The Peking Field Force was a modern-armed military unit that defended the Chinese imperial capital Beijing in the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912).
The Force was founded in 1862, two years after the humiliating capture of Beijing and the sack of the Qing emperor's Summer Palace in 1860 by foreign powers at the end of the Second Opium War.
[2] Founded by Wenxiang and manned by mostly Manchu Bannermen, the soldiers most loyal to the dynasty, the Force was armed with Russian rifles and French cannon and drilled by British officers.
[3] The Field Force was one of the main units defending Beijing from the Eight Nation Alliance during the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900, and it was destroyed by the heavy losses it took during the Western siege.
[16] The force had received western training and modern equipment during the period 1862-1865, though after that while it continued its existence further, modernisation had not occurred and it had been left to languish.