During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the war with Burma lasted for seven years. Qianlong, the emperor known as the "perfect old man", one of them was to clean up his little neighbor Myanmar.
However, Qianlong did not attach much importance to the small land of Burma. Initially, Burma violated the borders of the Qing Dynasty, and Qianlong sent troops to conquer them. Despite the superiority of the Qing army, they still lost in the first encounter.
Qianlong was extremely angry at this and launched a second attack. This time, he mobilized an army of 40,000 and fought a fierce battle with the Burmese army of 10,000. Unfortunately, the results were still not ideal, and the Qing army was defeated again. Qianlong did not give up, and he gathered more troops, including the elite Eight Banners soldiers, totaling more than 20,000 people.
In the face of the third offensive of the Qing army, the Burmese army showed a stubborn spirit of resistance. However, under the continuous onslaught of the Qing army, the Burmese army gradually showed defeat. Burma began to seek a peaceful solution, and Qianlong realized that even though the Qing army was superior in numbers, it was inferior in combat to the Burmese army.
After several years of conquest, the Qing Dynasty won a difficult victory, but the war also exposed a serious problem: the Qing Dynasty's military power had begun to decline. Even in the Qianlong era, the Qing Dynasty was no longer able to defeat a country like Burma. This also indicates that in the later Opium Wars, the Qing Dynasty's defeat was not due to the incompetence of the later emperors, but the overall strength of the Qing Dynasty was no longer able to compete with the world powers.