River Transport and the Effectiveness of the Qing Artillery Corps during the Ming-Qing Transition

What is it about?

The Yangtze River system and the Pearl River system guaranteed timely and stable artillery support for the Qing siege force in Jiangnan and Liangguang respectively. This was made possible by the Qing’s large reserves of cannons and the sizeable surface forces at several strategically important cities along the two river systems, which constitute a river-based artillery logistic system. In the mountainous and unpopulated areas of China, however, the Qing artillery corps faced considerable logistic difficulties. This put the besieging army in a strategic dilemma, i.e. whether to wait for the siege train indefinitely or to assault the city with cold weapons. To push further, this strategic dilemma posed by the terrain may explain why the Qing army, despite possessing the latest artillery technology, remained using cold weapons extensively until the nineteenth century.

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