Yang Yiqing (14541530) behind it.
Following the success of the Ordos walls, Yu Zijun proposed construction of a further wall that would extend from the Yellow River bend in the Ordos to the Sihaiye Pass (四海冶口; in present-day
Yanqing County) near the capital Beijing, running a distance of more than 1300 ''li'' (about ). The project received approval in 1485, but Yu's political enemies harped on the cost overruns and forced Yu to scrap the project and retire the same year. For more than 50 years after Yu's resignation, political struggle prevented major wall constructions on a scale comparable to Yu's Ordos project.
However, wall construction continued regardless of court politics during this time. The Ordos walls underwent extension, elaboration, and repair well into the 16th century.
The Walls of Xuanfu–Datong and the western reaches
With the Ordos now adequately fortified, the Mongols avoided its walls by riding east to invade
Datong and
Xuanfu, which were two major garrisons guarding the corridor to Beijing where no walls had been built. The two defence lines of Xuanfu and Datong left by the Northern Qi and the early Ming had deteriorated by this point, and for all intents and purposes the inner line was the capital's main line of defence. Starting from the 1520s, proposals were made to strengthen the defences of this region, but the plan was disrupted by the local populace's resistance to the prospect of labour; only in the 1540s did work proceed in earnest.
From 1544 to 1549, a defensive building program took place on a scale unprecedented in Chinese history. The project was led by
Weng Wanda (翁萬達; 14981552), the Supreme Commander of the Xuan–Da defence area (宣大總督), which was responsible for the Xuanfu, Datong, and Shanxi areas. Troops were re-deployed along the outer line, new walls and beacon towers were constructed, and fortifications were restored and extended along both lines.
Firearms
A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see legal definitions).
The first firearms originated ...
and
artillery
Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...
were first mounted on the walls and towers around this time, for both defence and signalling purposes. The project's completion was announced in the sixth month of 1548, but the walls were steadily augmented for a time after that. At its height, the Xuan–Da portion of the Great Wall totalled about of wall, with some sections being doubled-up with two lines of wall, some tripled or even quadrupled. The outer frontier was now protected by a wall called the "outer border" (外邊, ''wàibiān'') that extended from the Yellow River's edge at the Piantou Pass (偏頭關) along the Inner Mongolia border with Shanxi into Hebei province; the "inner border" wall (內邊, ''nèibiān'') ran southeast from Piantou Pass for some , ending at the
Pingxing Pass; a "river wall" (河邊, ''hébiān'') also ran from the Piantou Pass and followed the Yellow River southwards for about . The Hebei section of the Great Wall was further fortified by planting trees along the wall.

As with Yu Zijun's wall in the Ordos, the Mongols shifted their attacks away from the newly strengthened Xuan–Da sector to less well-protected areas. In the west,
Shaanxi province
Shaanxi is a province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to the west. Shaanxi ...
became the target of nomads riding west from the Yellow River loop. The westernmost fortress of Ming China, the
Jiayu Pass, saw substantial enhancement with walls starting in 1539, and from there border walls were built discontinuously down the Gansu Corridor to
Wuwei, where the low earthen wall split into two. The northern section passed through
Zhongwei and
Yinchuan
Yinchuan is the capital of the Ningxia, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, and was the capital of the Tangut people, Tangut-led Western Xia, Western Xia dynasty. It has an area of and a total population of 2,859,074 according to the 2020 C ...
, where it met the western edge of the Yellow River loop before connecting with the Ordos walls, while the southern section passed through
Lanzhou
Lanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu province in northwestern China. Located on the banks of the Yellow River, it is a key regional transportation hub, connecting areas further west by rail to the eastern half of the country. His ...
and continued northeast to
Dingbian. The origins and the exact route of this so-called "Tibetan loop" are still not clear.
In the east, the
Tümed Mongols under
Altan Khan raided Sihaiye and Dabaiyang (大白陽) in the seventh month of 1548. These points were much further east than previous raids and much closer to Beijing. The terrain there proved difficult to traverse, and so fortifications were not seen as urgently needed before the raids. In response, Weng Wanda proposed to close the gaps by connecting the walls of Xuan–Da with the signal towers of the eastern
Jizhou defence command (薊州鎮). Only one sixth of the 436,000 ''
liang'' of silver demanded for this project was allotted, and Weng Wanda supervised only briefly before leaving office on the death of his father.
The Great Wall outside Beijing
In 1550, having once more been refused a request for trade, Altan Khan invaded the Xuan–Da region. However, despite several attempts, he could not take Xuanfu due to Weng Wanda's double fortified line while the garrison at Datong bribed him to not attack there. Instead of continuing to operate in the area, he circled around Weng Wanda's wall to the relatively lightly defended
Gubeikou, northeast of Beijing. From there Altan Khan passed through the defences and raided the suburbs of Beijing. The Ming court put up minimal resistance and watched the suburbs burn as they waited for reinforcements to drive the invaders out. According to one contemporary source, the raid took more than 60,000 lives and an additional 40,000 people became prisoners. As a response to this raid, the focus of the Ming's northern defences shifted from the Xuan–Da region to the
Jizhou and
Changping Defence Commands (grouped and abbreviated as Ji–Chang) where the breach took place. Later in the same year, the dry-stone walls of the Ji–Chang area were replaced by stone and mortar. These allowed the Chinese to build on steeper, more easily defended slopes and facilitated construction of features such as
ramparts,
crenelations, and
peepholes. The effectiveness of the new walls was demonstrated in the failed Mongol raid of 1554, where raiders expecting a repeat of the events of 1550 were surprised by the higher wall and stiff Chinese resistance.
The success of the wall did not always translate into political success for its builders. Detractors cited its high costs and the drain on military manpower as reasons for their opposition and in 1557 the
Grand Coordinator Wu Jiahui (吳嘉會) was jailed on charges of
embezzlement
Embezzlement (from Anglo-Norman, from Old French ''besillier'' ("to torment, etc."), of unknown origin) is a type of financial crime, usually involving theft of money from a business or employer. It often involves a trusted individual taking ...
due to faulty and wasteful wall-building. Construction thereafter had to be low-key: the Supreme Commander of Shanxi (山西總督), Liu Tao (劉燾), minimized political attention to himself by claiming that he was "building through non-building."
In 1567
Qi Jiguang
Qi Jiguang (, November 12, 1528 – January 17, 1588), courtesy name Yuanjing, art names Nantang and Mengzhu, posthumous name Wuyi, was a Chinese military general and writer of the Ming dynasty. He is best known for leading the defense on th ...
and
Tan Lun, successful generals who fended off the
Jiajing wokou raids
The Jiajing wokou raids caused extensive damage to the coast of China in the 16th century, during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) in the Ming dynasty. The term "wokou" originally referred to Japanese pirates who crossed the sea a ...
, were reassigned to manage the Ji–Chang Defense Commands and step up the defences of the capital region. They submitted an ambitious proposal to build 3,000 brick towers along the Great Wall, and manoeuvred their way out of political opposition through the efforts of their allies at the imperial court. Although the number of towers was later scaled back to 1200, the project, which started in 1569 and lasted two years, marked the first large-scale use of hollow watchtowers on the Wall. Up until this point, most previous towers along the Great Wall had been solid, with a small hut on top for a sentry to take shelter from the elements and Mongol arrows. In contrast, the Ji–Chang towers built from 1569 onwards were hollow brick structures, allowing soldiers interior space to live, store food and water, stockpile weapons, and take shelter from Mongol arrows.
Altan Khan eventually made peace with China when it opened border cities for trade in 1571, alleviating the Mongol need to raid. This, coupled with Qi and Tan's efforts to secure the frontier, brought a period of relative peace along the border. However, minor raids still happened from time to time when the profits of raiding outweighed the profits of trade, and so wall-building continued.
On 6July 1576, a minor Mongol raid broke through a small gap in the Wall and resulted in the death of several high ranking border officials in the vicinity of
Simatai
Simatai (), a section of the Great Wall of China located in the north of Miyun District, 120 km northeast of the city center of Beijing, holds the access to Gubeikou, a strategic pass in the eastern part of the Great Wall. It was closed in ...
, east of Gubeikou. After this incident and starting in 1577, the Ming became committed to closing all gaps along the frontier around Beijing whilst strengthening the walls. As a result, the earthen defences around Beijing were torn down and replaced by ones built with stone bricks and ''sanhetu'' (三合土), an early sort of
concrete
Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...
made of
lime, clay tiles, and sand. Areas of difficult terrain once considered impassable were also walled off, leading to the well-known vistas of a stone-faced Great Wall snaking over dramatic landscapes that tourists still see today.
Except for a lull in the 1590s due to resources being diverted to deal with the
Japanese invasions of Korea, wall construction continued until the demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644.
The Wall and the fall of the Ming
The last decades of the Ming saw
famines,
floods
A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...
, economic chaos, rebellions, and invasions. In 1618, the upstart Jianzhou Jurchen leader
Nurhaci
Nurhaci (14 May 1559 – 30 September 1626), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Taizu of Qing, was the founding khan of the Jurchen people, Jurchen-led Later Jin (1616–1636), Later Jin dynasty.
As the leader of the House of Aisin-Gi ...
united the tribes of Manchuria and declared war on the Ming. After the
Fushun garrison within the Liaodong Wall surrendered to Nurhaci the next year, the Ming court assembled a Chinese–Korean army numbering above 100,000 men to contain him, but they were catastrophically defeated at the
Battle of Sarhu. Nurhaci made substantial progress in his conquest of Liaodong until he was mortally wounded at the 1626
Battle of Ningyuan
The Battle of Ningyuan () took place between the Ming dynasty and the Later Jin (1616–1636), Later Jin dynasty in 1626. The Later Jin had been waging war on the Ming for several years, and their leader Nurhaci had deemed Xingcheng, Ningyuan to ...
by
Yuan Chonghuan. He was succeeded by his son
Hung Taiji, who worked to undermine Yuan Chonghuan by spreading rumours of Yuan's collaboration with the Jurchens. To drive the point home, Hung Taiji sent an army around Ningyuan through Mongol territories to breach the Great Wall pass at
Xifengkou in the fall of 1629, taking advantage of a rift in the Ming ranks due to Yuan Chonghuan's execution of his fellow commander
Mao Wenlong
Mao Wenlong (; 10 February 1576 – 24 July 1629), courtesy name Zhennan, was a Chinese military general of the Ming dynasty, best known for commanding an independent detachment based in Dongjiang, a strategically important island in the Yellow ...
. This breach, known as the
Jisi Incident, was the first time the Jurchens had broken through the Great Wall into China proper since the troubles in the northeast began. Yuan Chonghuan hastily sent an army to drive off the raiders from the walls of Beijing, but political damage had already been done. Yuan Chonghuan was accused of treason for letting this happen, and in 1630 he was executed by
slow dismemberment while his family were exterminated or exiled.

Following Hung Taiji's raid, regular garrison troops in the western defence zones along the Great Wall were sent east to defend the capital, which had the unintended consequence of instigating more instability. The regions of Shaanxi had already been afflicted by adverse weather, heavy
taxation
A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal person, legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to Pigouvian tax, regulate and reduce nega ...
, and
fiscal mismanagement, so the removal of a substantial military presence encouraged the inhabitants to turn to banditry and rebellion; the remaining garrison forces, already unpaid and resentful, saw little choice but to throw in their lot with the rebels. A prominent leader who rose from the ranks of the rebels was
Li Zicheng, the self-titled "Dashing Prince" (闖王, ''Chuǎng Wáng'') who came to dominate Central China by 1642. Throughout his rise there were several occasions on which he could have been extinguished by the Ming, but Jurchen breaches of the Great Wall – the Jurchens had raided across the Great Wall several times since 1629, including in 1634, 1638, and 1642 – distracted the Ming court's attention. The Ming were not able to effectively deal with the simultaneous internal and external threats, much less maintain a consistent defence along the Great Wall. In 1635 Hung Taiji renamed his people the
Manchus
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) an ...
and declared himself the emperor of a new Qing dynasty the following year. However, the Manchus were not yet willing to launch an invasion of conquest against the Ming; as Hung Taiji remarked in 1642, "The
Shanhai Pass
The Shanhai Pass () is a major fortified gateway at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China and one of its most crucial fortifications, as the pass commands the narrowest choke point in the strategic Liaoxi Corridor, an elongated coasta ...
cannot be taken."
In the first months of 1644, Li Zicheng, having consolidated control over his home province Shaanxi, declared himself the founder of a new
Shun dynasty, and marched against the Ming court in Beijing. His invasion route brought the Shun army along the Great Wall to neutralize its heavily fortified garrisons. In this effort Li was met with next to no resistance as most garrisons surrendered to the Shun with no major fighting, except at the
Ningwu Pass where the general
Zhou Yuji (周遇吉) fought to the death. By April17, both the major garrisons at Datong and Xuanfu had surrendered to Li Zicheng, and most Ming hopes were placed on the last Great Wall pass at
Juyong and its defender
Tang Tong (). However, just as the Ming court was discussing the means of increasing provisions to Juyong Pass, it received word that Tang Tong had surrendered and let the Shun army through on April21. With all options exhausted, the Ming's
Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself as the Shun army entered Beijing on April25, 1644.
The largest remaining Ming fighting force in North China at the time of Beijing's fall was
Wu Sangui
Wu Sangui (; 8 June 1612 – 2 October 1678), courtesy name Changbai () or Changbo (), was a Chinese military leader who played a key role in the fall of the Ming dynasty and the founding of the Qing dynasty. In Chinese folklore, Wu Sangui is r ...
's 40,000-man frontier force, who had abandoned the Ningyuan garrison to come to the emperor's aid. Halfway to Beijing, Wu received news of Chongzhen's death, so he went back to garrison the Shanhai Pass, the eastern terminus of the main Great Wall line. He and his men were now caught between the rebels within the Great Wall and the Manchus without. After some deliberation, Wu Sangui decided to resist the new Shun regime, having heard that Li Zicheng had ordered Wu's family executed. On May3 and May10 Wu Sangui twice defeated the Shun vanguard led by the turncoat Tang Tong, but he knew that his force alone was insufficient to fight Li Zicheng's main army. Wu Sangui wrote to the Manchus for help, promising "great profits" if they assisted him in defeating the rebels. The Manchu
prince-regent Dorgon
Dorgon (17 November 1612 – 31 December 1650) was a Manchu prince and regent of the early Qing dynasty. Born in the House of Aisin-Gioro as the 14th son of Nurhaci (the founder of the Later Jin dynasty, which was the predecessor of the Qi ...
(Hung Taiji had died in 1643) determined that this was the opportunity to claim the
Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven ( zh, t=天命, p=Tiānmìng, w=, l=Heaven's command) is a Chinese ideology#Political ideologies, political ideology that was used in History of China#Ancient China, Ancient China and Chinese Empire, Imperial China to legit ...
for the Qing. Dorgon made clear in his reply that the Manchus would help Wu Sangui, but Wu would have to submit to the Qing; Wu had little choice but to accept.
On May27, as the Shun army approached the Shanhai Pass from the south, Wu Sangui opened the gates to let the Qing army through the pass from the north. Up to this point the
Battle of Shanhai Pass
The Battle of Shanhai Pass, fought on May 27, 1644 at Shanhai Pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall of China, Great Wall, was a decisive battle leading to the beginning of the Qing dynasty rule in China proper. There, the Qing prince-rege ...
between Li Zicheng and Wu Sangui had been moving in Li's favour, but the sudden appearance of the Manchu
bannermen decisively routed the Shun forces. Having thus entered through the Great Wall, the Manchus seized Beijing on June5. They eventually defeated both the rebel-founded Shun dynasty and the
remaining Ming resistance, establishing Qing rule over all of China.
Construction
The workforce
Central policy alone did not decide whether the walls would be built, as various "defense commands" (邊鎮, ''biānzhèn'') along the border possessed considerable autonomy to deal with the nomads, leading to a decentralized approach to wall-building along the frontier. Each wall-building project was designed to meet imminent or potential threats along short sections of the empire's northern border, never larger in scope than a single regional defence command, and were often as short as a few hundred meters. In most cases, frontier policy decisions of this period were made by the
supreme commander or the
grand coordinator in charge of the defence command, who would then send their proposals to the
Ministry of War (兵部, ''Bīngbù'') and the emperor for approval. If approved, funding for the project would be footed by the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Revenue (戶部, ''Hùbù''). In essence, the Ming Great Wall was built in a piecemeal fashion by a number of regional commanders over a long period of time, not as one monumental project ordered by the central government.
There were three main groups of people that made up the builders of the Great Wall during the Ming dynasty: frontier guards, peasants, and convicts. Towards the end of the Ming Great Wall building period, skilled artisans became a prominent group of wall builders as well. During the Ming period, soldiers were in shortage due to low productivity on the military colonies, called ''weisuo'' (衛所). The northern frontier, the most heavily guarded border of Ming China, was kept at 40% strength, which was equivalent to 300,000 men across a 2,000 mile border. Because of low productivity on military farms and the need for more guards along the frontier, most of the frontier soldiers were from military families that served on the farms. Soldiers were involved in the building of the Great Wall because Ming officials preferred to fight a defensive war on the northern frontier. This took the form of building fortresses and walls along the frontier to protect the empire from invaders. Therefore, the building of the Great Wall fell on the shoulders of the military. Depending on the military colony and the general in charge, labor could be paid or unpaid. If they were paid, it averaged out to six pounds of silver per man per year. But like peasants and convicts, labor was always conscripted by the government, meaning that the government would force people to work on the wall.
Like previous dynasties, the Ming officials also recruited peasants from the surrounding areas to work on the wall for seasons at a time. Not much is known about how the peasants were recruited or how they worked, but the labor was often conscripted and paid very little.
The last major group of wall builders during the Ming dynasty were convicts. Convicts were the other part of the military that was not conscripted from hereditary military families. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, only military convicts were sent into frontier exile, but as time went on, civilians convicts were also sent to the frontier. Because Ming officials wanted to create more hereditary military families, unmarried convicts were often given a wife from the female convict population to start a family with.
In addition to these main groups of wall builders, there were also masons who were hired by the emperor to build the more sophisticated parts of the wall that were made of brick and mortar instead of the traditional tamped earth method. These workers were paid significantly more by the emperor because of their specialized skills in wall building, including working with kilns to create the bricks and designing the walls to fit the terrain.
Living and working conditions for the wall builders were miserable and often fatal. Traveling to the Great Wall itself was a dangerous journey that many would die on. This difficult journey would also make supplying the garrisons with food and other supplies extremely difficult. Once at the wall, workers lived in "inhumane conditions" that were rampant with disease, lacked basic needs, and was incredibly dangerous to navigate. These factors, combined with the harsh working climate instituted by the generals in charge of the wall building, lead to a high mortality rate among wall builders, which is why many call the Great Wall "the longest cemetery in the world".
Ming soldiers who had built and guarded the Great Wall were given land nearby for their families to settle down and farm small plots of land. There are altogether 158 such villages. One of these villages in the vicinity of the Great Wall include Chengziyu (城子峪) in
Funing District of
Hebei
Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...
. Their ancestors were recruited from the districts of
Jinhua
Jinhua is a prefecture-level city in central Zhejiang province in eastern China. It borders the provincial capital of Hangzhou to the northwest, Quzhou to the southwest, Lishui to the south, Taizhou, Zhejiang, Taizhou to the east, and Shaoxin ...
and
Yiwu in
Zhejiang
)
, translit_lang1_type2 =
, translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese)
, image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg
, image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains
, image_map = Zhejiang i ...
province and had served in the Ming military under
Qi Jiguang
Qi Jiguang (, November 12, 1528 – January 17, 1588), courtesy name Yuanjing, art names Nantang and Mengzhu, posthumous name Wuyi, was a Chinese military general and writer of the Ming dynasty. He is best known for leading the defense on th ...
.
Techniques
Several techniques were used to build these walls. For materials, the Ming used earth, stone, timber, and lime like previous dynasties. But they also used bricks and tiles, especially for areas with rougher terrain, which was a new technique in China at the time. These were made with kilns, which were a new invention at the time. Materials were transported hundreds of miles either on the backs of workers, by hand carts or wheelbarrows, or on animal-driven carts.
There were two main techniques for building the wall. The first was the
rammed earth
Rammed earth is a technique for construction, constructing foundations, floors, and walls using compacted natural raw materials such as soil, earth, chalk, Lime (material), lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently ...
method, which was used on level areas, and had been used by previous dynasties as well. Materials at the location were compressed together to build the wall. The Ming dynasty refined this technique by being able to do this on a larger scale than previous dynasties. The Ming builders also created a new technique, the two-layer method, which involved bricks and tiles. This was used on uneven terrain, like hills and mountains. Bricks were stacked diagonally if the incline or decline of the landscape was less than 45 degrees, and were shaped into stairs if the incline or decline was greater than 45 degrees.
Siege techniques
The
Mongol
Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of M ...
Northern Yuan dynasty
The Northern Yuan was a dynastic state ruled by the Mongol Borjigin clan based in the Mongolian Plateau. It existed as a rump state after the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 and lasted until its conquest by the Jurchen people, Jurchen-led ...
used to send ahead a force of up to a thousand men that carried
pickaxe
A pickaxe, pick-axe, or pick is a generally T-shaped hand tool used for Leverage (mechanics), prying. Its head is typically metal, attached perpendicularly to a longer handle, traditionally made of wood, occasionally metal, and increasingly ...
s to break
down the wall whose core consisted mostly of rammed earth.
[Atwood, Christopher P. (2004): ''Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire'', Facts On File, , p. 410]
Appraisal
In academia, opinions about the Wall's role in the Ming dynasty's downfall are mixed. Historians such as
Arthur Waldron and
Julia Lovell are critical of the whole wall-building exercise in light of its ultimate failure in protecting China; the former compared the Great Wall with the failed
Maginot Line
The Maginot Line (; ), named after the Minister of War (France), French Minister of War André Maginot, is a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built by French Third Republic, France in the 1930s to deter invas ...
of the French in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. However, independent scholar
David Spindler notes that the Wall, being only part of a complex foreign policy, received "disproportionate blame" because it was the most obvious relic of that policy.
References
Bibliography
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{{Ming dynasty topics
Great Wall of China
Ming dynasty architecture
Military history of the Ming dynasty