In 1368, the first year of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, hongwu, the capital of the Ming Dynasty at this time was still in Nanjing, but the reinforcement and repair of the Great Wall on the northern front had been carried out in an orderly manner. The person who presided over this cause was Xu Da, the founding general of the Ming Dynasty.
In order to build the Great Wall, Xu Da used local materials from the gray and white stone produced on the nearby mountains, cut into a stone back wall, and built a magnificent Great Wall between the lofty mountains. This section of the Great Wall is of superb quality, and to this day visitors can climb here and see the layered stones on the nearby hills, which is evidence of the superb craftsmanship of the Ming Dynasty.
The Great Wall of Juyongguan is such an excellent example. Juyongguan is an important barrier to the northwest of Beijing, and its original origins date back to the Warring States period. At that time, the Yan kingdom, which controlled this mouth, built a fortress here, and some people said that the name of this fortress was Called Juyong Sai, which was an important gateway to the Great Wall of Yan. However, the nomadic people at that time were not enough to form a serious hazard, so the Yan State did not have a permanent army here on a daily basis, and only when a war broke out, it would send troops to station. However, combined with various factors, in fact, the term Juyongsai did not exist at that time. It was not until the Qin Dynasty destroyed the Six Kingdoms and the world was unified, when the First Emperor came here, relocated a large number of prisoners, soldiers, and conscripted people here, and forced them to build the Great Wall, and only then did he extract the word Juyong from the four words of "migrating to the mediocrity" and become the name of Guan. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, Juyong County was established, and the county seat was later Yanqing County (of course, it has now changed from a county to a district), which belonged to Shanggu County at that time.
Why did the Qin and Han dynasties look at the boundary of Zhongjuyong? There have been ancient people who have visited here, such as Gu Zuyu, a famous military geographer in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, who said that this place is sandwiched between two mountains, and there is a huge stream below, and from below, it is a cliff, which is called a dangerous danger. What can be walked together is only a very narrow side road, the width of the road is only the distance between the two wheels, coupled with the dense forest, the valley rocks, and the lofty walls, which is really dangerous and dangerous.
Such geography, on top of history, is Mr. Storyteller's favorite eight words, called: "One husband should be closed, and everything will not be opened." At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xianbei repeatedly invaded the south, but they were all blocked under Juyong Pass. At that time, Liu Yu, the pastor of Youzhou, sent his subordinate Shimoda Domain to go to Beijing with the song chapter. He selected twenty strong cavalrymen, set out from Juyongguan, and walked along the Great Wall, that is, the line from northern Shanxi to Inner Mongolia, and finally followed the road to Chang'an. And then the last battle between Liu Yu and Gongsun Zhan also occurred at Juyongguan. As a result, the city fell on three days, and Liu Yu became a prisoner and was finally killed.
During the Sixteen Kingdoms period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, a major battle between the then Later Zhao Shihu and Murong Hao of the Yan state also took place here. Murong Hao, who was good at using troops, took Juyongguan by surprise, and directly took Jicheng and Gaoyang, which were undefended and empty in later Zhao, and hit Shi Hu by surprise. Later, when Murong Chui restored the great cause of the Yan kingdom, he also sent all the soldiers and horses out of Yongguan to take longcheng, the base camp of Xianbei, and lay his own foundation. More than ten years later, the situation changed greatly, the Yan state turned from prosperity to decline, and Northern Wei Tuoba marched eastward in a big way, just as it took the road of Juyong and seized the Youzhou region.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jurchens rose rapidly, and the wind and clouds went straight down to Yanyun, and the Liao state at that time was also desperately defending Juyong. As a result, halfway through the battle, a cliff in Juyongguan suddenly collapsed, crushing most of the last loyal soldiers of the Liao state, so the Liao army collapsed, and the Jin state quickly took Yanjing. When the Mongols fought the Golden Kingdom, those who guarded the Yong became the Golden Soldiers. The wolf Mongols who dominated the steppe were also stopped here, and they had to wait until another Mongol soldier detoured through Bauhinia Pass, laid down Zhuo and Yi Erzhou, and then turned around and attacked Juyong Pass from the south, and only then took this Xiongguan under the attack of the end and the end.
From the Han Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, Juyongguan fought a total of sixteen relatively important battles here, and the proportion of victories on the attacking side was only three-tenths, which shows that Juyongguan is dangerous, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and it is not a vain word. It was precisely for this reason that Zhu Di of Daming, once he moved the capital to Beijing, he turned his attention to Juyong, saying: "Juyongguan Road is narrow and dangerous, and the forbidden throat of Beiping is also." A hundred people will keep it, and all the people will not be able to see it, and they will not look north according to it. This is absolutely true, and there is another sentence in the Ming Dynasty called: "Juyong is tilted." South of the pass, all battlefields are battlefields. That is to say, as long as the Juyong Pass is broken, the enemy in the north can drive straight into the Central Plains without any worries.
Since it is so important, how did the Ming Dynasty set up this "world's first Xiongguan"?
The first is divided into two passes, north and south, and the castle is located in the canyon north of the south mouth. The city gate is only north and south, the urn city is in the south, flanked by high mountains, a throat passage, in the heavy cause of cockroaches, lush forests, straight to the graben. Because of the danger, this is the first military point. Also because of the danger, in the Taiping Period, it later became one of the so-called Eight Scenic Spots of Yanjing, called "Juyong Diecui". It is said that in the Jurchen Golden Kingdom, it has been played like this. And the scenery here, naturally because the mountains are majestic, the peaks overlap, as well as the clear stream lingering, the mountain birds are singing, the terrain is dangerous, the people live here is of course impossible, becoming an ecological resort is a natural thing.
Of course, Daming should be more securely locked on top of this natural and dangerous terrain. That is, during the Jingtai period, the Guancheng was expanded and reinforced, and two gates were set up on land and water. Today, on the ticket gate of Juyongguan South and North Guancheng, there is also a plaque, saying that it is the real relic left by Ming Jingtai when it was built in the tenth year. It must be said that the Ming Dynasty really worked hard. Starting from the fork road city and Badaling on the outer line of Juyong, to Shangguan Castle, Zhongguan City, and finally the south entrance, there are five lines of defense. The southern urn city is a horseshoe-shaped fortress, there is a heavy eaves on the upper side of the mountain tower, the arc of the urn city platform is equipped with a fort, the outer wall has a battlement, the inner wall is low and unpalleted, the intention is to lure the enemy into the urn city during the battle, the main city is closed to block its entry into the city, and then put the urn gate, the enemy is trapped in the urn city, can only be tied hands, the so-called urn catch turtle, so it is called the urn city. In order to ensure victory, a temple of Guan Wang was also built in the urn city, presumably hoping that the martial saint Guan Yunchang would protect Daming.
The most important warhorse of that era also gained a unique position here. That is, the so-called horse temple, from the Sui, Tang, Song, Liao, all the dynasties. Of course, there will be no less juyongguan, which was originally built during the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty, and then rebuilt on a large scale during the Qianlong period of the Great Qing Dynasty.
In the Ming Dynasty, the times were already different. The army stationed here has, as never before, added a large number of firearms in addition to swords, guns, bows and arrows and armor. The divine hangar, which was built in the fourteenth year of the Ming Dynasty, was named because of the storage of various firearms such as guns and cannons. The so-called Flang machine and the Hongyi cannon in the annals of history have all had moments of great power here. The most powerful Hongyi cannon weighed three thousand pounds, the sound of the shock tens of miles, the range is said to be more than 500 meters.
This point is not a false statement, when the later people restored Juyongguan BeiguanCheng, they excavated 23 earth and stone shells and 6 iron shells, with a maximum diameter of 15 centimeters.
After the change of the Ming and Qing dynasties, especially in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the northern nomads were no longer a threat to the Central Plains, and the military significance of Juyongguan declined step by step, and the four words "Juyong Diecui" mentioned above were actually written by the Qianlong Emperor, and there are still royal pen tablets to this day, which to some extent determines the transition of Juyongguan from a military fortress to a scenic spot. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the gradually abandoned Juyongguan was even more so. In 1987, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed it as a World Heritage Site of Humanity. Today's Juyongguan, obviously has no connection with the knife soldiers, and is completely a tourist attraction.