Sino-Burmese War
Military

For the Qing, the war highlighted limits to their military power. The Emperor blamed the low battle-worthiness of his Green Standard armies for the first two failed invasions. But he was to concede later that his Manchu Bannermen too were less suited to fighting in Burma than in Xinjiang. Despite sending in 50,000 and 60,000 troops in the last two invasions, the Qing command lacked up-to-date information about invasion routes, and had to consult centuries-old maps to form their battle plan. This unfamiliarity exposed their supply and communication lines to repeated Burmese attacks, and allowed their main armies to be encircled in the last three invasions. The Burmese scorched earth policy meant that the Chinese were vulnerable to supply line cuts. Perhaps most importantly, the Qing soldiers proved ill-suited to fight in the tropical climate of Burma. In the last three invasions, thousands of Chinese troops became ill with malaria and other tropical diseases, and many perished as a result. This neutralized the Chinese advantage of superior numbers, and allowed the Burmese to engage the Chinese armies head-to-head towards the end of the campaigns.

The war is considered the peak of Konbaung military power. Historian Victor Lieberman writes: "These near simultaneous victories over Siam (1767) and China (1765–1769) testified to a truly astonishing elan unmatched since Bayinnaung." The Burmese military proved that they were able and willing to take on a far superior enemy, using their familiarity with the terrain and the weather to their maximum advantage (the Battle of Maymyo is now a military case study of infantry fighting against a larger army.).

Yet it proved that there were limits to the Burmese military power. The Burmese learned that they could not fight two simultaneous wars, especially if one of them was against the world's largest military. King Hsinbyushin 's reckless decision to fight a two-front war nearly cost the kingdom its independence. Moreover, their losses, while smaller than Qing losses, were heavy in proportion to their much smaller size of population, hampering their military capability elsewhere. Konbaung 's military power would plateau in the following decades. It made no progress against Siam. Its later conquests came only against smaller kingdoms to the west — Arakan, Manipur and Assam.
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