The Eight Banners and the Green Camp were the pillars of rule and the tools of military repression of the whole country on which the feudal state of the Qing Dynasty relied.
The Eight Flags system is a form of social organization of the Manchus. The Jurchens, who were originally in the period of the clan system, engaged in hunting and military activities, each of the ten people in one unit, each produced an arrow, manchu called Niulu (Chinese translation as a big arrow). And with one person as the leader, he was called Niu Lu Erzhen (later collectively known as The Collar). After the rise of the Qing Taizu Nurhaci, he used the name niulu and reorganized it into a basic administrative unit and a military unit with three hundred people.
In 1601, Nurhaci changed the cattle recording to the Gushan (Chinese translation as flag) system, and established four Gushan, namely the yellow, white, red and blue flags. In 1615, in order to meet the needs of fighting against the Ming Dynasty, Nurhaci officially established the Eight Banners Organization. The eight flags each have different colors of flags, namely yellow, white, red, blue and yellow, white, red and blue. This organization is commonly known as the Eight Banners of Manchuria. During the Reign of Emperor Taiji, the Mongols and Han Chinese who surrendered were organized into the Eight Banners of Mongolia and the Eight Banners of the Han Army.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Eight Flags System, it had three functions of military, administrative and production, and all major matters were jointly discussed by the Eight Banners. Its emergence is of positive significance to the formation and consolidation of the situation of Manchuria's reunification, to the enhancement of military strength, the enhancement of social productive forces, and the economic and cultural exchanges between ethnic groups. At the same time, it also created conditions for the Manchu rulers to establish the Qing regime and unify the country.
Starting from the Emperor Taiji, the power of the flag owners was gradually weakened, the practice of the eight flag lords sitting on an equal footing was changed, and the centralization of power was strengthened. After the Qing army entered the customs, after the reform of the Shunzhi and Kangxi periods, to the Yongzheng era, it further attacked the aristocratic forces of the Eight Banners, and ordered that the people of the Eight Banners must respect the emperor as the supreme monarch and break away from the direct subordination relationship with the banner owner. In this way, only part of the feudal privileges remained of the flag owners, and the eight banners were completely transformed into parts of the centralized state apparatus. After the Eight Banners were stationed in urban towns, it was still an organization that integrated military and government on the surface, but military functions gradually occupied a dominant position and became the military pillar of the feudal regime of the Qing Dynasty.
The Green Camp is a military system established after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs. For each territory occupied by the Qing rulers, they converted the local army into a green battalion of Han soldiers. The Green Camp is marked by the Green Flag and has the Battalion as its organized unit, so it is called the Green Camp.
The Green Battalion has four classes: horsemen, soldiers, guards, and sailors. The number of soldiers is often around 600,000. Garrisoned in the Beijing Division and throughout the country. The vast majority of the officers and men of the Green Camp were Han Chinese, but important official positions were stipulated to be Manchu, which was a manifestation of the Qing rulers' policy of ethnic discrimination. The green battalion system is three major systems of sub-standardization, coordination, and battalion, and the chiefs at all levels mainly include the admiral, the chief soldier, the deputy general, the staff general, the guerrilla, the capital division, the garrison, the thousand general, the general general, and the foreign commissioner. The commander-in-chief of the Green Battalion stationed in the Beijing Division was the Commander of infantry (also known as the Admiral of the Nine Doors). During the period of corruption of the Eight Banner Soldiers, the Green Battalion became the most important military force of the Qing government.
As a military organization, the Eight Banner Soldiers and the Green Battalion together constituted the tools of the Qing government to rule the whole country. The rulers of the Qing Dynasty regarded the flag people, especially the Manchurian soldiers, as the foundation of the country, so that the eight flag soldiers were stationed around the capital and outside, and the flag people served as soldiers for generations, living exclusively on grain and wages, and separated from production and labor. After the Yongqian, due to the sharp increase in population, the system of restricting the freedom of the flag people has not changed, and the flag people rely on the state to provide for them, and the Qing government has been unable to meet the increasing demand of the flag people, making the livelihood of the eight flags increasingly embarrassing. Secondly, due to the generous supply of flag people in the early Qing Dynasty, the officers and men of the Eight Banners gradually developed the vices of arrogance and lasciviousness, gluttony, laziness, drunkenness and gambling, and their combat effectiveness was greatly weakened, so that even the green battalion soldiers were inferior. Moreover, in order to safeguard the rights and interests of the flag bearers, the Qing government imposed various restrictions on the Han army with the red flag, which widened the hierarchical gap between the flag bearers, intensified the contradictions, and thus the eight flags system was in a state of flux. Although it continued until the end of the Qing Dynasty, it could no longer save the fate of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.
After the last years of Qianlong, the Green Camp also gradually became corrupt. First of all, the Green Battalion's heavy work not only affected the training because of its mission, but also infected the army with the slippery habit of yamen oil. Secondly, the Green Camp is a world army system, with eating grain as a soldier as a worldly business, the whole family relies on the monthly salary for a living, and since Kang Yong, the monthly salary is thin, the Green Camp soldiers are difficult to calculate, they have to rely on being peddlers and crafts for a living, which affects the training, and the combat effectiveness is gradually declining, so that during the Jiaqing period, the suppression of the White Lotus Sect uprising has relied on some of the village brave forces. By the time of the Taiping Revolution, the Green Camp system was no longer useful, and Zeng Guofan could only use the Yongying system to organize the Xiang Army to suppress the Taiping Army. After the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it was impossible for the Qing government to attempt to rebuild the old system of the Green Camp. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Green Camp system was gradually abolished, and some were reorganized into police. Soon after the green camp system disappeared, the Qing Dynasty also perished.