Chapter 6 Chapter 1 The Military Power of the Qing Dynasty

If we use one sentence to summarize the respective levels of Chinese and British weapons and equipment during the Opium War, that is, As for the cold weapons used by the Qing army, such as knives, spears, bows and arrows, there are so many names that they are too numerous to remember.Fortunately, this type of weapon is intuitive, and its use and effectiveness are also known to ordinary readers in detail.The focus here is on the firearms used by the Qing army. People often refer to the Qing army's firearms during the Opium War as "earth guns and earth cannons".If this only refers to the manufacturer, or even the manufacturing process, it seems reasonable, but as far as the model of the firearm is concerned, it is a misunderstanding.

Both gunpowder and tube-type firearms were invented in China, but China has always been in the pre-scientific period and has not formed a scientific theory and experimental system, which has fundamentally restricted the development of Chinese firearms.By the time of the Opium War, the firearms used by the Qing army were not mainly invented and developed by China, but imitated Western firearms such as the "Fulang Ji", "Bird Gun" and "Hongyi Pao" introduced in the Ming Dynasty.From this, it can be said that the Qing army used old-fashioned "foreign guns and cannons" made by themselves.As far as the style is concerned, compared with the British army, it is more than 200 years behind.

The prototype of the shotgun used by the Qing army can be traced back to the Portuguese matchlock gun in 1548 (the 27th year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty). It has been improved several times since then and has become one of the main individual firearms. A shotgun is a muzzle-loading smoothbore matchlock gun.Before launching, gunpowder must be loaded from the muzzle, then the projectile should be inserted, and the matchlock should be used as the ignition device.According to the records in "Illustrated Firearms of Ritual Vessels of the Imperial Dynasty", there are as many as 58 types of shotguns in the Qing army, which are similar with minor differences.Among them, the soldier shotgun is the most equipped.

The soldier shotgun is made of iron, the gun is 2.01 meters long, the lead bullet weighs 1 qian, and the gunpowder is 3 qian.The range is about 100 meters.The rate of fire is 1 to 2 rounds per minute. At this time, the British army was equipped with two kinds of military guns that were relatively advanced in the world at that time: one was the Burke type (Barker) front-loading smoothbore flintlock.Its ignition device is a friction flint.The gun body is 1.16 meters long, the caliber is 15.3 mm, and the projectile weighs 35 grams.The range is about 200 meters.The rate of fire is 2 to 3 rounds per minute.The gun was successfully developed in about 1800 and was later equipped with troops.The second is the Brunswick muzzle-loading smoothbore pistol.The ignition device is the percussion cap of the percussion bolt.The gun body is 1.42 meters long, the caliber is 17.5 mm, the projectile weighs 53 grams, the range is about 300 meters, and the rate of fire is 3 to 4 rounds per minute.The gun has been equipped with troops since about 1838.

It can be seen from this that, compared with the British army, the defects of the shotgun of the Qing army are: the gun body is too long (it is inconvenient to charge, reload and shoot); the ignition device is backward (the performance is extremely poor in wind and rain) .In terms of performance, it has the two fatal flaws of slow fire rate and short range.If we compare the parameters of rate of fire and range, we can roughly infer that two soldier shotguns are no match for one Burke gun; while one Brunswick gun can match five soldier shotguns.If the factor of shooting accuracy caused by the manufacturing process is taken into account, this difference may have to be doubled.

In addition, situations worthy of our attention include: 1. Because the shotguns of the Qing army were too long to be loaded with bayonets (at this time, all western military guns had bayonets), and because of the poor range and speed of fire of the shotguns of the Qing army, it was difficult to deal with the enemy in short combat. Not all of them are equipped with shotguns, and some still use swords, spears, bows and arrows.It is estimated that, on a national scale, the ratio of shotgunners to spear-archers was about 5:5.In the Opium War, cold weapons such as knives, spears, bows and arrows were of little use on the battlefield.

2. Due to the long period of peace and the limitation of military expenditure, the Qing army shotguns did not have a regular repair and replacement system.Under normal circumstances, it is extremely common for shotguns to be used for decades, but among the materials I have seen, there are those that have not been replaced for 166 years. 3. Due to the shortage of shotguns, during the Opium War, a batch was rushed to be distributed to combat troops.However, these rush-made firearms are of particularly poor quality. Adding these factors, you can imagine how many soldier shotguns are worth one Burke or Brunswick?If these guns are replaced by soldiers holding guns, you can imagine again, how many Qing soldiers can be worth one British soldier?

The artillery used by the Qing army, like its shotgun, can be traced back to the Ming Dynasty.During the Kangxi period, Western missionaries Nan Huairen and others also helped the Qing Dynasty supervise the production of many artillery pieces.Therefore, although the artillery of the Qing army has many names, in terms of style, it is mainly modeled after the Western cannon series from the 17th century to the early 18th century. In the 18th century, there was no major change in the style of Western artillery. By the time of the Opium War in the 19th century, compared with the British army, the Qing army’s artillery was roughly the same in style and mechanism. The difference between the two lies in the quality problems caused by the manufacturing process. , manifested in the following aspects:

1. Poor iron quality.The Industrial Revolution improved British smelting technology and greatly improved the quality of iron, which provided good raw materials for casting high-quality artillery.The smelting technology in the Qing Dynasty was backward, the furnace temperature was low, the molten iron could not be purified, and it contained many impurities. The cast artillery was very rough and had many pores and bubbles.The Qing army mainly adopted two strategies to deal with this problem.One is to thicken the tube wall of the artillery, which made the artillery of the Qing army extremely cumbersome. The giant artillery weighing thousands of catties is not as powerful as the small Western artillery.The second is to use copper as a casting material.Due to the lack of copper resources at that time, copper cannons were very rare and were regarded as sharp weapons.In addition, the Qing army reduced the amount of gunpowder that had been cast into cannons that had many pores and bubbles and were easy to burst, which in turn reduced the power of the cannons.

Second, the casting process is backward.At this time, the British had adopted iron molds and other processes in casting, and used boring machines to cut and process the inside of the gun bore to make it smoother.At this time, the Qing Dynasty still used the backward clay molding process, the castings were rough, and the gun bore was not processed in depth, resulting in disordered ballistic trajectory after the shell was fired, which reduced the shooting accuracy.At this time, due to the progress of science, the British side had carried out research on the combustion of gunpowder, ballistics, and initial velocity.The Qing side only imitated the artillery, and did not understand the barrel/caliber ratio and the practical significance of the position of the fire door in the combustion of gunpowder. As a result, the proportions of many artillery pieces were not suitable, and the fire doors of most artillery were opened too far forward and too large. .

3. Incomplete or incomplete gun mounts (cannon carriages) and aiming equipment.The gun mount (cannon carriage) is a device for adjusting the shooting direction and the angle between the gun and the gun.The Qing army did not pay much attention to this.By the time of the Opium War, many of the Qing army's artillery had no gun mounts, but were fixed.Some gun mounts can only adjust the angle between height and height but cannot rotate left and right, which limits the shooting range.Most of the gun mounts that have been installed are made of poor wood. After the performance, the gun mounts shake loose and are difficult to use.Surprisingly, many artillery pieces of the Qing army did not have aiming devices, or only had "stars" (used to determine the shooting direction) but no "cannon gauges" (used to determine the angle between height and height).Soldiers aim mainly by experience. 4. There are few types of shells and the quality is poor.The artillery shells used by the British army in this period included solid shells, shot shells, and explosive shells; while the Qing army only had solid shells with the worst effectiveness, and had defects such as rough shells or small diameters. In addition, the management of Qing army artillery is similar to that of shotguns, and there is no regular replacement system.Because they are not usually used, many cannons placed in the open air on forts, battlements, etc. are exposed to the sun and rain, and the cannon bodies are corroded.By the time of the Opium War, most of these cannons had been used for a long time. There were many castings in the early Qing Dynasty, and some were even relics of the pre-Ming Dynasty.If it is not steamed and washed for trial use, no one knows whether it can be used. From this, we can conclude that although the Chinese and British cannons are basically the same in style, due to the difference in quality, they have defects such as short range, slow shooting speed, small shooting range, poor shooting accuracy, and weak shell power after shooting.Which of these flaws is not fatal? Most of the battles in the Opium War were artillery battles between the Qing army's shore artillery and the British army's naval artillery.According to common sense, coastal artillery relies on solid land, regardless of factors such as weight and recoil, and is made larger, with a longer range and greater power.In fact, the shore artillery of the Qing army was generally heavier than the naval artillery of the British army.However, during the battle, the power of the artillery on both sides was reversed.When the smoke cleared on the battlefield, we had to face the tragic fact in astonishment: the Qing army failed to sink a single warship or ship of the British army in the whole course of the war, but its own position was completely destroyed Hundred holes. What is related to guns and cannons is gunpowder. During the Opium War, Chinese and British gunpowder were at the same stage of development. Both were black pyrotechnic powders, and their main components were nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal.However, it is also because of quality problems that the gap between China and Britain in terms of gunpowder is greater than the artillery mentioned above.The key here is science and industry. In 1825, after many experiments, Scheverieri proposed the best chemical reaction equation for black gunpowder: 2KNO+3C+S=KS↓+N↑+3CO↑ Accordingly, in theory, the combination ratios of nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal are 74.84%, 11.84%, and 11.32% as the best gunpowder formula.According to this equation, the UK prepared propellant powder for guns (75% nitrate, 10% sulfur, 15% carbon) and propellant powder for guns (78% nitrate, 8% sulfur, 14% carbon).These two formulas have been identified as standard gunpowder formulas by Western countries.In addition to the theoretical progress brought about by science, the Industrial Revolution brought mechanized production.At this time, gunpowder in Britain has been produced in modern factories and is in the leading position in the world. Chinese gunpowder originated from the accidental discovery of alchemy Taoists, which made the Chinese gunpowder theory covered with the veil of Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory from the very beginning, hindering the scientific analysis of its physical and chemical phenomena.Since then, the development of gunpowder has mainly relied on the accumulation of experience, and there have been few theoretical revelations.By the time of the Opium War, the gunpowder manufactured by the Qing army was still produced in handicraft workshops or factories according to the formula in the late Ming Dynasty. The gunpowder formula used by Guan Tianpei, the admiral of the Guangdong Navy before the war, was 80% nitrate, 10% sulfur, and 10% charcoal.This is the only recipe we can see from this period.However, the nitrate content in this formula is too high, it is easy to absorb moisture, it is inconvenient to store for a long time, and the explosive effect is low. The production method of the handicraft industry made it impossible for Qingfang to extract high-purity nitrate and sulfur, and the impurities in the medicinal material were high; there was no advanced crushing, mixing, pressing, drying, polishing and other processes, only by pounding, the result was gunpowder The particles of the fuel are rough and vary in size, and often cannot be fully burned. The quality of gunpowder directly affects the power of guns and cannons.The inferior gunpowder used by the Qing army made its originally outdated guns and cannons even less effective in actual combat. Comparing Chinese and British weapons and equipment, the biggest gap is the ship. The British navy was the largest in the world at that time, with more than 400 ships of various types.Its main combat warships are still powered by wooden sails, which seem to be similar to those of the Qing army, but in comparison, they have the following characteristics: 1. They are made of solid wood, which can withstand wind and waves and go to the ocean; 2. The lower part of the hull is double-layered. It has good anti-sinking performance (the Chinese called it "plywood ship" at that time), and it was wrapped with metal materials such as copper sheets, which was moth-proof, decay-proof and fire-proof; 3. There were two or three masts on the ship, dozens of sails were hung, and it could take advantage of various wind directions Navigation; 4. Warships are large, with a displacement ranging from more than 100 tons to more than 1,000 tons; 5. There are many cannons, ranging from 10 to 120.In addition, steam-powered iron-hulled paddle steamers, which were born at the end of the Industrial Revolution, were also equipped with the Navy in the 1830s.Although the tonnage of ships at this time was small and the number of guns was low, they were difficult to be effective in formal Western naval battles, and they did not occupy a dominant position in the navy; China's coastal and inland rivers are rampant. The navy of the Qing army was called "Navy Division" at that time, and there were two main branches: one was the Fujian Navy and the other was the Guangdong Navy.In other coastal provinces, there are also towns, associations, and camps that perform naval tasks, such as Dinghai Town in Zhejiang Province, Lushun Naval Camp in Shengjing, and so on.However, the task of the navy of the Qing army was not to go abroad to fight, but to patrol the offshore and guard the coast. The navy of the "Celestial Dynasty" does not target the fleet of any country, and its opponents are only pirates.Measured by today's standards, the navy of the Qing Dynasty is not a formal navy, roughly equivalent to the coast guard. Because of this, the main force of the navy in the Qing Dynasty was not on the ships or in the service units serving the ships, but stationed in numerous forts, forts, forts, and strategic passes along the coast and along the river.In many important coastal defense areas, such as Xiamen, Humen, Zhoushan, etc., the land defense is entirely in charge of the navy. In terms of quantity, there are hundreds of ships of the Qing army navy; in terms of types, there are dozens of styles of Qing army warships; however, the most basic feature is that the ships are small.The tonnage of the largest warship of the Qing army was not as high as that of the foreign warships of the British army, and the number of artillery of the warship of the Qing army with the most guns was only equivalent to that of the warship of the British army with the least guns.As for other weaknesses, people at that time also had a clear understanding.Deng Tingzhen, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, commented on this. Except for the sailing and speed of the ship (it is likely that Deng Tingzhen has no sailing experience and doesn't know much about it), the quality of the hull, the number of artillery, and the quality of the gunner Safety and other issues have been compared in detail.His conclusion is: "The power of ships and guns is invincible." It's not that China's shipbuilding industry could only reach this level at that time, China also built ocean-going merchant ships that were bigger and stronger than warships at this time.This involves the "Ministry of Regulations" mentioned in Deng Zuo.The style of warships in the Qing Dynasty was generally fixed during the Qianlong period, and the "Military Regulations of the Ministry of Industry" and "Regulations of Military Supplies of the Ministry of Households" were used to determine its style and military expenditure.This self-limits the development of warships.There isn't more money everywhere to build bigger and better warships.In order to maintain a certain advantage of naval warships over civilian ships, the Qing Dynasty in turn regulated the size of civilian ships, limiting the number of firearms, food, and fresh water that civilian ships could carry when they went to sea.Such a cycle has seriously hindered the progress of China's shipbuilding and navigation industries. Even for such a backward navy ship, its intact rate is still very low.For example, before the Opium War, the Fujian Navy had a total of 242 large and small warships. Excluding those who had not completed repairs, were due for repair, and were broken by the wind, there were 118 pilots in the battalion, and the sailing rate was only 48.8%.For another example, there are 77 warships in Dinghaishi Town, Zhejiang Province, of which 30 were damaged by wind and repairs were not completed, and the in-voyage rate was only 61.2%. The huge disparity in the level of Chinese and British ships made the Qing army dare not go out to sea to face the British fleet in the Opium War, forcing the Qing army to abandon the confrontation at sea and focus on land.This kind of strategic decision limited by equipment actually caused the Qing army to lose the initiative in the war.Relying on its powerful navy, the British army ran across the waters of China, determining the time, place, and scale of the battle.The stakes here will be introduced later. During the Opium War, all the top and bottom of the Qing Dynasty realized that the Qing Dynasty Navy was definitely not an opponent of the British Navy, and most of them advocated defense on land, especially on the coast.The status of fortifications is thus highlighted. There are mainly two types of fortifications in the Qing Dynasty, one is the city and the other is the fort. The defensive facilities of the city, including city walls, gates, moats, etc.The conditions and functions of these fortifications have been familiar to people for a long time, and there are still relics that can increase people's sensory knowledge.The offensive and defensive battles of the city have been the main combat style in ancient and modern China, not to mention the British army's siege battles in the Opium Wars, only three times (Guangzhou, Zhapu, Zhenjiang).Therefore, it is not intended to analyze the city's defense system here, but to make specific comments in conjunction with the battle later. Coastal forts were the most important fortifications of the Qing army in the Opium War, but these forts no longer exist, and people lack perceptual knowledge of them. There is a long volume in the First Historical Archives of China, called "Illustrations of Fujian and Zhejiang Coastal Defense Fortresses".It meticulously depicts the specific styles of all coastal defense forts in Fujian and Zhejiang.Here is a picture of the Xishanzui Fort in Zhapu, Zhejiang, which played a role in the Opium War. The text of the picture reads: "Xishanzui built a solid round fortress, with a circumference of eight feet, a height of one foot and five feet, a stack height of three feet, and eight cannons. A besieged city was built behind the platform, with a circumference of twenty feet, a height of one foot and two feet, and an inner cover. There are twelve houses for officers and soldiers, one member of Anqian, and thirty soldiers." According to this long scroll, each fort in Fujian and Zhejiang has 4 to 10 cannons and 20 to 50 guards. The Zhapu Xishanzui Fort represented the general level of Chinese coastal forts before the Opium War; and the Jingyuan Fort in Humen, Guangdong, completed in 1839, was the largest and strongest coastal fort in the Qing Dynasty before the war.Lin Zexu, who was ordered to inspect the fort, said: "The platform is sixty-three feet wide and one foot four feet five inches high. The stone wall at the back is ninety feet long." According to Deng Tingzhen's memorial: "One guard guards the cannon, and two extra are added, and there are ninety gunners." If you compare Jingyuan Fort with Xishanzui Fort , you will find that the style is roughly the same only if the specification is enlarged several times. Can such a fort withstand the attack of the Western fleet?In this regard, we can take a look at the situation of the Western Fortress in this issue. With the use of artillery and the development of artillery technology, Western military fortification technology has also made great progress.Since the 16th century, European military engineers have put forward a new theory of fortification, and the old watchtowers (high platform artillery positions, similar to Qing army forts) have been gradually abandoned, and Sauborg-style forts have emerged.Shuobao is a pointed fortress, divided into upper and lower floors, each with artillery, side passages, and its own defensive firepower configuration. 4 to 6 Shuobao form a fort (fortress).The entire fort has 50 to hundreds of guns; hundreds to thousands of cavalry and infantry are stationed to cooperate with the artillery; there are enough food and ammunition stored inside, which can be held for several years; there are passages between the forts, Can support each other.By the 18th century, fortress-style forts appeared in Europe, that is, forts were built on the periphery of the core fort, and a complete defense system was composed of multiple forts; There are sheltered passages between the fortresses, which can support each other; the combat parts where the artillery is installed are fully sheltered, which can protect the safety of soldiers. It can be seen from this that the forts of the Qing army in this period are still the small high platforms before the changes in Western fortification technology, and their fatal damage is that they are not as focused on defensive functions as in the West: 1. The soldiers on the forts only use stacking walls to cover the front, and these The stacking walls are easily destroyed by Western artillery fire; 2. There is no protection on the top of the fort, and the enemy's curved artillery can shoot at the fort from above; 3. In terms of artillery configuration, the pursuit of heavy artillery is concentrated on the front of the fort to fight against incoming enemy ships 4. The gates of the fort are mostly opened on the front or the back, and there are no trenches, suspension bridges, gates and other facilities, so it is difficult to prevent the attack of the enemy's landing troops; 5. The side and rear of the fort Often there is only one wall, no inclined embankments, trenches and other positions, and the defenders cannot be organized to counterattack the landing troops; Sixth, the side and rear of the fort lacks a good road system, and it is difficult for the defenders to supply soldiers, food, grass, and ammunition during wartime.Of the above six items, the first two are due to insufficient understanding of the power of Western artillery, and the last four are due to errors in the assessment of the British land combat capabilities (see Chapter 2, Section 4 for details).Western observers have extremely low evaluation of the Qing army fort. The analysis here is based on the premise of the upcoming Opium War, and the most powerful British army in the world as the opponent; if people at that time did not know that the war was coming, they were just to guard against pirates who took advantage of the situation. These forts can indeed be described as "impregnable as gold"! If the above-mentioned guns, cannons, gunpowder, warships, and forts are combined, what will be the specific situation? Let's take Wusong Camp in Jiangsu as an example. The Wusong Camp was stationed in Wusong, Baoshan County, Jiangsu Province (now part of Shanghai), and was one of the main battlefields in the Opium War. In 1828, Guan Tianpei, who was then the commander-in-chief of Susong Town, investigated the weapons of the battalion, and the most important figures were: 948 waist knives, 277 broadswords, 213 horn bows, 11,570 war arrows, 260 rockets; 917 shotguns, 118 spray tubes; 55 firing cannons, 12 jade belt cannons, 72 decisive cannons, and 42 mountain-splitting cannons There are 10 mountain cannons, 40 sub-mother cannons, 7 Hongyi cannons, and 3 Hongyi Fajiu cannons; 8,940 catties of gunpowder (a considerable part of the above figures are stored in warehouses). Wusong Battalion has a total of about 1,000 soldiers. Because they are stationed in important places, their weapons are better than those in other places.However, it can be seen from the list cited above that most of the artillery of the Wusong Battalion were small artillery from the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, and their power was extremely limited. In addition to the list cited above, the Wusong Battalion was located in Yangjiazui, southeast of Baoshan County, near the mouth of the Yangtze River by the Huangpu River. From the perspective of modern warfare, what is the combat capability of the Wusong Battalion? In 1832, the East India Company sent the merchant ship Amherst northward from Macau to scout the situation along the coast of China. On June 20, the ship broke into Wusong without any obstruction.The Prussian missionary Karl Gutzlaff who accompanied the ship "inspected the left side of the (Wusong) fort and inspected the country's internal defense organization," he wrote in his diary: "If we come here as enemies , the resistance of the entire army will not exceed half an hour." This conclusion is drawn by comparing the military strength of China and the West, referring to the later Opium War, it is not an exaggeration. Here, we might as well make a further review. Why did the level of weapons and equipment of the Qing army lag far behind the West? It can be seen from the history of the development of Chinese and Western weapons and equipment that during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China's military technology did not lag behind the West. Naturally, there was the effect of boldly introducing advanced Western firearms at that time, because the modern science of the West was still in its infancy. .As far as manufactures are concerned, both are at the same level as manufactures.After the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the gap between Chinese and Western weapons and equipment widened sharply. In addition to the two major factors of science and industry mentioned above, there was another important reason, which was the reduction of the scale of war. The battles between the Ming and Qing Dynasties depended on their own fate, so they spared no expense in the introduction, study, and development of weapons and equipment.After the suppression of San Francisco and the recovery of Yaksa City during the Kangxi period, the Qing Dynasty entered a long-term relatively peaceful stage.Since then, although the Qing Dynasty used troops in the northwest and southwest frontiers and the interior, no matter what the battle situation was, it could maintain its superiority in weapons and equipment.This made the Qing Dynasty not continue to focus on the development of new weapons to gain greater advantages, but to focus on monopolizing the military technology of this advantage and preventing it from being mastered by opponents or potential opponents.In other words, the focus of the Qing Dynasty was not research but secrecy.Here are two examples: 1. The soldier shotgun mentioned above is one of the main equipment of the green battalion soldiers.However, according to the official documents of the Qing Dynasty and the real objects that exist today, the shotguns of the Qing army are quite different.The best of them were imperial guns, for which flintlock guns were already available at that time; the second was the guns used by the Beijing Eight Banners; the third was the guns used to garrison the Eight Banners;The quality of shotguns provided by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty was based on the consideration of consolidating the base with the Beijing camp and monitoring the green camp with garrison.However, this method adopted to ensure the rule of the Manchu aristocrats made the main force of the Qing army, the Green Camp, respond to the enemy with the most inferior equipment of the Qing Dynasty in the Opium War. 2. At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, when China introduced Western cannons, it also introduced the technology of "flowering shells" (a kind of explosive shells).However, this technology is exclusive to the Imperial Forest Army, and almost all the shells of the early Qing Dynasty in the Palace Museum in Beijing are "flowering shells".However, if it is not used for a long time, even the ruler himself has forgotten it. During the Opium War, not to mention ordinary officials, even Lin Zexu, who presided over the coastal defense, and Huang Mian, the artillery expert at the time, made a fuss about "flowering shells". What a big joke.After the war, the Qing Dynasty trial-produced according to actual samples, which was actually the second introduction.In the 1870s, Zuo Zongtang, the supervisor of the Western Expedition to Xinjiang, found the "blossom cannonball" left in the late Ming Dynasty in Fengxiang, Shaanxi. Some people pay attention to this, why did the island people run across the sea and hold them proud of me for decades"? After further careful inspection, it will be found that the weapons and equipment of the Qing army after the Kangxi Dynasty not only did not have a major breakthrough in performance, but also showed an obvious downward trend in manufacturing quality. This involves the weapons and equipment management system of the Qing Dynasty.The weapons and equipment management system in the Qing Dynasty was probably first established in the Kangxi Dynasty and became more rigorous in the Qianlong Dynasty.This system first stipulates the type system of various weapons in the Qing Dynasty, secondly stipulates its manufacturing process according to the type system, and finally stipulates the labor price and material price according to the type system and process.Although this system is conducive to the standardization and integration of Qing military weapons (in fact, there are still more types), it meets the requirements of the Qing Dynasty’s financial expenditure institutionalization at that time, and it also reduces the chances of officials cheating, but it stifles the development of new weapons. Development and application of new technologies. Under this kind of system, the development of new weapons is rejected at the beginning because it does not comply with the regulations, new technologies and new processes are rejected because they do not comply with the regulations, and finally all new factors are blocked out with authoritative prices - not in compliance with the regulations. No reimbursement allowed!The long-term peace made the rulers of the Qing Dynasty forget the big topic of future wars, and they never formulated long-term weapons and equipment development plans. Since the Kangxi Dynasty, China's commodity prices and labor prices have been on the rise, but this management system has fixed weapons manufacturing funds.Although there have been some price adjustments since then, the rate of increase has not kept up with the actual level of prices and wages in various places, and sometimes even shows a downward trend.Such as gunpowder, the Yongzheng Dynasty was 2.6 cents per catty, and the Jiaqing Dynasty was 2.1 cents per catty.This makes weapons manufacturers not only unprofitable, but may often lose money.Of course, the price of wages and materials, which is no longer sufficient, must also include the rampant deduction of officials in charge and various extortions of acceptance checkers in that era. The deviation between the stipulated price and the actual cost will not change the economic law of pursuing profit.Any manufacturer, instinctively, will never do business at a loss.In order to prevent compensation, cutting corners and materials has become an inevitable way.In order to be able to cut corners, bribing the acceptance officer has become an open secret again.Wei Yuan, a celebrity at the time, once pointed out: If Wei Yuan's remarks are too vague, let's look at an example. In 1835, Guan Tianpei, the admiral of the Guangdong Navy, made 40 new cannons to improve the defense situation of Humen. As a result, 10 of them were blown during the trial release process, killing 1 soldier, injuring 1 soldier, and 5 artillery pieces had other problems.Guan Tianpei inspected the exploded cannon and found that "there are too many pieces of broken iron and dregs, the inside of the chamber is uneven, and there are more holes", and there is a hole in it, "in which four bowls of water can be stored"! In the era of colonialism where the weak preyed on the strong, Western countries have always given top priority to the development and production of weapons and equipment.As a Westerner put it at the beginning of a long article commenting on the military power of the Qing Dynasty in the "China Series" in August 1836, "Today, as the standard for evaluating the civilization and progress of various societies, the most correct The general idea is: each society's level of sophistication in 'killing techniques', the degree of perfection and types of weapons of mutual destruction, and the proficiency in using them." However, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty who were still immersed in the well of "Heavenly Dynasty" They don't seem to know this yet.Their various practices made the weapons and equipment of the Qing Dynasty not reach the level that the technology and craftsmanship of the society at that time had reached.