But most of the large-scale military service was forced by the situation at the time.
At that time, the Central Plains had just been unified, and the original aristocratic powers in various regions were still very strong. If the traffic and ties between the central and local areas are not maintained, the country will be divided again at any time. Therefore, it is necessary to improve as soon as possible between the central government and the various regions and other counties Therefore, the roads must be constructed as soon as possible.
Due to years of war, the agricultural facilities of the original countries have suffered considerable damage, or have fallen into disrepair for a long time due to the war; agricultural production must be restored as soon as possible after reunification; therefore, considerable manpower was spent on dredging rivers, repairing canals, and affecting waterway traffic. Agricultural irrigation is beneficial and necessary.
The Great Wall was built to protect the lives and property of the people on the northern border, and its purpose was also to reduce the burden on the people. Since the Huns are nomads, their cavalry has a large range of activities. Without the Great Wall, many troops would be required to defend it. The people have increased a great burden. Qin Shihuang did not create the Great Wall for repairing the Great Wall. He only connected the original Great Wall to the north of the Kingdom of Qin, Zhao and Yan. However, the history books blamed Qin Shihuang for all the suffering caused by the repair of the Great Wall. This is not in line with the facts.
It turned out that there were some Great Walls between countries, but the Great Wall in the north was incomplete. After the reunification, he ordered the Great Wall between the original countries to be demolished, and then the Great Walls on the north of the Qin, Zhao, and Yan kingdoms were connected to prevent the northern Huns from invading south. It left us with a world-famous Great Wall.
The Great Wall, which stretches for thousands of miles, is not just a single wall, but a complete defensive project composed of various fortifications such as the city wall, enemy buildings, Guancheng, Dunbao, Yingcheng, guards, and beacon towers in the town. system. This defense engineering system is commanded and controlled by military command systems at all levels. Take the Ming Great Wall as an example. Nine military jurisdictions, including Liaodong, Ji, Xuanfu, Datong, Shanxi, Yulin, Ningxia, Guyuan, and Gansu, were set up on the Great Wall defense line to defend and repair the Yalu River in the east and Jiayuguan in the west. The Great Wall with a total length of more than 7,000 kilometers is called the "Nine Sides Important Town." Each town has a general officer as the military commander of this section of the Great Wall. Defense. There were about 1 million troops defending along the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty. The commander-in-chief is usually stationed in the town, and the rest of the officials at all levels are stationed in the guard post, the battalion city, the Guan city, and the enemy building and dunbao on the city wall.
The defense engineering of the Great Wall
The defense engineering construction of the Great Wall has accumulated rich experience in the construction process of more than 2,000 years. First of all, in terms of layout, when Qin Shihuang built the Great Wall, he summed up the experience of "preventing the barrier with danger due to the terrain". This principle has been followed for more than 2000 years and has become an important basis for military deployment. In terms of building materials and building structures, many structural methods have been created based on the principle of "obtaining on-site materials and applying them in accordance with the materials". There are structures such as rammed earth, slabstones, masonry, etc.; in the desert, red willow branches, reeds, and sand-layered structures are also used. It can be called a creation of "ingenious workmanship". The remains of this kind of Great Wall during the Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago have been preserved in Guanhe Xinjiang.
The composition of the Great Wall
The walls of the Great Wall
The wall of the Great Wall is the main part of this defensive project. It is built in high mountains or dangerous places in plains, and is built according to the needs of terrain and defense functions. It is built very tall and strong in plains or key areas, while it is relatively low and narrow in dangerous places in high mountains to save manpower and Costs, and even some of the steepest places that cannot be built are convenient to adopt the “mountain wall” and “splitting gable wall”. The Great Wall walls in Juyongguan, Badaling, Hebei, Shanxi, Gansu and other regions generally have an average height of about seven or eight meters. , The bottom is about six or seven meters thick, and the top of the wall is about four or five meters wide. On the top of the city wall, a space wall is set on the inner side, which is more than one meter high to prevent the patrol soldiers from falling. On the outer side, there is a crenellation wall about 2 meters high. It is used to watch the enemy's situation, shoot, and roll the rocks. On top of some important city walls, there are also layers of barriers built to resist enemies who might ascend the city wall. In the mid-Ming Dynasty, when the famous anti-Japanese general Qi Jiguang was transferred to Jizhen’s general army, he made major improvements to the fortifications of the Great Wall. The defense function is greatly strengthened.
Guancheng
Guancheng of the Great Wall is the most concentrated defensive stronghold on the Great Wall defensive line. The location of the city is very important. It is to choose a terrain that is favorable for defense in order to receive the effect of resisting powerful invaders with very few troops. Explains the importance of Guancheng. There are large and small Guancheng along the Great Wall, and there are a lot of them. Take the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty as an example, there are nearly a thousand places, large and small, such as Shanhaiguan, Huangyaguan, Juyongguan, Zijingguan, Daomaguan, Pingxingguan, Yanmenguan, Pianguan, Jiayuguan, and Yangyang of the Han Dynasty. Guan, Yumenguan, etc. There are many small gates near some large Guancheng. For example, there are more than ten small gates near Shanhaiguan, which together form the defense engineering construction system of the Great Wall of China. Some important passes have several lines of defense. For example, Juyong Pass has three passes, namely the South Gate, the North Gate, and Shangguan. The north entrance is Badaling, which is the most important outpost defense line of Juyongguan.
the Beacon Tower
Fenghuotai is one of the most important components of the Great Wall defense project. Its role is to serve as a facility to transmit military information. The Beacon Tower, a tool for transmitting information, has been in existence for a long time. When the Great Wall was first built, it was used well and gradually improved. It became the best way to transmit military information in ancient times. The method of transmission is to burn smoke during the day and raise the fire at night. Because the sunlight is very strong during the day, the fire is not easy to see, and the fire at night can be seen far away. This is a very scientific and rapid method of transmitting information. In order to report how many enemy soldiers have committed, the distinction is made by the number of smoke and the number of fires raised. In the Ming dynasty, the sound of gunfire was added at the same time as the number of smoke and the number of fires raised to enhance the effect of the alarm, so that the military sentiment would be transmitted thousands of miles in an instant. In ancient times when there was no telephone or radio communication, this method of transmitting military information can be said to be very fast. The layout of the beacon tower is also very important. The most important thing is to arrange it in a dangerous place or a place where the beacon tower turns, and the three platforms must be able to see each other so as to be easy to see and pass. Fenghuotai was called pavilion, pavilion tunnel, and Fengsui in the Han Dynasty, and it was called Yandun in the Ming Dynasty. In addition to conveying military information, it also protects the security of the envoys, provides board and lodging, and supplies horses and grains and other services. In some sections of the Great Wall, only beacon towers and pavilions were built instead of walls, which shows the importance of beacon towers in the defense system of the Great Wall.
A great project of mankind that can be seen with the naked eye on the moon
The Great Wall is the crystallization of the wisdom and strength of the working people in ancient China. It is a rare ancient military defense project in the history of human architecture.
Many people think that the construction of the Great Wall was the beginning of Qin Shihuang. In fact, this huge project had already begun as early as the Warring States Period. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, the various nations were struggling, and each vassal nation built a single defensive castle and a beacon tower used to transmit military information in dangerous strongholds, and then gradually built city walls on the border to connect these castles and other facilities to form an organic whole , In order to resist the intrusion of foreign enemies. The Kingdom of Chu first started this work around the 7th century BC, building a "square city" to defend against Han and Wei, and other countries followed suit. For example, the State of Qi built the Great Wall of Qi in the Taiyi Mountains to defend against Chu and Yue; the State of Wei built the Great Wall of Wei along the Luoshuihe City to defend against the State of Qin;
To defend against the enemies of Qi and Wei, the Kingdom of Zhao built the Great Wall of Zhao in the Zhangshui area. These are called the Great Wall of the Warring States Period. In addition, some princes, Yan, Zhao, and Wei, built Great Walls in the north to resist the intrusion of nomads (such as Donghu and Xiongnu) in the north. With the successive destruction of the six countries, these Great Walls have also lost their original role, but they can still play an important role in preventing the Huns from invading.
The earliest Great Wall in the Qin Kingdom, built in the seventh year of Qin Jian Gong (408 BC), "Junluo", was built along the Luo River to prevent the enemy of Wei. In the first year of King Qin Huiwen's first year (324 BC), the State of Qin built the Great Wall in the middle reaches of the Luohe River, "built up the prefecture", which was to defend the State of Zhao. When Emperor Qin Zhaoxiang, the Great Wall was built in Longxi, Beidi, and Shangjun to prevent the Huns from intruding. This section of the Great Wall runs from east to north, starting from Lintao, and is divided into two branches at the border of Ansai County, Shaanxi: one branch ends near Fushi, the Shangjun Prefecture of Qin State; the other branch arrives near Twelve Liancheng, Tuoketuo County, Inner Mongolia Along the bank of the Yellow River.
After Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, he was engaged in various domestic reforms. However, the northern Hun aristocratic clique coveted the wealth of the Central Plains and often went south to harass. Large tracts of land in the Hetao area were taken over, causing great pain to the people and a serious threat to Xianyang, the capital of the State of Qin. At that time, the saying "Hu Ye, the one who died of Qin" was circulated among the masses, which shows the seriousness of the problem. In the 32nd year of the Qin Dynasty (215 BC), the general Meng Tian sent 300,000 troops to crusade against the Huns and retake the area south of Hetao. Then it regained a large area of the Yinshan area north of the Hetao and re-established Jiuyuan County. Although the offensive of the Huns aristocrats was driven away, its strength has not been completely attacked, and there is still a great threat to the interior of Qin. This requires that the Huns should always guard against another offensive. So Qin Shihuang decided to build a new Great Wall.
The Qin Dynasty recruited a large number of migrant workers from the people, and at the same time ordered the general Mengkuo to lead his soldiers to build the Great Wall. This Great Wall is based on the old Great Wall that was originally built to defend against the Huns in the Qin, Zhao, and Yan states during the Six Kingdoms period. It was repaired and supplemented. At the same time, many new walls were built to connect them to make them stand tall. North of the Qin Dynasty. This Great Wall stretches from Lintao in the west to Liaodong in the east, along the vast Yellow River basin, along the steep Yinshan Mountains, and winding through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, with a total length of more than 5,000 kilometers. It took 9 years before and after it was finally built to resist foreign enemies. Barrier.
Over the past 2000 years, a total of more than 20 dynasties and princes have built the Great Wall, and the Great Walls built by many dynasties are comparable to or even surpassing the Qin Great Wall in terms of length, engineering quality, and engineering scale. The rulers of the Ming Dynasty paid the most attention to the construction of the Great Wall. This was related to the fact that the northern Mongolian ministries often deployed troops to harass the Central Plains. There were three large-scale repairs of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty. Around 1500, the Ming Great Wall was completely repaired. From Jiayuguan in Gansu Province in the west to Shanhaiguan in the northeast of Hebei Province in the east, it passes through Ningxia, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and other provinces. It hovered along with the twists and turns of the mountains, stretching for 6,300 kilometers, forming a majestic city wall on the high mountains of northern China. This well-known Great Wall at home and abroad shows the high wisdom of the Chinese nation and is also a testimony to China's long history.
