What is the difference between the Great Wall of China and the French Maginot Line?

I don't know whether it is Zhihu or which platform, there is a question that interests me: saying that the Great Wall is so short, how to play a defensive role? Therefore, I deliberately use the time to go to work to touch the fish to summarize and sort out my understanding or opinion, it must be very simple, and I can just click a thumbs up without spraying it.

Everyone knows that there are relics of the ancient Great Wall and beacon towers from Xinjiang to the two lakes. The Great Wall is also the world's longest-built and largest ancient defensive project in the world, which has been built for more than 2,000 years since the Western Zhou Dynasty, with a total length of more than 20,000 kilometers. To say more: most of us always feel that the Great Wall was built by Qin Shi Huang alone or a dynasty, and here Meng Jiangnu has made great contributions; secondly, some people may further understand that during the Ming Dynasty, a large part of the Great Wall was also built, and Nurhaci and Huang Taiji father and son joined forces with Yuan Chonghuan to dedicate themselves to the great drama of attack and defense.

So when did the name of the Great Wall come about? The name of the Great Wall began in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The "History of the Chu Shijia" says: "King Xuan of Qi built the Great Wall on the top of the mountains, east to the sea, west to Jeju, more than a thousand miles, to prepare for Chu." The Great Wall is not just a separate city wall, but a complete defense engineering system composed of various defensive fortifications such as the city wall, the enemy tower, the guancheng, the pier fort, the camp city, the guardhouse, and the zhencheng beacon. The specific building structure of the Great Wall, please look for yourself, a bunch of online professional information, here is not repeated.

Entering the main topic, how does the Great Wall play a defensive role?

The main purpose of the construction of the Great Wall is to defend against the attacks of nomadic peoples in the north, so defense is the core value of the Great Wall. In the era of cold weapons, that is, in addition to the time when the distance is far away, the bow and arrow are fired at each other, and the knife is cut at close range, on the whole, the infantry is unable to resist the high-speed impact of the cavalry, especially the northern nomads because they are good at riding and shooting, good at field battles, and take surprise attacks, showing strong combat effectiveness, while the previous combat units of the Central Plains peoples were mainly infantry and chariots, slow in action, and it was difficult to resist the attacks and plunders of the nomadic peoples. In response to this passive situation, the Central Plains peoples built the Great Wall in the north. The walls of the Great Wall are the main part of the city wall, with an average height of 7.8 meters, and some sections are as high as 14 meters. Critical places are relatively high, and general places are relatively low. The total thickness of the wall is wider, the base width is 6.5 meters, and the width of the floor on the wall is also 5.8 meters on average, ensuring that the two heavy carriages are parallel. Enemy towers or enemy platforms were set up on the top of the city wall to accommodate patrolling soldiers and store weapons, food and socks, which greatly strengthened the defensive function of the Great Wall. Such a high wall did make the nomadic cavalry units often unable to play the advantage of raids or broken formations, and could only look at the wall and sigh.

The construction of the Great Wall is personally felt to be to turn passive into active defense in advance. The key is that the defensive role of the Great Wall is not "not to be attacked" as the average person thinks; its real use is that the invaders may be able to concentrate their forces on occasionally breaking through one or two passes and breaking into the interior, but as long as the entire section of the Great Wall is still garrisoned with a strong army, the invaders will always face the danger of being blocked, ambushed and unable to go home, and their logistics cannot be transported through the pass, so they cannot gain a foothold in the interior, which is the fundamental meaning of the existence of the Great Wall.

However, in the long river of history, the great wall is the product of the idea of position warfare, which is more as a passive defense. Many northern nomads often enter the Central Plains easily with a roundabout strategy, and at this time, the Great Wall of China, like the French Maginot Line, has little effect. At the same time, whether the Great Wall can play a defensive role depends on who is stationed on it. Great Qin Mengtian could be defended, and Daming Yuan Chonghuan could be defended, but Wu Sangui, who was "angry and angry with the crown", gave it to Emperor Taiji. Therefore, talent is the most important factor. How different is the Great Wall of China from the French Macedonian Defense Line? The two have the same starting point or strategic thinking, the difference is that if the Great Wall of China is defensive version 1.0, then the French Maginot Line is defensive version 2.0.

The story of the Specific Maginot Line, we will talk about it next time. If you feel interesting, just give it a thumbs up. Thank you.