategies of the Warring States. Some details, such as the dialogue, are likely literary, but the attempt itself is recorded in the official annals of Qin as well.

The scene became a favourite subject of Han-dynasty art. Stone reliefs in tomb shrines, including the Wu family shrines in Shandong of the 2nd century AD, show the king fleeing, Jing Ke restrained and the dagger quivering in a pillar. Poets from Tao Yuanming in the 4th–5th century onward wrote about him, and the idiom “when the map is unrolled, the dagger is revealed” is still used today.

Modern films have retold the episode, notably Chen Kaige’s The Emperor and the Assassin (1998). Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) imagines a different, fictional assassin but draws on the same tradition of attempts on the king’s life.

Timeline

• 246 BC: Ying Zheng becomes King of Qin.
• c. 232 BC: Prince Dan escapes from captivity in Qin and returns to Yan.
• 230 BC: Qin conquers the state of Han.
• 228 BC: Qin captures Handan, capital of Zhao.
• 227 BC: Jing Ke attempts to assassinate the King of Qin at Xianyang and is killed.
• 226 BC: Qin captures the Yan capital, Ji; Prince Dan is later killed.
• 222 BC: Qin conquers the last Yan territory in Liaodong.
• 221 BC: Qin completes the unification of China.

Why it matters

Jing Ke’s attempt was a desperate bid by a weaker state to change history by killing one man. Its failure sealed Yan’s fate, while the story of courage, sacrifice and the dagger in the map became a lasting part of Chinese literature, art and language.