just use a ladder
just use a ladder
https://twitter.com/CenturiiC/status/1745823031577153947
love the literal horse archer in the background
It literally was stupid though, because it was economically ruinous to build and impossible to staff or maintain. Enemy armies (most notably the Manchus of the 1600s) would periodically cross the wall in their raids, particularly through breaches created by local farmers who would scavenge from unmanned sections of the walls.
Yes, the walls around Beijing and a few vital passes were useful. But you didn't need to build across the entire country to benefit from a few defensible choke points.
The Great Wall is probably just the most famous in a thousand year history of ill-conceived physical border security measures. They're bad. They don't work good. Don't build these stupid things.
Love to bifurcate the ecosystem with a thousand miles of pure hubris
the alternative is more expensive, a military expedition to the steppe with the massive supply requirements was really hard to pull off, and they could be lost like at Tumu. a wall that added customs controls and had regularly stationed troops supplied by well-established roads (and the local environs of the garrisons) was a cheap part of a multifaceted defense/control strategy.
customs was important to control exactly what left Chinese territory, from controlling weapons to preferentially giving allies resources over their rivals. divide-and-rule or patronage of a client khan on the steppe were convenient and cheap, but would be much harder to implement if the border was too porous. the walls were also enough to stop small-scale opportunist raids, no-body expected it to be an impenetrable obstacle in a grand raid or invasion, just to provide warning for a larger army.
the alternative is more expensive, a military expedition to the steppe with the massive supply requirements was really hard to pull off
Or just don't do that. Build trade relationships and family ties, rather than launching raids across the mountains.
Customs was important to control exactly what left Chinese territory, from controlling weapons to preferentially giving allies resources over their rivals.
That's true. But, again, the wall wasn't what drove traffic quite so much as the roads that were cobbled and supplied and patrolled. Smugglers could cross the hills and mountains just as easily as raiders. But crossing that territory is dangerous and taxes that aren't going to fund this enormous vanity project can be kept at a comfortable range.
the walls were also enough to stop small-scale opportunist raids
The terrain already accomplished this, for the most part. A few key forts at major passes and trade crossings do the rest. The Romans didn't need a giant network of walls to manage Southern Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East. And the Chinese still got invaded and sacked regularly after the walls were built.
FFS, the biggest vulnerability to Chinese hegemony at the end of the day wasn't Steppe Tribes. It was the ports of trade, through which the English injected their opium traffic.
I've heard that in the last few decades the mood has shifted to the wall being for controlling taxation and internal migrations. Like it was a pita to try to drag a cart over the wall so everyone just sighed and paid the tolls.
A 20,000 km tollbooth wall. "Goddamn wall, fucking 300 wen to go out of town now. I swear, they put in a couple more of these things and I'll move all the way to Champa."
I see these comics and theyβre always all women. Is it some sort of sex thing?
from the author's twitter bio:
history/yuri artist
all my characters are very gay
comment of all time
If you see a webcomic full of attractive women characters, it's almost a given that the artist also does porn. Mostly because they'll make 30x as much money doing the latter, and the former is their passion project.
It's always a sex thing
Which mod for Mount and Blade is this?
the amount of force that would canonically be on the literal horse archer's horse ankles would be a fun statics problem
or you can just bribe the guy behind the gates, that works too
Ive missed Tervell-posting. Do you have any cool pictures of compound bows?
not bows by themselves, but I've got guys with bows (although I think "compound bow" specifically refers to those fancy modern bows, I don't have anything with those - did you mean recurve bows?):
I did mean recurve bow! These are very cool, thank you
i;ve heard compound/composite used for recurves because they're not a hunk of wood but pieces glued together
If they ever get up there, they're in trouble, 'cause there's no way to get down. Maybe a rope.
smartest white woman