China's Great Wall has always given people the feeling of being unique in the world, and has always been like this in the previous impression, but no one would have thought that in fact, there are buildings similar to the Great Wall of Chinese in foreign countries, but the gap between their Great Wall and the Great Wall of Chinese is too large, and the two sides are not in a dimensional world at all. So where is the gap between the British Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall of Chinese, and why Chinese wondered after seeing the British Hadrian's Wall that this was just a fence?
The origin and role of the Great Wall of China
Speaking of the Great Wall of China, it is almost unknown to everyone, no one knows, and in China, there is a saying that the Great Wall is not a good man, so as an authentic Chinese, if there is a suitable opportunity in your lifetime, you must go to the Great Wall to see and understand the style of Chinese ancestors more than two thousand years ago. Since we want to understand the style of China's ancestors, we must understand a history of the formation of the Great Wall of China, in order to better know the origin of the Great Wall, so that we can be a person who really knows the history of China, and will not be laughed at by foreigners and forget their ancestors.
The earliest time of the Great Wall of China should have originated in the Warring States period located in the northern border of the princely states, at that time the Central Plains land was fragmented, the various princely states in order to compete for hegemony constantly launched wars, only powerful countries can continue to survive in the chaotic world, geographically closest to the north are the Qin State, Zhao State, Yan State these three princely states, the fate of these three princely states is actually very tragic, they not only have to defend the other Zhu princely states in the south to launch wars, In order to better defend against the threat of northern nomads, these countries on the northern border have invariably built the Great Wall as a defensive project.
The Great Wall of the Warring States Period was mainly divided into the Great Wall of Qin, the Great Wall of Zhao, and the Great Wall of Yan. Their main role is to play a role in hindering and warning when the nomadic peoples attack, because the nature of agricultural civilization determines that our country is to cultivate in one place for a long time, and the nomadic peoples have a very different way of life from us, they basically rely on herding cattle, sheep and horses and then live by water and grass, where the water and grass are abundant on the grassland, they will migrate to where, this nature of life determines that the steppe people grow on horseback, so when fighting they also come and go like the wind , like to fight with light cavalry.
And the agricultural peoples like to assemble two armies, face to face direct combat, so the spring and autumn Warring States period in the early war is basically tens of thousands of people standing in an open place to fight in groups, this characteristic of agricultural civilization makes them and the nomads to fight very unfavorably, the nomads every time to the autumn when the horse fat began to go south to harvest, grab a wave directly back, and the method of building the Great Wall looks very clumsy, but it is indeed able to raise a beacon to warn the army behind when the nomadic people arrive. Prepare them for foreign enemies.
And the soldiers stationed on the Great Wall with a certain height can also use some stone and wood to roll down the slope to hinder the steppe cavalry, which gives the army behind the reaction time, when the border army is ready to resist, the nomadic raid has long lost its meaning, so the Great Wall plays a huge role in the frontier defense line, even if it costs a huge amount of civilian and financial resources, it is also necessary to send a certain number of non-commissioned officers to deploy along the line, otherwise the peasants in the interior will have to suffer more serious losses!
The difference between the Great Wall of Qin and the Great Wall of Ming
Today we see that most of the Great Wall in northern China is actually the Ming Great Wall, but Chinese still like to call it the Great Wall built by Qin Shi Huang, and say that the Great Wall has not fallen for more than two thousand years, as a Chinese pride, but in fact, it is not so, the Ming Great Wall and the Qin Great Wall have a great difference. The Great Wall of Qin is indeed worthy of the saying of the Great Wall from the top, because the distance from liaodong to Gansu is indeed enough to be ten thousand miles, and the Great Wall built by Qin Shi Huang itself is a sum of the Yan state, the Zhao state, and the Qin state in the Warring States era.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the world, he was already aware of the threat from the Xiongnu in the north, so he mobilized hundreds of thousands of people from the Qin state to build the Great Wall in the north, and this also became the main evidence of Qin Shi Huang's tyranny, which was considered by later generations to be the main reason for the demise of Qin Shi Huang, but Qin Shi Huang was actually very particular about connecting the Great Wall of various countries at that time, he was not according to personal preferences but conscripted the people, most of those who went to build the Great Wall were domestic criminals or prisoners of war. A person who lives a good life rarely needs to go to that kind of bitter place to build the Great Wall, and although the Great Wall after Qin Shi Huang connecting the Yan Kingdom, the Zhao State, and the Qin State has reached ten thousand miles above, it is not as high as the Ming Great Wall today.
According to the study of Prince Wang, an expert in the history of the Qin and Han Dynasties in China today, the height of the Great Wall of Qin is about 2 to 3 meters, and such a height is actually just like a gate, and this purpose is actually limited by the technology at that time. The main technology of the Great Wall of the Qin Dynasty and the kind of rammed earth houses in rural China today are actually similar, and the rammed earth technology can generally guarantee this height, so we basically do not see more than three-story houses in the wooden houses of ancient China, and the height of the Qin Great Wall at 2 to 3 meters is actually limited by this technology.
Since the fall of the Qin Dynasty, the Great Wall has been described by scholars of all generations as the product of tyranny. However, successive emperors know how big the role of the Great Wall is, so in each dynasty, the Great Wall will be well protected, the purpose is to defend against the invasion of the northern nomads, among which the Han Dynasty, which insulted the Qin Dynasty the most ruthlessly, also had the best protection of the Qin Great Wall. In the later dynasties, the biggest transformation of the Qin Great Wall was the Ming Dynasty, and in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the entire Ming Empire fell into a moment of crisis, which can be described as internal and external troubles. The north was constantly invaded by the Mongols, and the northeast was attacked by the Jurchens of Jianzhou, which was actually worse than the situation faced at the beginning of the Han Dynasty.
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, a great figure named Qi Jiguang appeared, and his Qi family army quelled the Wukou Rebellion in the southeast of the Ming Dynasty for more than a hundred years. Then it became a brick of the Ming Dynasty, where it needed to be moved. Qi Jiguang came to northern China after quelling the southeastern plague, and under his auspices made great changes to the Great Wall of Qin, which came from technological innovations.
During the Ming Dynasty, there were already green brick piles. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and thousands of craftsmen began the great project of strengthening the Great Wall under the auspices of Qi Jiguang, and the Qin Great Wall in the past began to become taller. The rammed earth city wall was reinforced layer after layer of green bricks, and the middle was glutinous rice syrup water glutinous together, the adhesion effect of this glutinous rice syrup was comparable to today's cement, so the Great Wall seen Chinese today was 7 to 8 meters tall, and some places were even more than 10 meters, in fact, it came from the Ming Dynasty Qi Jiguang with a batch of craftsmen to build.
Hadrian's Wall in Britain
The British also have the Great Wall, which is indeed something that few people dare to believe, but there is indeed this Great Wall in the British homeland, and its name is Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall was built in 122 AD by the Roman Empire, which was so powerful that the entire Mediterranean Sea was their inland sea.
The Emperor of the Roman Empire at that time was named Hadrian, and during his reign he pushed the territory of his country to the northern part of the present-day British Island of Great Britain, in order to defend against the Picts in the northern part of the island and protect the acquired lands and property of the Roman Empire, Hadrian ordered the construction of the Great Wall. The Great Wall is mainly made of mud and stone, the overall length is about 120 kilometers, and the average height is about 3 meters. In Roman parlance, the north of this great wall was full of barbarians, and what they Brought to the area by Rome was true civilization. Therefore, the purpose of Hadrian's Great Wall and the Great Wall of Qin is actually the same, both to defend against foreign invasion.
The history of Hadrian's Wall is actually the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, when the Roman Empire was strong, this section of the Great Wall was the last limit of the barbarians of northern Scotland to go south, but this glorious moment began to fail in the 4th century AD, the Roman Empire began to decline, the Italian peninsula was full of people vying for power and profit, the local princes also began to sit large, and began to disobey the instructions of the Roman Emperor, for this reality, The newly enthroned Roman emperor had no choice but to shrink his army, and since he could not maintain a huge territory as before, it was better to take back the useful forces to protect the power of the Roman city and the emperor's elders.
So from 410 AD, the Roman soldiers on the island of Great Britain have become a lone army, no one paid them salaries, no food replenishment for the empire, this overseas lone army began to scatter, many people turned to barbarians, and finally under the attack of the Northern Pickers, Hadrian's Wall became a useless defense line, and the Roman Empire's rule in Great Britain had to be declared over, but the history of Hadrian's Wall did not end, he watched the Roman Empire from glory to decline , and then into extinction.
The Roman Empire and Hadrian's Wall was originally a glorious, one-loss relationship, after losing the protection of the Roman Empire's armed forces, Hadrian's Wall became a public goods that everyone could access, there were many castles on the island of Great Britain, the bricks used in the walls were taken from Hadrian's Wall, and today Victoria Avenue on London Street has high-quality stones from had been on it.
And when Hadrian's Great Wall went from Britain to the world and into the eyes of Chinese, Chinese habitually compared Hadrian's Great Wall with China's Great Wall, and naturally felt that Hadrian's Great Wall was too small, compared with the Ming Great Wall, it was not like the Great Wall, but more like the fence yard made of rammed earth technology in front of Chinese farmers' homes!