Peking Field Force

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). Its troops were on duty in the Imperial City, Beijing, as one of the units of the Qing emperor's Imperial Guard.

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. After that war, high Qing officials like Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Wenxiang (the latter a Manchu) tried to acquire advanced western weapons and to copy western military organization. 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. 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.

The "First Historical Archives of China" (中国第一历史档案馆) in Beijing hold a collection of primary documents on the Peking Field Force.