Meng Tian

General Meng Tian drove the Xiongnu out of the Ordos loop and linked the northern walls of the warring states into the first Great Wall. He came from three generations of Qin generals; his grandfather Meng Ao and father Meng Wu had both served the state. He took part in the final conquest of Qi in 221 BC that completed the unification of China under Ying Zheng, the First Emperor. He was then sent north with an army reported at three hundred thousand men. He pushed the Xiongnu back beyond the Yellow River, colonised the recovered territory with settlers from the interior, and spent roughly a decade connecting and extending existing frontier walls into a single line running for thousands of kilometres, built of rammed earth by conscript and convict labour at enormous cost in lives. He also built the Straight Road, a military highway running north from the capital. Chinese tradition credits him with inventing the writing brush, which is almost certainly a later attribution to a famous name. When the First Emperor died in 210 BC, the eunuch Zhao Gao and the chancellor Li Si concealed the death, forged a decree naming a younger son as heir, and sent another ordering Meng Tian and the crown prince Fusu to kill themselves. Fusu obeyed at once. Meng Tian doubted the order, was imprisoned, and took poison, reportedly saying his crime was to have cut through the earth's veins. Sima Qian, writing a century later, judged that Meng Tian deserved his fate for having exhausted the people on wall-building rather than restraining the emperor - a verdict later readers have found harsh. The Qin dynasty fell four years after his death.

• Lived: 250 BCE – 210 BCE
• Nationality: Chinese
• Roles: military