The Qing Solution to China’s Weak Military

The Manchu Created their own European Military Ethos

(Pictured: A Manchu ruler, leading the heavy cavalry of the Yellow Banner)

This is part 3 of a series. See Part 1: The Song Military - and Part 2: The Ming Military

The Manchu were a fascinating culture in that they took control over China and ruled it from 1650 to 1911 despite being a tiny ethnic minority. When the Qing army entered Beijing in 1644, there were less than 200,000 Manchus all told - men, women, and children. Add in some 30,000 Chineses who joined - or were forced - into Manchu society and some 20,000 Koreans and we have a multi-ethnic state which happened to be in the right place at the right time to replace the massive Ming Dynasty.

The Manchu were not Mongols, despite their public pronouncements to the contrary. The Manchu lived in fortified cities, they prized learning - especially technical military knowledge - and they were very happy to live part of their lives surrounded by luxury material goods. However, they also loved the martial arts and hunting in the summer was something every Manchu did without fail. The Manchu rulers were warrior-generals who kept the intellectual egg-heads - nearly all of whom were ethnic Chinese - in the back rows, and never let them make important decisions.

In many respects, the Manchu look like European nobles from the late medieval-early Renaissance period. They both shared a belief in the value of skill at arms: jousting for the Europeans, archery on horseback for the Manchu. They both loved hunting animals in the forest. They both felt that while civil administrators were nice to have, the bookworms should not be allowed to decide matters of state. They both believed in the justness of noble families who ruled the state simply because they were born into the right families.

Consequently, the Manchu created a military in which every Manchu man was either a warrior, or he supported a warrior by some craft or skill. The Manchu also were skilled diplomats, or perhaps they should be thought of as masters of psychology. They convinced many educated Chinese to work for them by praising their knowledge of the Confucian classics. They convinced tens of thousands of Mongol warriors to fight for them by praising their skills in horsemanship and hunting. They praised the Koreans for their ethnic solidarity, their determination, and their courage. The Manchus were also ruthless when people or tribes got in their way. The Manchu leaders acted like they had read Machiavelli and knew his ideas by heart.

The Manchu Created A Two Tier Army

From 1590 to 1645 the Manchu army was nearly all cavalry, a mix of horse archers and heavily armored lancers. The Manchu repeatedly defeated large infantry armies fielded by the Ming and the Joseon (Korean) state. The Manchu also defeated various Mongol armies of pure cavalry in Mongolia. How exactly the Manchu pulled this off remains something of a mystery, but the facts are not in dispute. Manchu armies moved with incredible speed and they were rarely beaten in battle.

The major difficulty the Manchu faced was large forts. The founder of the Manchu state, Nurhaci, was killed during the siege of a very strong Ming fort in 1626. In order to capture forts, the Manchu worked hard at recruiting Chinese cannon experts and building up their mobile artillery units. Unlike the Mongols, the Manchu had forges, and expert armor smiths working day and night to equip their army. Again, this is just like the European nobility from the 1300 and 1400s.

However, once the Manchu had taken over northern China, they simply didn’t have the manpower needed to garrison the territory they now ruled. The Manchu solution was to recruit a new Chinese army (the Green Flag Army), which was essentially the Ming army under a different name. The fact that the Manchu were able to take over China and gain the cooperation of millions of Chinese scholars, administrators, and soldiers, is a remarkable fact which is not much discussed. The Sonoma Sage may write more about this at a later date.

The form of the Manchu - Qing Dynasty - army from 1680 to 1840, was:

1. An elite strike force of heavy cavalry composed of Manchu lancers / horse archers.

2. An auxiliary force of Mongol light horsemen, mostly horse archers.

3. A large artillery division with both light cannons carried by horses or camels and heavy cannons which moved by wagons. No walls or gates could last for long against the Qing cannons. This artillery division was taken directly from the Ming army.

4. A massive army of Chinese infantry which was slow, but nearly unstoppable, when supported and protected from flank attacks by the Manchu and Mongol cavalry. This infantry army was also nearly the same as what the Ming fielded, only with even less status and with fewer (if any) arquebus units.

The Manchu Army - 100 Years of Success

The Manchu army, in conjunction with the quasi-Ming army of Wu Sangui, conquered all of China by 1660. Now ruling over China, the problem of controlling the conquered nation became paramount. The Qing government divided their mobile strike force into ~15 division and then stationed these divisions in garrison cities within China proper - practically emptying the Manchu homeland. Even though the Manchu Bannermen were required by law and custom to train as soldiers, living in the cities of China with Chinese servants made them soft.

The Kangxi Emperor complained about the decline in martial quality of his Manchu cavalry when he fought his eight-year war against Wu Sangui and the other, previously loyal, Chinese generals (1673-81). This decline was noticeable after just 20 years of garrison duty. The Qing only won that war because Wu Sangui conveniently died in 1678 (perhaps assassinated) and the Green Flag army proved to be loyal to the Qing instead of siding with General Wu.

In 1690 the Kangxi Emperor began his war against the Dzungar Mongols. To win that war, he used an army which included tens of thousands of Mongol horsemen, in addition to his Manchu bannermen and a Chinese supply division. The Qing battle with Galdan, the Khan of the Dzungars at Jao Modo was a decisive victory for the Manchu army. The Kangxi Emperor proved to be one of the greatest warrior kings in all of Chinese history, very much like Alexander the Great or Charlemagne.

His son and grandson (the Yongzheng Emperor and Qianlong Emperor respectively) did not go out on campaigns but the Qing army continued to be relatively successful in their wars across Central and East Asia.

The Late Qing - 100 Years of Failure

The 1800s were a bad era in Chinese history. Nothing worked. Everything failed.

The Qing victory over the Taiping in 1864 was really due to the efforts of one Chinese scholar-official: Zeng Goufan. He essentially willed an army into being, creating it out of nothing. In addition, the English and the French provided Zeng with substantial military assistance (the see the book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen Platt). Finally, the leadership of the Taiping disintegrated after their initial victories. The Manchu rulers and Bannermen were mostly useless during the war. The Manchu leaders in Beijing were like bystanders in the conflict, so much so that many people told Zeng that he should march his army north to the capital and take over the nation. The Sonoma Sage thinks Zeng should have done just this, he could not have ruled worse than the Qing leaders from 1860 to 1911.

The Qing lost every war they fought against the Europeans. And at the end of the 1800s, even Japan beat them.

The Manchu Bannermen had became a dead weight on the Chinese military. In an age where breach loading rifles and steel-barreled cannons could accurately hit targets more than a mile away, the Manchu soldiers still practiced archery and mailed cavalry charges with lances. At the battle of Palikao in 1860, the Qing army of more than 50,000 Mongol horse archers and Manchu Bannermen was utterly defeated by a small British-French expeditionary force. Total British and French losses were five killed, while the Qing army was annihilated.

The Qing nobility in 150 years went from being warrior-generals who exemplified martial valor, to soft, corrupt, money hungry rent-seekers.

To be blunt: the Qing system of maintaining military prowess didn’t work any better than the Ming system.

Conclusion - Can China field an Effective Military?

No one knows. The Chinese performance of military operations against the US Army in Korea in 1952-54 was mixed. The PLA won some battles, pushed the US forces out of North Korea, and suffered incredibly high casualties doing so. Specifically: the USA lost more than 36,000 killed in the entire Korean war, while Chinese deaths are estimated at more than 400,000!

In the 70 years following the Korean war, China’s military successes are few. While the USA has fought almost consistently from 1960 to 2021, the Chinese have fought very rarely. True, the USA withdrew its army from South Vietnam in 1973, withdrew it’s army from Iraq in 2009, and withdrew its army from Afghanistan in 2021 but these were not military defeats. It hard to think of a US battle loss since we withdrew from the Chosin Reservoir in 1953.

In the past the CCP PolitBuro had nine generals among its 21 members (for example, see the 10th PolitBuro composition from 1973). In 2022, that number is down to just three. The Chinese army - the PLA - seems to have lost prestige and probably capability during the last 68 years of peace. This is something the Chinese army is concerned about but what can they do? They work for the CCP. If the CCP tells them not to fight, then they will not fight.

It’s very hard to tell when a Chinese army is real, or when it’s just a paper tiger. However, given China’s history and it’s long established cultural disdain for military valor, the Sonoma Sage suspects China’s leaders do not trust their military to perform as of 2022. The PLA can send tanks to Fujian beaches but that doesn’t mean they have the ability to actually win a war.

This is part 3 of a series. See Part 1: The Song Military - and Part 2: The Ming Military

For a related series on China & the Mongol Threat - see China vs. the Northern Barbarians - part 1.