Meng Tian links the northern walls into the Qin Great Wall

Date

c. 215–214 BCE

Category

Military & conflict

Region

China (northern frontier)

Era

Classical Antiquity

Significance

Around 215 BCE the First Emperor dispatched General Meng Tian with a large army northward against the Xiongnu, driving the nomads from the Ordos region.

To consolidate the new frontier, from about 214 BCE Meng Tian directed the linking and extension of the older border ramparts built earlier by the states of Qin, Zhao and Yan into a continuous defensive line — the ancestor of the later Great Wall. Stretching, by tradition, from Lintao in the west toward the sea in the east, the work was carried out by hundreds of thousands of conscripted soldiers and labourers under harsh conditions, and the human cost became a byword for the burdens of Qin rule. Although little of the rammed-earth Qin wall survives, the campaign defined a durable strategic frontier between the agrarian Chinese world and the steppe, and established the wall-building tradition that later dynasties, especially the Ming, would continue and monumentalise.

Empires active in c. 215–214 BCE

• Qin Dynasty
  221 BCE – 206 BCE
• Maurya Empire
  322 BCE – 185 BCE
• Roman Republic
  509 BCE – 27 BCE
• Odrysian Kingdom
  480 BCE – 46 CE
• Seleucid Empire
  312 BCE – 63 BCE
• Ptolemaic Kingdom
  305 BCE – 30 BCE

Related military & conflict events

• Battle of Gaixia and the founding of the Han dynasty
  202 BCE
• The Kalinga War and Ashoka's turn to Dhamma
  c. 261 BCE
• Battle of Gaugamela destroys the Achaemenid Empire
  1 October 331 BCE
• Alexander the Great invades the Persian Empire
  334 BCE
• Battle of Cannae: Hannibal annihilates a Roman army
  2 August 216 BCE
• Battle of Zama ends the Second Punic War
  19 October 202 BCE

Further reading

The Terracotta Army

The wider story

The Terracotta Army

John Man

Accessible account of the First Emperor and his tomb army.

Get it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.