ABSTRACT
On 15 September 1813, a Manchu prince named Mianning used his musket within the walls of the Forbidden City to fire at invading rebels from the Eight Trigram Uprising, thus breaking the age-old imperial dictate that guns should never be fired in the Forbidden City.1 This action is an entirely appropriate place to begin a discussion of modern Chinese warfare, since the most essential element of modern warfare is the gun and, by extension, artillery. With guns and bayonets, foot soldiers could not only compete with cavalry, they could dominate them:
The customary explanation for this new importance of infantry is that it resulted from the improvement in firearms; and it is true that the invention of the musket, its evolution into the flintlock, and the invention of the bayonet, all led to a pronounced increase in infantry fire power, and hence to an extension of foot soldiery.2
