CHAPTER XI
The Great Wall—Its failure as a defence—Forced labour—Mode of construction—Shih-Hwang-Ti orders all books to be burnt—Mandarins flung into the flames—The Shu-King is saved—How the sacred books came to be written—The sedan-chair and its uses—Modern hotels at Pekin—Examination of students for degrees—Cells in which they are confined—Kublai Khan conquers China—Makes Pekin his capital—Introduces paper currency—The Great Canal—Address to the three Philosophers—Marco Polo's visit to Pekin—His description of the Emperor—Kublai Khan's wife—Foundation of the Academy of Pekin—Hin-Heng and his acquirements—Death of Kublai Khan—Inferiority of his successors—Shun-Ti the last Mongol Emperor—Pekin in the time of the Mongols—When seen by Lord Macartney—The city as it is now.
It is a relief to turn from the terrible events which have given to Tien-tsin such a sinister notoriety to visit from it the celebrated Great Wall of China, the western termination of which is at no great distance from the town on the north. Begun by the Emperor Shih-Hwang-Ti, in B.C. 214, as a protection against the invasions of the Tartars, it was completed in the marvellously short time of five years, that energetic monarch sparing neither expense nor trouble, and ruthlessly sacrificing the lives of thousands of his subjects in his determination to keep out the hated barbarians. That he was not successful, but that his rampart in due time served his enemies better than it had done himself, is one of those ironies of fate with which the student of history is familiar. Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus have in their turn reigned over China from the sacred city, within the very defences supposed to be impregnable; the mighty wall remaining a standing proof, not of the wisdom, but of the short-sightedness of its builder.
FIG. 46.—THE GREAT WALL.
(Univers Pittoresque.)
THE GREAT WALL
To secure a sufficient number of men to work at his wall, Shih-Hwang-Ti issued an edict ordering every third labourer throughout the whole of the Empire to labour at it, and the unfortunate men thus selected were forced to work like slaves, with no wages but a scanty supply of food, their places when they fell down dead being quickly taken by other victims. The wall, when completed at the cost of so great an expenditure of human life, was fifteen hundred miles long; its breadth at the bottom was nearly twenty-five feet, and at the top fifteen feet, whilst it varied in height from fifteen to thirty feet. The materials employed would, it is said, be enough to build a wall six feet high and two feet thick to go twice round the world. Six horsemen could ride abreast upon it, and it was fortified by very strong towers, placed at regular intervals of about one hundred yards, that is to say, within two arrow-shots of each other, so that any one attempting to scale it would be covered from one tower or another by the guards stationed in them. The construction of the wall was very strong, the outside being formed of stone and brickwork, whilst the inside was filled up with earth. The wall started from the sea-shore at the Shan-Hai Pass, in N. Lat. 40° and E. Long. 119° 50′, and ran over mountains, through valleys, and across rivers by means of arches, which are still marvels of engineering skill, to the most western province of Kan-su, where it ends at the Khiya Pass. Whilst only insignificant relics now remain of the immense Roman walls which once intersected England and France, this vast monument of an ambitious ruler still stands, ranking as one of the wonders of the world, an incidental proof that at the time of its erection, two thousand years ago, China must have already been a great and civilized Empire. There is no doubt that Shih-Hwang-Ti did succeed in centralizing authority, and absorbing the power of the numerous military chiefs who before his time reigned in the various small kingdoms, making up what is now the Celestial Empire.