One is guarding the border, which is the main force to build the city. Chronology of Bamboo Books (Volume II) contains: Forty-five years of Zhou Xianwang and twelve years of Liang Huiwang, the Great Wall was built in the west, and the commander was Long. So the Warring States period was the Great Wall of the Western Wei Dynasty built by the army. According to Records of Historical Records and Biography of Meng Tian, Qin Shihuang sent Meng Tian to chase the Xiongnu in the north, and after taking over Henan land, he built the Great Wall with 300,000 troops guarding the border, which took nine years to complete. In addition, the Great Wall of Northern Qi Dynasty was mainly built by soldiers guarding the border, and Northern Qi also adopted the method of "sending widows with sergeants", so that the troops guarding the border could build the city with peace of mind all year round. According to Zhang Wangong's Biography, a history book of Jin Dynasty, the southwest and northwest roads of Jinxiu, which borders Taizhou, were built with 30,000 foot soldiers for many years.

Second, a large number of civilian workers were forced to serve hard labor and recruit hungry people. For example, Qin Shihuang built the Great Wall, used hundreds of thousands of troops and recruited about 500 thousand civilian workers. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, "100,000 people from France, Dingding and Hebei" built their capital and besieged the city. The Great Wall from Xiakou to Hengzhou was built in the Northern Qi Dynasty, with a population of 1.8 million. In the third year of Sui Dynasty, when the Great Wall "Yulin in the west and He Zi in the east" was built in Inner Mongolia, more than 1 10,000 people were collected. In addition, in the third year of Cheng 'an (AD 65,438+065,438+098), Jin Xiulin was in Huang Lu, which not only "combined the army and the people" but also "recruited the hungry people as servants".

The third is to exile prisoners. There was a criminal law in the Qin Dynasty that punished prisoners to build the Great Wall, which was called "Cheng Dan". Its name comes from Li Si's suggestion of burning books in the thirty-fourth year of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty (2 13 BC): "If you don't burn books in the next thirty days, it will be Cheng Dan." (Historical Records of Qin Shihuang's Biography) Qin Shihuang adopted Lisi's suggestion and ordered that all the poems and books collected by the people should be destroyed except books about Ji Qin and medical divination of planting trees. Those who fail to burn within the time limit will be punished as "Cheng Dan". The so-called "Cheng Dan" was convicted of the crime of "Cheng Dan" according to the records of Ye Pei's Collection of Solutions and Hanshu Criminal Law. First, his face was blackened, then his hair was shaved, and an iron ring was tied around his neck, and he was sent to build the Great Wall. This punishment is cruel: patrol by turns during the day and build a city at night. The sentence is four years. After the Han Dynasty, this criminal law was still used.