Many people talk about how powerful firearms were at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but that's purely nonsense. Besides the red-coated cannons, which had some power, the remaining weapons were the three-barreled guns and the "somi" guns (Japanese). These things, let alone accuracy, have a power that is merely a noise, creating a fireworks atmosphere, and they were very slow to load. In the battle of the Hun River, the Qi family army of Zhejiang, equipped with all firearms, faced the Eight Banners' "mounted archery" and suffered a disastrous defeat, with not a single person left alive.

Effective use of firearms in war was not until the Napoleonic era (after 1800), which coincided with China's Jiaqing period. The standard-issue flintlock rifles of the Napoleonic era matured and were officially deployed in troops. The power of the flintlock rifle was indeed considerable (it could penetrate steel breastplates at 100 meters), but the accuracy was poor due to round bullets and no rifling. The group dispersion at 100 meters reached as high as 3 meters, which led to the tactic of dense infantry formations and firing squads where a round of simultaneous fire could take down fewer than 10 men out of over 200 opponents, and the loading process was extremely slow. When faced with a cavalry charge, the only defense was to form a square formation.

Regarding the firearms at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Draft History of Qing records: “It cannot penetrate a wet cotton quilt from fifty steps away and cannot penetrate heavy armor from twenty steps. After firing once, it cannot fire again for a moment.” In contrast, the effective shooting range of the Eight Banners' bow and arrow was 250 meters, and six arrows could be shot in one minute.

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