Great Ming Military

Thanks for the support. The article is still WIP at the moment though. Stay tuned for future update.

I'd say Chinese were definitely at the front row, by the sheer size of their walls if nothing else, but Europeans and Indians built some crazy good fortifications too. Concentric wall for example are simply genius.

Why didn't the Chinese build concentric walls? Does it have to do with the rammed earth construction?

Nothing to do with rammed earth. Chinese fortified cities were settlements and economic centres first and foremost, and city population outgrew the wall limit fairly often, so city walls were frequently demolished and expanded, or entirely new walls erected to enclose the old city. Given the size of a Chinese city, adding a concentric wall cost a lot, the space between two walls went to waste, and it inconvenient the population.

Moat wall (Yang Ma Qiang/羊馬墻 & Hu Xian Qiang/護險墻) and crescent fort (Yue Cheng/月城) were Chinese applications of the same concept. They don't enclose the entire city though.

(BTW, moat walls inconvenient herders that wanted to water their livestock in the moat and were sometimes vandalised/demolished by them)

oh, thanks for the reply, very informative. Oh yeah, I can imagine concentric fortifications being quite a difficulty as a city ring defense for economic centres. I meant round towers (at least the brick exterior?), my mistake! It seemed like the rectangular or square city towers were standardized during the Ming/Qing whilst Europe start adopting circular city towers more and more in response to cannon siege warfare.

I am guessing it has also to do mainly with economic factors for the reason?

Btw, it's interesting I've never heard about the inconvenience or even usage of the moat for herders.

Chinese people used a combination of rectangular and rounded bastions during Song Dynasty. But rectangular bastion became the norm during Ming-Qing period. In the first place, the majority of China's enemies weren't that big on cannon warfare, and Chinese wall was more resistant to cannon anyway.(when the Manchus did show up with advanced cannons, Chinese people tried to adopt angled bastion/star fort instead of rounded bastion).

The South-west corner of Xi'an city wall still has a rounded bastion. I will update the post in the near future.

BTW, Chinese people actually developed some kind of proto-angled bastion in the LATE 14th CENTURY.

That's quite strange. In the 14th century there are literally no reasons for its appearence(and its defensive qualities will be simply inferior).

Angled bastion can eliminate dead zone/blind spot of the wall, which is always welcomed.

Even 4-5 thousand yr old Egyptian fortreses(Buhen) did it just fine with protrouding bastions, the very same way chinese city walls do it.

Star fort was born out of necessity to achieve the same effect in a world full of numerous and readily availible siege artillery.
I.e. where both walls and heavily sloped parapets with thrir huge dead zones(which replaced vertical battlements) had to survive incoming fire.

14th century is 1.5-2 centuries too early...

Some princibles that worked for star fort also work for pre-gunpowder fortifications. In particular, the corners of a square or rectangular fortress are its weak spots, since the attackers can focus their attack on one single tower, and that corner tower cannot be supported by adjacent walls/towers. It make sense to build corner bastions into a more acute angled shape to limit the area that attackers can concentrate.

what would the advantages of a square shaped bastion/tower be over a round one? Would it be that you build it into an angle?

@Wakawakwaka
Square-shaped tower has less "dead zone" than round tower, i.e. when enemy troops hide at the base of the wall, more defenders can shoot at them from a square tower than a round one.

was the reason why round towers were preferred in Europe because they were harder to sap?

Yes, and round tower is also more resistant to siege weapons.

but I don't think you can have angled bastions/towers on round towers though

@wakawakwaka
You can stack a round cavalier on top of agled bastion, I suppose.

What about something like this indian fort ? I mean it has a sloping round towers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tughlaqabad_Fort#/media/File:Ghiyath_aldin_tughluq_tomb_from_tughluqabad.JPG

@wakawakwaka
Hmm? I can't really tell anything out of the ordinary for that fort...

the towers are sloped and it is round. it looks like a cone with the point chopped off. But it doesn't seem to be as sloped or as effective as a trapezoid sloped tower.

@Wakawakwaka
The sloped surface makes it harder for the attackers to mount a ladder, but it's a pretty common feature otherwise.

Thank you for your encouraging words. For the most part this series of articles are meant to discuss the various parts and components of a fortification, so they can equally apply to walled cities and smaller forts and castles.

Do you have link for potential miao or yi fortification if it still exist? I know about Qiang and nakhi watchtowers but not the fortification of thoses people.

Does Miaowangcheng count?

I found the video that I was talking about. It was indeed Miaowangcheng (Literally "King Miao's city), located in Tongren in Guizhou province.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M3wEZ1WpkY

Development about what?

I bet not. Being a nomadic people, the Mongols mostly relied on their mobility to evade potential enemies, as opposed to building cities and other stationary defenses.

Thanks for the kind words! I hope to see you write something similar on Japanese fortifications too!

I've watched a couple videos of TW3K siege, it seems the walls are modeled after Ming/Qing-style bricked walls, but downsized. They are suitable for small to moderately large sized forts/towns/cities, but too small for major cities or capital. From the destroyed sections, they seem to be made of stones instead of rammed earth too.

Nanjing wall is an interesting piece of history. Even though the wall is ancient, you can actually find interesting features on Nanjing wall like concrete-reinforced modern gun ports, as Chinese troops also modified the wall to defend against Japanese invasion during the second Sino-Japanese war.

There are also some pillboxes built with Ming period bricks.

I don't know why you bring out the second Sino-Japanese war as it's completely irrelevant to the topic. And yes any ancient or medieval fortifications would fall under modern bombardment, be it Chinese or European.

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@henrique
With part 2 of my article under way, you should've noticed by now that Chinese walls also played an important role in flood control. "Improving" the fortification design to withstand more destructive weaponry sounds like a wonderful idea until the entire city is submerged under year-long meters deep floodwater and millions died.

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@henrique, I'm not the owner of this blog, but I have the right to reply. I sense some sort of prejudice and arrogance in your comments. The wars of the 20th century have nothing to do with this blog, since it talks about ancient and medieval Chinese warfare. It's strange that you bring up the second sino-japanese war. And it's even stranger that you mentioned how those medieval Chinese structures couldn't stand modern firepower. Don't single out medieval Chinese structures, cause any medieval structures, no matter Chinese, Japanese, or European, cannot withstand modern firepower, since they were not made to withstand 20th century shells. And there're still many authentic ancient walls in China from Ming/Qing period and even from Song period or earlier. It's not just limited Pingyao, Jingzhou, and Xi'an. Do some research before you post your comments, and stop being arrogant.

@henrique, the fact that you think ancient China lacked dams, dykes, or other flood control systems shows again the lack of research on you part. Dujiangyan, which is an irrigation and flood control system built in 256 BC in Sichuan by the Qin state of the Warring States period, is still functioning today.

@henrique, and the drainage canals of Ganzhou designed by Liu Yi in the years 1068 to 1077 during the Song dynasty, still exists today and still takes part of the flood control responsibility of Ganzhou (they've since built new dams, but this old drainage system is still functioning).

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@henrique
You're responsible for your actions and words. Stop shunning away from your own prejudices and face them like a man, I didn't misinterpret anything. No, you don't know the things that I said. Briefly mentioning Yu the Great (which is a legendary figure with no real evidence or time period) doesn't equate to mentioning the examples that I've given, since I've provided the exact time period and location. Romans were perhaps more sophisticated in certain types of dams or aqueducts, but that doesn't mean ancient China didn't have dams/canals or have less of them. Based on your above comments, your knowledge on ancient China is severely lacking, and you shouldn't make any quick assumptions about an area that you have no clues about.
The Chinese walls were medieval or pre-modern, based on the time period they were built. The fact that they can stop 19th century shells doesn't make them 19th century walls, since they weren't built with the intention to stop those shells.
The Chinese already had numerous civil wars in the 1920's and early 30's before the Japanese invasion, of course those were 20th century warfare. Unless you have a different time table of your own and don't consider the 1920's as the 20th century, which is rather weird.
No, the second sino-japanese war wasn't the end for Chinese walls, as we still have many walls left today.
If you are interested in roman or japanese history, then this blog is perhaps not the best place for you. Go to profess your childish roman or japanese superiority somewhere else, stop disturbing the people here who are genuinely interested in Chinese history.

The main purpose of 京杭大运河 is to facilitate the transport of goods and people between the Central Plains and the Jiangnan region. It's like an ancient logistic highway. Of course I don't deny the possibility that it could be used as a canal to divert floods of the Huai River or the Yangtse River, but that's not its main purpose.

Ok now, I think we all should cool our head a little bit and not get too emotional, please refrain from heating up the argument any further.

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@Henrique
Ok, here we go again. I don't know what a gravity dam is, and I never claimed that I know. Usually I don't make assumptions about things that I don't know, unlike you. I didn't talk about Romans in my earlier comments, cause I know that my knowledge about them is rather lacking. The only time that I mentioned them is that "the Romans were perhaps more sophisticated in certain types of dams or aqueducts". Unlike you who don't really know ancient China, yet are quick to draw conclusions based on the few info that you have, and make silly comparisons of Roman vs China, which is a topic that has been done to death on other forums such as Historum, and usually boiled down to Roman fanboys vs Chinese fanboys in the end. It's precisely this type of situation that I don't want to see happening again on this blog, so I suggest that you refrain from doing such.
And again, I suggest that you should stop talking about the sino-japanese war of the 20th century, as it's outside of the scope of this blog.
The rest of what you said simply doesn't make any sense so I won't bother to reply.
Listen, I'm not cyber-stalking you. I couldn't care less about who you are. But the thing is I'm a follower of this blog and I really appreciate what the blogger has done, and I don't want to see roman fanboys or japanese weeboos like you destroying the peaceful atmosphere here by making those clueless comparisons. And if you're still unsure about what I mean, it's against you that I say these things, not against other readers of this blog. Don't try to put the blame on others, it's you that I'm targeting. Really I suggest that you leave this blog and stop disturbing me and other people here who're interested in Chinese history.

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That's enough you two. Go argue somewhere else.

Hi.

From memory I believe that the Ming built reservoirs as part of the canal deepening maintenance works. The reservoirs were used to regulate canal water levels.

Unfortunately I can't see Henrique's comments but it seemed like cities in China preferred to divert river water as canals over aqueducts, and build water reservoir pools over say gravity dams for public use.... Military use is a whole 'nother story.

Um... as far as I can tell the canal could hardly have helped management large river flooding and the opposite occurred where bad maintenance and climate disasters threatened to choke the grand canal. Grand canal despite pound locks proved to unreliable at times at supplying water and transport to inland Chang'an which is perhaps why Luoyang and later capitals were never again picked for modern day Xi'an general location.

Yu the great learnt from his father and instead of dike system for the 1 in 100,000 deadly dam flooding that wrecked havoc on early Chinese civilisation relied on river deepening and river diversion approach to control the riverss.

made a mistake pound locks were invented during the Song dynasty. Hence the reason why central ancient capitals were no longer preferred may have nothing to do with canal water level managment issues during the Tang dynasty as mounting cost of grain shipments due to canal failure and the strategic choke during An Lushan rebellion highlighted the strategic concerns of otherwise sound fortification locations of the twin ancient capitals.

@Khal, the reasons are not that complicated. Chang'an had been thoroughly destroyed by the wars and rebellions of the late Tang, to the point that it costed too much to rebuild there. On the other hand, Bianliang (Kaifeng) had served as the capital of the Five Dynasties, so it was natural that the Song chose an available capital instead of rebuilding Chang'an.
Another reason might be that after several hundred years of continuous habitation by up to a million people at its peak, the water reservoirs near Chang'an had either been exhausted or filled with human or animal waste that made it no longer suitable for drinking. Back then they didn't have water cleansing techniques like today, so they were obliged to relocate the capital elsewhere.

@Khal, and as far as I remember, the canal had never extended to Chang'an, the furthest extent of it was Luoyang. To reach Chang'an you'd either have to choose to cross overland or sail up the Yellow and the Wei rivers. I don't think canal failure was the issue of the abandoning of Chang'an. The rising cost of grains that you mentioned as well as the two reasons that I mentioned are enough to explain what caused the relocation of the capital.

@TheXanian

Oh i see, that makes sound sense to be me why Kaifeng was chosen, which also was strategically placed with many rivers crossing through the metropolis.

Currently looking at
http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/yunhe.html

It does seem like a Sui canal connected Chang'an to the yellow river which was connected to the grand canal though I imagine it was just not reliable over Luoyang like you mentioned with the overland and sailing up the yellow river.

I neglected to add "major" city wall to the sentence. Fixed.

Yes, water diverging and pond reservoirs were indeed quite important water management techniques in ancient China, which were drastically different from the Roman approach. I think there's no inherently superior or inferior techniques, cause each technique was developed in response to the particular geographical situation of each region. However, Henrique senselessly compared the two techniques and claimed/implied that the Roman technique was the superior one, and he did so with very little knowledge of ancient China on his part. This was what caused our arguments.

@Khal
@TheXanian

That's why I said you are welcome to ask me. I never said the Roman way was the best one or anything about canals and other hydraulic engineering in my first 2 comments, as all the rest of the conversation was derived from misinterpretation, the rest should be discarded. First of all.. hydraulic despotism already includes all implicit references like canals, aqueducts, dikes, reservoirs etc ... and second the idea was only between Chinese city walls and Roman gravity dams. China (notably southern china) has always had millions of dead in its history because of flood, because of east Asian monsoon, rice paddy fields filled with water, hydraulic projects (such as canals) and the average discharge of yangtze (rivers by volume and not length) is the number two in the world for areas of ​​considerable urbanization throughout history, China has always been a lot populous and the bigger the number of people the bigger the number of dead, which is obvious. Then the Roman-style dams would be useless in Chinese geography, so the Chinese city walls were equivalent. The two things are wall-shaped structures involving safety issues and no the making of roman city walls & chinese city walls has nothing to do with each other.

This post is turning into a forum and this gonna be my last comment on the page. I'm out

@Henrique

If you don't know then you should ask. Stop assuming things like "millions of dead", that's not a good way to start a meaningful conversation.

No, the Chinese walls aren't equivalent to Roman dams. The ancient Chinese had a whole system of water management which included water diverging/drainage canals, dams, dykes, ponds, moats, etc. Walls are only part of the picture.

@Khal
To be honest my knowledgge in ancient Chinese water engineering is rather lacking, and there's already a Part 3 in the planning that is more challenging to write. Maybe I will put the water one in a separate topic in the future.

Oh thanks for the reply.

In any case I found some great free links for people to peruse. A really nice comparison which I did not mention before was Greco and maybe Roman preference to not build cities near rivers, preferring dry up-hill regions hence more emphasis on cistern water collection over flood management and distribution to homes/baths/toilets. Whereas the Chinese had placed far less emphasis on personal public water usage requiring more on wells and ditches for water usage.

https://davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/59a8c78a1e4dd.pdf

https://www.euro-acad.eu/CMS/tinymce/js/tinymce/plugins/filemanager/source/Library/VI_Angelakis%20u.%20Zheng_Hydro-technologie%20China%20Greece.pdf

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10221-1.pdf

In any case it still blows my mind that by boat, it was possible if maintenance was given to traverse all the way from Beijing to the Pearl delta on boat through the ancient Qin dynasty Lingqu canal which was used to annex the baiyue and then provide transportation.

Or that 4 years of work on the Dujiangyan system for flood control managed to make the Sichuan region the most agriculturally productive region or one-of for most of Chinese history.

But I think what which is mentioned in part 2 of fortifications is the elegance of the fortifications/moat design. Chinese hydraulic engineering achieved so many purposes beyond flood control to provide transportation for troops (Sui invasion of Gogeryeo) that powered the commerce economy of the state to even water conservation for much needed river channels.

I have to check on the specifics of various sieges during the late Ming period to be sure, then again, there were some cases that sustained bombardment of Hongyi cannon demolished even wall sections, I doubt gates could last longer.

Thank you!

There are other reasons you sometimes don't want to simply bombard the gate though.
Gate is hard to reach and heavily defended, and the defenders can shoot back at you with their own hongyi cannon from elevated position. Also, the first gate you will likely target is probably that of Weng Cheng.

Horse face wall existed since Han period, probably earlier.

AFAIK I am the only content creator about ancient Chinese military history in English language so far.

Sorry I don't know were exactly to ask this but do you have any idea when did iron/steel weapons replaced bronze ones in Chinese armies? Perhaps it could be an interesting post in the future.

Iron/steel weapons replaced bronze ones sometime in the Western Han period, though the replacement could have already begun during the late Warring States period or earlier, since we've found some late Warring States armors and weapons made out of iron/steel, such as the iron lamellar helmets found at Yanxiadu.

It would be an interesting topic to explore, though I think a lot of people believed the Qin used bronze weapons because of the terracotta army, despite bronze having lots of ceremonial value in the ancient world

Thank you. The curious structure has caught my attention for a while now.

All photos I've manage to find show the structure with its base sealed away, so I am uncertain about its true purpose. However with the explanation from that webpage you provided, I can confidently say that yes, it is indeed a machicolation.

On second thought, that particular wall section seems to be a gun fort extention built by Qing army to defend against Taiping rebels, so that "machicolation" or whatever is actually not very old.

At the moment that structure seems to be one-of-a-kind, so I won't add it to the article unless I find more examples of it.

It's been so long that I can't remember...I THINK it's from a museum website or something.

I only know Xiangyang had quite a few supplemental fortresses surrounding it, but that's about it.