Dàdū

Its last years under the Mongols were hard. Famine and plague in the reign of Emperor Shùndì emptied its streets, and when the Míng general Xú Dá marched on the city in the summer of 1368, only some ten thousand people are said to have remained inside the walls. Shùndì fled north to Shàngdū through the Jiàndé Gate, and on 14 September the Míng army broke in through the Qíhuà Gate and renamed the city Běipíng, 'the North Pacified'. Its northern quarter was so deserted that the garrison could not hold the walls there, so the Míng raised a new earthen rampart across the city and abandoned the old northern wall. For half a century Běipíng was the seat of Zhū Dì, Prince of Yān, until, having seized the throne as the Yǒnglè Emperor, he moved the imperial court here in 1421 and made Běijīng the capital of the Míng.