It's not that Ministry of War Shangshu can't control the army at all most of the time. There were many ministers of the Ministry of War in the Qing Dynasty. They were in charge of Manchu affairs, and Han ministers were in charge of Han affairs. There are already two of them, and local governors usually hang the title of Ministry of War ministers to facilitate the military jurisdiction of their own jurisdictions, so there are more than a dozen Ministry of War ministers in the country. Even if these governors were not in Beijing, the ministers of Manchu and Han could not directly manage the army. He can only manage the promotion, appointment and assessment of military attaché s in various countries, the ordnance logistics of the national army, the military intelligence of the whole country and so on. He can still plan battles in wartime, and he can't care about anything else. The army belongs to the emperor, and only the emperor is the supreme commander of the army. The Ministry of War is equivalent to the Fourth Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army and the Ministry of National Defense today, but the command of the army is in the hands of the Central Military Commission.