The Battle of Pyongyang in September of the 20th year of Guangxu (1894) was a decisive battle between the Qing and Japanese armies in Korea. Many articles said that when the battle was fierce, the Japanese army's food, grass and ammunition were about to run out, but Ye Zhichao, the commander of the Qing army, abandoned the city and fled, ran 500 miles and withdrew to China, leaving a large number of supplies captured by the Japanese army.
This is not the case. In the early morning of September 15, 1894, the Japanese army launched a general attack on Pyongyang, and at 8:30 a.m., the Japanese army conquered the Mudandae in the north of the city, overlooking the city of Pyongyang, and then broke through the Xuanwu Gate, Pyongyang was very critical. However, the biggest problem faced by the Qing army was that there was a shortage of ammunition. For example, the Sheng army, one of the main forces of the Pyongyang defenders, Wei Rugui, had about 6,000 troops and 20 artillery pieces, accounting for nearly half of the total number of Qing troops defending the city. Before the war, the army made preparations and stockpiled some ammunition in Pyongyang, including 550,000 rounds of ammunition for various guns and 2,400 artillery shells. In addition, the soldier brought 150 rounds of ammunition per gun, and each gun was originally equipped with 50 rounds. In other words, each soldier could use an average of 242 rounds of ammunition (a far cry from the standard of 1,000 rounds per gun and a minimum of 500 rounds in the Qing army), and each gun had 170 shells.
However, in the Battle of Pyongyang, less than a day after the start of the Japanese general offensive, the Sheng army fired 740,000 rounds of ammunition and 1,800 artillery shells, which had already consumed about half of the ammunition. In fact, in the high-intensity combat at that time, 200 rounds of ammunition were distributed to each person, and it was barely enough to support even half a day. After the Qing army abandoned the city, the Japanese army captured 560,000 rounds of infantry and 840 artillery shells in Pyongyang, which seemed to be a lot. But at that time, the Qing army had a total of 130,000 people, at least 40 artillery pieces, these ammunition evenly spread, only 43 rounds per person, 21 shells per gun, is a drop in the bucket. Taking the Sheng Army as an example, about 340,000 rounds of ammunition were distributed in the battle of the 550,000 rounds of ammunition in the pre-war reserve, and 60 percent of them have been consumed, and the commander-in-chief Ye Zhichao also came to borrow 1060,000 rounds, which shows that the ammunition of all armies at that time was close to running out.
From this point of view, the Qing army's ammunition reserves in the Battle of Pyongyang were actually quite scarce, and if they fought another battle of the same intensity as on September 15, they would have to fight the enemy with their bare hands. Ye Zhichao also reported to the imperial court that there was less food in the city for 5 days, and the situation of the Qing army at that time was really exhausted, and it was impossible to get supplies and reinforcements in the short term.
The decision to retreat under such circumstances is not entirely unreasonable. However, the generals of the Qing army did not do a good job of preparing for the war before the war, they were passive and incompetent on the battlefield, and they were at a loss during the retreat, causing unnecessary losses, which is undoubtedly the responsibility that they cannot escape.
Examples of the lack of ammunition affecting the combat effectiveness of troops were not uncommon in the Qing army. Heilongjiang General Yi Ketang'a, reinforced by the ** Division in the First Sino-Japanese War, guarded the border of the Yalu River, and later became one of the protagonists of the battlefield. The 3,000 soldiers he led when he went to war carried 3,800 fast guns, and each man had more than one gun, which can be said to be quite abundant.
However, this force has less than 700,000 rounds of ammunition, an average of 182 rounds per shot. It was obviously a home battle, but the ammunition situation was more tense than that of Wei Rugui's army in the battle of Pyongyang. In the rest of the armies on the Yalu River defense line, the average number of soldiers carried was more than 200 rounds.
In the case of insufficient ammunition reserves, soldiers will undoubtedly have great concerns, affecting efficiency and morale. As a result, the border defense was broken by the Japanese army with a single blow. In the ensuing battle, Iqtanga repeatedly requested ammunition supplies. In late November, he asked the Heilongjiang side to allocate 500,000 rounds of ammunition, and the Jilin Machinery Bureau was responsible for rushing to produce 300,000 rounds. Iktanga said that 2 million rounds of ammunition each of Mauser *** Habekis need to be replenished to be enough for the battalions of his subordinates. However, there are not so many bullets in Heilongjiang, and only 170,000 rounds can be transported first, which is better than nothing.
For this reason, Emperor Guangxu sent a telegram to Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili, and Li Bingheng, the governor of Shandong, asking the Tianjin and Shandong Machinery Bureaus to raise ammunition and quickly receive help. However, during the entire war, Iktanga received only more than 1.19 million rounds of ammunition. At the same time, his troops have expanded to more than 10,000 people, and they have participated in the Battle of Motianling and the Battle of Haicheng, and the consumption of ammunition has increased unabated. This level of ammunition reserves simply cannot meet the needs of modern warfare.
The ruling class of the Qing Dynasty did not grasp the operation of the modern state at all. In all aspects of war preparations, from the collection of war funds to intelligence gathering, from logistics to troop recruitment, the Qing court adopted extremely crude and primitive methods.
For example, at that time, the Japanese army had adopted the logistics system of the modern army, and set up military stations on the march route to ensure transportation and supply. In the establishment of the Qing army, there was basically no logistics and baggage troops with a clear division of labor, and the supply and transportation relied heavily on the old-style system of civilian personnel and civilian husbands, which was primitive and inefficient. Moreover, in terms of the types of arms supply, the Qing Dynasty did not pay enough attention to the balance of collocation, and increased guns to the front line;Moreover, the Qing army was equipped with as many as 16 types of guns, which exacerbated the problem of insufficient ammunition and matching.
The above-mentioned Iktang Army, although it did not have enough ammunition to use, had sufficient firearms. During the war, they received a total of 5,000 Mauser guns, 500 Mauser horse guns, 1,300 Haggaeus guns, 430 bead guns, and 300 rifles. In addition to the 3,800 fast guns carried when the division was launched, nearly 10,000 guns of various kinds were replenished one after another, and on this basis, the army was expanded on a large scale, but the problem of insufficient ammunition has always plagued this unit.
In addition, the equipment of the various units of the Qing army was uneven, and the rear ** purchased and transported arms, and did not pay enough attention to the types and specifications, and there were often embarrassments where guns and ammunition did not match. In addition, the Qing army lacked a reasonable warehouse management mechanism, which led to serious quality defects in the limited number of bullets. At the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, Liu Kunyi, who was supervising the battle on the front line, found that the upper layer of each box was fine, but the lower layer often had the problem of incompatibility or insufficient medicinal power. Song Qing, who commanded the main force of the Qing army, also proposed that most of the bullets in a certain batch did not go off, and when they were opened for inspection, they found that the gunpowder had turned to ashes. In this case, it is most likely that the bullet has not been used for a long time and is not stored properly, resulting in deterioration. This was also the case in the Battle of Pyongyang, where the guns of the Qing army reserves were said to have failed or exploded from time to time, resulting in defeat.
Of course, the generals of the Qing army also bear a heavy responsibility, in addition to some generals who are afraid of the enemy and cowardice, the bigger problem is that their modern military knowledge is generally insufficient, and it is difficult to correctly command the troops and give reasonable play to the power of modern times.
In any country, the army's organizational structure, training, logistics, equipment, and quality of officers and men are basically the same as the level of economic, orthodox, and cultural development of the whole society. The Qing Dynasty at the time of the First Sino-Japanese War had not yet realized what Huang Renyu called "digital management". The entire military system lacks strategic foresight and military knowledge, and cannot effectively reserve and deliver modern munitions, and defeat in war is inevitable.