Battle of Dalinghe
Battle of Dalinghe | |||||||
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Part of the Ming-Qing transition | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Later Jin dynasty | Ming dynasty | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Sun Chengzong Zu Dashou Wu Xiang Zhang Chun Zu Dabi Song Wei He Kegang | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
80,000[1] |
Zu Dashou: 13,800[2] Sun Chengzong: 40,000[1] Jinzhou: 6,000[1] Songshan: 2,000[1] |
The Battle of Dalinghe (Chinese: 大凌河之役) was a battle between the Later Jin dynasty and the Ming dynasty that took place between September and November 1631. Later Jin forces besieged and captured the fortified northern Ming city of Dalinghe (大凌河; present-day Linghai) in Liaoning. Using a combined force of Jurchen and Mongol cavalry, along with recently captured Ming artillery units, the Later Jin khan Hong Taiji surrounded Dalinghe and defeated a series of Ming reinforcement forces in the field. The Ming defenders under general Zu Dashou surrendered the city after taking heavy losses and running out of food. Several of the Ming officers captured in the battle would go on to play important roles in the ongoing transition from Ming to Qing. The battle was the first major test for the Chinese firearms specialists incorporated into the Later Jin military. Whereas the Later Jin had previously relied primarily on their own Eight Banners cavalry in military campaigns, after the siege of Dalinghe the Chinese infantry would play a larger role in the fighting. Unlike Nurhaci's failed siege at the Battle of Ningyuan several years prior, the siege of Dalinghe was a success that would soon be replicated in Songshan and Jinzhou, paving the way for the establishment of the Qing dynasty and the ultimate defeat of the Ming.
Prelude
In 1629, the Jurchen army under Hong Taiji invaded the Ming, bypassing the heavily defended Ming fortress at Ningyuan, where Hong Taiji's father Nurhaci had been defeated three years earlier by Yuan Chonghuan at the Battle of Ningyuan. Slipping through friendly Mongol territory, the Jurchens attacked to the west through Xifengkou Pass (喜峰口) in Hebei province, aiming towards the capital at Beijing in what became known as the Jisi Incident. Yuan, who was still commander of the Ningyuan garrison, sent 20,000 troops under Zu Dashou to relieve Beijing. Zu crossed the Great Wall through Shanhai Pass and marched to Beijing, defeating the Jurchens outside the city walls.[3] The failure of Yuan's northern defenses led to his arrest and subsequent execution. Before his death, however, he had used the prestige resulting from his previous victory over Nurhaci to rebuild Jinzhou, Songshan and Dalinghe into military colonies (屯, tun) protected by heavy fortifications as part of a forward defense policy that called for building strongholds north of the Great Wall, in particular at Ningyuan, which had served as his base of operations.[4][5]
Hong Taiji was able to capture several cities in northeast China in the 1629 campaign, including Luanzhou, Qian'an, Zunhua, and Yongping (present-day Lulong County). The surrender of the Yongping garrison gave the Jurchens access to the so-called "red barbarian" and "generalissimo" cannons (大將軍炮), European designs that Shandong's Christian governor Sun Yuanhua had proposed for adoption by the Ming military. In 1623 some of these European cannons were deployed to the northern frontier under generals such as Sun Chengzong and Yuan Chonghuan.[6] The new artillery had, in fact, been instrumental in Yuan's defense of Ningyuan against Nurhaci in 1626.[7] Hong Taiji, Nurhaci's son, now had access to the same technology himself. Tong Yangxing (佟養性), a former Ming officer, was given command of three thousand Chinese troops and the responsibility of managing the artillery experts captured at Yongping. By 1631, they had produced forty cannons.[8] These troops were the initial core of what would come to be known as the "Old Han Troops" (舊漢兵).[9][10]
In 1630, Hong Taiji left his cousin Amin in Yongping to defend the newly conquered territory. Zu Dashou embarked on a counterattack and recovered Luanzhou. In response, Amin ordered a massacre of the civilian populations of Qian'an and Yongping, plundering the cities and abandoning them to the Ming. News of the slaughter enraged Hong Taiji, who had been cultivating relations with the Chinese population to pacify captured cities and encourage defection by Ming officers.[11]
Battle
Dalinghe was the most forward-placed of all the Ming garrisons in
The Jurchen forces focused their efforts on capturing the castles surrounding Dalinghe, sending messengers to each inviting their surrender. They also sent repeated appeals to Zu himself requesting his submission. Tong's artillery bombarded the castles that initially refused to surrender, causing several to eventually submit. The Ming defenders attempted several sallies from the city, but were generally unsuccessful against the Jurchens.[14][1] Meanwhile, two small Ming relief forces were defeated by the Jurchens outside the city: first a force of 2,000 from Songshan, then a force of 6,000 from Jinzhou. One source attributes the Jurchen victories to Jurchen and Mongol cavalry, some led by Ajige, Hong Taiji's half-brother.[15] Another source credits the artillery of Tong Yangxing.[1]
Battle of Xiaolinghe
In early October, a large Ming army of 40,000 men arrived near Jinzhou under the command of Zu's brother-in-law (and father of fellow frontier general
On October 19, the main body of the 40,000 troops under Sun Chengzong set out under the command of Zhang Chun (張春). The Ming troops crossed the Xiaolinghe and arrayed themselves in a block with cannons and muskets covering each direction. Making use of Tong Yangxing's gunners, Hong Taiji broke the Ming lines after losing many of his Jurchen cavalry on several inconclusive head-on charges. The Ming army set fire to the dry autumn grass, hoping to burn Tong's artillery, but the wind direction changed and the fire turned back upon them instead. Zhang Chun was captured along with thirty-three other officers and later defected to the Jurchen side.[17][1]
Surrender of Dalinghe
On November 5, Yuzizhang (於子章), the largest of the forts surrounding Dalinghe, surrendered after being pounded for several days by the "red barbarian" and "generalissimo" European cannons of Tong Yangxing.[10] The remaining forts soon surrendered one by one. By mid-November, supplies were low in the Jurchen camp, but the surrender of Yuzizhang and the other forts gave them enough supplies to last another month. The situation was far worse inside the walls of Dalinghe, where the population had resorted to cannibalism. Messages were exchanged between the two armies regarding the possibility of surrender. Zu Dashou's adopted son Zu Kefa (祖可法) was sent to the Jurchen camp. When asked why the Chinese continued to pointlessly defend a now-empty city, Zu Kefa responded that the officers all remembered what had happened at Yongping, where Amin had slaughtered the population the previous year.[18]
After more messages were exchanged, Zu stated his willingness to surrender on the condition that the khan immediately send a force to attack Jinzhou, where Zu's family and those of many of his officers lived. This would enable the soldiers to be reunited with their kin. Knowing that his army was in no condition to mount another major attack, Hong Taiji agreed to a plan in which Zu himself would return to Jinzhou, of which he was still the commanding officer, under the pretense of having escaped from Dalinghe. After entering the city, he would turn it over to the khan. With the plan decided, Zu's forces finally surrendered Dalinghe on November 21. Of the 30,000 people in the city, less than 12,000 had survived.[19][20]
Aftermath
Zu Dashou had promised to take Jinzhou for Hong Taiji, but when he actually arrived at his old garrison there, he returned to the service of the Ming. He remained at the Jinzhou garrison for the next ten years as its commander. Hong Taiji besieged
The Battle of Dalinghe had proven that the Jurchens were now capable of using artillery to counter the fortifications along the Ming empire's northern frontier. Whereas the Ming had initially been reluctant to adopt foreign technology in the form of the Portuguese cannons, the Jurchens readily made use of them to address their relative weakness in siege warfare. Instead of avoiding the main Ming strongholds in Liaodong as he had in his 1629 expedition, Hong Taiji could now fight them head on. Moreover, the battle was a success for the newly formed Chinese units fighting under the Jurchens. As the ranks of Ming defectors swelled after Dalinghe and the subsequent battles of Songshan and Jinzhou, the Chinese artillery forces under Tong Yangxing would be expanded into the Han Chinese Eight Banners, fighting alongside the original Jurchen Eight Banners and the Mongol Eight Banners.[22] The Ming officers who surrendered in these campaigns would later have successful careers under the Jurchens. The Liaodong natives of the northern frontier were the best troops of the Ming military, and their incorporation into the Jin dealt the Ming dynasty a crippling blow. In 1635, Hong Taiji declared that his people, formerly called the Jurchens, would henceforth be called the Manchus, and in 1636 he changed the name of his empire from the Later Jin to the Qing. The Qing dynasty would go on to defeat the Ming and rule over China.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Swope 2014, p. 92.
- ^ a b c Swope 2014, p. 91.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 130–131.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, p. 86.
- ^ Elliott 2001, pp. 92–93.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 74–77.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 82–83.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 168–169.
- ^ Elliott 2001, p. 77.
- ^ a b Wakeman 1985, p. 182.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 164–166.
- ^ a b Wakeman 1985, p. 170.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 171–172.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 172–173.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 173–174.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 175–179.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 182–186.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 189–190.
- ^ Swope 2014, p. 93.
- ^ Wakeman 1985, pp. 221–223.
- ^ Elliott 2001, p. 59.
Bibliography
- ISBN 0520048040
- ISBN 9780804746847
- Swope, Kenneth M. (2014), The Military Collapse of China's Ming Dynasty, 1618-44, ISBN 9781134462094