The modern Chinese army dates back to 1894 and the defeat in the
China-Japan War over Korea. Viceroys Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai
were bent on drilling an effective service. Chiefly German and Japanese
instructors were hired, though there were a few other foreigners also.
General Upton (U. S. A.), of Civil War fame, once made a trip to China
and planned with Viceroy Li Hung Chang the establishment of a Chinese
West Point in the north, which has been begun in the Pei Yang Military
College at Tientsin. Emperor William personally instructed General Yin
Tchang in Germany. An army of Imperial Guards and ten divisions, mostly
territorial for facility in recruiting and mobilizing, was whipped into
shape chiefly in the northern provinces, and twenty other divisions
were partly formed as provided for by the famous Army Edict of April
16, 1906. Modern arsenals, headquarters offices, field maneuvers, Red
Cross, foreign instructors, the Pei Yang Military College, etc., were
all provided for. The old-style provincial turbaned troops allotted to
each viceroy, and the pensioned soldiers of the eight Manchu banners
were not all disbanded. They were quartered among the 4,000 walled
cities. No conscription was necessary, as the men seemed anxious to
serve for the wage, or the promise of six dollars a month. The plan
was to keep the men three years with the colors, three years with the
reserve, and thereafter for ten years with a landwehr on the German
plan. By 1900 the new army was not cohesive, or the reactionary
empress dowager, Prince Tuan, General Tung Fu of Kansu, and Yu Hsien,
of Shangtung, would have wiped out the foreigners in the legations and
Admiral Seymour’s international relief expedition at Tientsin. When
the 1911 rebellion opened, the Eighth Division joined the republicans
at Wuchang, and earned immortal glory. Their brothers of the Third
Division opposed them at Hankau. The Ninth Division of Shangtung and
Kiangsu territorials held Nanking for the imperialists, but the Kiangsu
Brigade of that division later deserted. The Twentieth Division of
Manchurian territorials at Lanchow Camp near Peking earned immortal
glory by sending up to the National Assembly and the throne nineteen
constitutional articles which they said had to be signed before they
would war for the throne. This was _lèse majesté_ with a vengeance! The
Guards Division was at Peking, where it stayed, watching the hoards of
bullion and sycee more than constitutional articles! The Sixth Division
was in Shansi province. The First Division of Manchu troops, and the
Second and Fourth Divisions at times shuttlecocked along the railway
between Hankau and Peking. The Fifth Division was at Tsinan, capital of
Shangtung province.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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