From my notes:
Imperial Artillery
“…well trained and efficient, with excellent weapons used with effect in nearly every engagement.”
-Dix
Despite the lack of a true Artillery branch-of-service, certainly early in the period, according to various contemporary reports officers often chose good positions for the guns and they were handled well. Gunners were quick at picking up ranges, and accurate in their fire when the range had been found. There seem to have been many defective shells, however, as some landed without exploding. However in several actions Chinese gunfire silenced the Allied guns or forced them to limber up and move off.
Uniforms
The cut and style of the uniforms followed the typical traditional Chinese infantry pattern, primarily as the crews were often just infantry or cavalry assigned to man the guns. The uniform worn by Li Hung hang’s artillery during the late 1890s was green turban, yellow sleeveless waistcoat with a red ‘panel’ on the chest and wide red borders around neck and bottom edge, shirt or tunic under the waistcoat blue with red cuffs, very full light blue trousers with loose bottoms reaching just below the knee, black stockings in white slipper-shoes.
Other Chinese artillery units wore uniforms in similar styles but with darker primary colours, predominantly blues and reds. Artillerymen were also described wearing violet embroidered coats and blue trousers.
Westernised artillery wore similar uniforms to other Westernised units. The crew of a Hotchkiss mountain gun battery in a photo wear dark round-topped peakless caps and suits, the tunics having darker collar trim which extends down the front to make a ‘plastron’ front. Officers wear Mandarin hats and traditional robes in a colour which appears to match the trim on the men’s tunics.
Weapons & Equipment
Typically belts and equipment were brown leather.
Traditional artillery was given frightening names such as the Dachen Zhong ‘Great Spirit’, a gun made from a 1.5m long iron tube, bound with nine rings and carried on a three wheeled (presumably triangular) carriage.
Most of these old weapons had been replaced by modern steel guns, Bao. Field guns, all of a modern type and for the most part of German manufacture, included batteries of 3.8 in QF Krupps, 17 pdrs, 15 pdrs, 6 pdrs, 3 pdrs & 1 pdrs.
A battery of 1.65” Hotchkiss Mountain Guns with a Westernised uniformed crew appears in a photograph. This was a breech-loading, rifled gun, without recoil or counter-recoil systems, weighing 241 pds when assembled. It fired 2-lb fused projectiles to a maximum range of 3,500 yards. The gun broke down into loads for two mules; the barrel and wheels on one, and trail and axle on the second. One or more ammunition mules carried 4 wooden boxes each, containing 18 rounds and 20 primers, a total of 72 rounds of ammunition per mule.
Problems came from ensuring the right ammunition and ammunition which worked. Contemporary sources mention cannon balls made from painted mortar and shells filled with coal or saw-dust instead of gunpowder.
Machineguns
The ‘Swarm of Bees’ was a traditional weapon which fired c100 bullets some 500 paces, and was carried at the hip by a soldier, making it what could be described as the Chinese ancestor of the light machinegun.
The Chinese had modern machineguns, certainly Gatlings and Maxims. Gatlings were purchased. 10-barrelled M1877 Bulldog Gatlings were amongst those purchased. Some M1885/6/7 Gatlings were mounted on a special ‘wheelbarrow’ travelling carriage in China. The large single wheel made moving the c260 lb gun, tripod and complement of Accles magazines a little easier over the rutted roads. The sturdy wheelbarrow had 2 chests, each for 4 Accles drums, the rear sights and gunners implements just like the normal carriage.
Gatlings were also made in the Nanking Arsenal between 1874-1888, with both low wheeled carriages and tripod mounts. ‘English’.45 cal and 1” cal cartridges were filled in China. 10-barrelled guns were made at Nanking until 1888 when production switched to making Maxim machineguns.
The Maxims purchased included 1 pdr Pom-Poms QF and smaller calibre machineguns.
