Providing original insights into Chinese military history, Nicola Di Cosmo gives an annotated translation of the only known military diary in pre-modern Chinese history, providing fresh and extensive information on the inner workings of the Ch'ing army. The personal experience of the author, a young Manchu officer fighting in inhospitable South-Western China, take us close to the 'face of the battle' in seventeenth-century China, and enriches our general knowledge of military history.