The Battle of Dalinghe () 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 () 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. 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.
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 (), 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. The new artillery had, in fact, been instrumental in Yuan's defense of Ningyuan against Nurhaci in 1626. Hong Taiji, Nurhaci's son, now had access to the same technology himself. Tong Yangxing (), 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. These troops were the initial core of what would come to be known as the "Old Han Troops" ().
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.