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Qing Imperial court portraits of senior Manchu military officers, known as Bannermen, mid-18th century.<br/><br/> From the time China was brought under the rule of the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1683), the banner soldiers became more professional and bureaucratised. Once the Manchus took over governing, they could no longer satisfy the material needs of soldiers by garnishing and distributing booty; instead, a salary system was instituted, ranks standardised, and the Bannermen became a sort of hereditary military caste, though with a strong ethnic inflection.<br/><br/> Banner soldiers took up permanent positions, either as defenders of the capital, Beijing, where roughly half of them lived with their families, or in the provinces, where 18 garrisons were established.<br/><br/> The largest banner garrisons throughout most of the Qing dynasty were at Beijing, followed by Xi'an and Hangzhou. Sizable banner populations were also placed in Manchuria and at strategic points along the Great Wall, the Yangtze River and Grand Canal.
Agui (September 7, 1717 - October 10, 1797) was a Manchu noble general for the Qing dynasty. He was a scion of a noble family who led a number of important Manchu military operations, including several of the 'Ten Great Campaigns'. In 1781, Agui went to Lanzhou, in the northwestern Gansu province, to lead the suppression of the rebellion by the Salar adherents of the Jahriyya Sufi order. Agui also led campaigns that acquired Ili and Eastern Turkestan (which today are part of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region) and Taiwan. He served under Fuheng in the 1769 failed campaign of the Sino-Burmese War (1765–1769). He served as a minister to the emperor and a member of the Grand Council and Grand Secretariat (both administrative cabinets of the Chinese government) until his death.