The Great Wall of China 221 BC-AD 1644 by Stephen Turnbull

Author:Stephen Turnbull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Great Wall of China 221 BC–AD 1644
ISBN: 9781782005162
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

The Ming Great Wall runs across precipitous mountain ridges covered with vegetation and loose rocks where no army would think of crossing, like this dramatic ‘switchback’ on the Jinshanling section, where one feels that in such places the Great Wall exists only to defend its own existence.

Several theories may be put forward to explain the presence of the Great Wall where common sense may suggest that it was not needed. One explanation sees the Ming Great Wall as more of a political creation than a military one. Resources were plentiful, so if certain sections demanded that a long wall should be built across mountains for sound military reasons, why not go the whole hog and join it all up? It gave work, prestige and a reassurance of security to the Chinese population that disjointed and isolated sections could not provide.

A further explanation may lie in the genuine usefulness of the towers along the Great Wall. Each was a little castle in its own right and provided observational, signalling and defensive functions that would be of real use in handling a nomad invasion. But for the towers to work effectively there had to be good communication links between them. This did not only concern signalling, but involved the provision of covering fire and the rapid movement of troops from one tower to another if they were needed. It was therefore logical to link the towers by an all-weather defensible walkway. On this model the ‘stone dragon’ is merely the means of linking the key defensive installations of the towers, so apart from them the magnificent overall structure is little more than the ‘Great Footpath of China’!

Support for this theory is provided by the existence of spurs from the Great Wall to isolated towers, often at a considerable distance away, and by the observation of gaps in the Great Wall. By ‘gaps’ I do not mean large sections that were never completed, but small gaps where the Great Wall hits a ‘dead end’ at a very steep slope or even a sheer cliff face, such as the ‘yellow cliff’ at Huangyaguan. The Simatai sector may boast a wall that rises at an angle of 70 degrees, but the builders of the Great Wall were no fools. There were places where to build an easy link would prove to be as much to an attacker’s advantage as it was to a defender’s, so it was left as a rough scramble up a narrow mountain path, which could be defended more easily.

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