By the seventh day, Huang Long knew the city was lost. His garrison's ammunition was nearly gone, the walls had been breached, and Manchu soldiers were fighting their way through the streets of Lushun. The Ming commander had already sent a messenger riding hard toward Beijing with his seals of office -- the symbolic instruments of his authority, dispatched ahead because he knew he would not need them again. When the attackers finally surrounded him, Huang Long took his own life. Every soldier in his garrison was killed. The year was 1634, and Lushun was falling for the first time -- two and a half centuries before the same harbor would become the most contested port in East Asia.
The siege was made possible by betrayal. In the spring of 1633, two former Ming commanders -- Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming -- defected to the Later Jin dynasty after their own rebellion against Ming authority was suppressed. The two men brought with them something the Jin desperately lacked: expertise in naval warfare. The Manchu forces that would soon found the Qing dynasty were formidable on land but had limited capability at sea. Kong and Geng offered to use their knowledge to capture Lushun, a port city that controlled access to the Bohai Sea and the sea lanes connecting Manchuria to the Chinese heartland. The Jin had briefly seized Lushun once before, in 1622, but had been unable to hold it. This time, with experienced naval commanders directing the attack, they intended a permanent conquest.
The Jin army attacked Lushun in the summer of 1634. For six days, the Ming garrison held the city's walls against repeated assaults, inflicting 4,000 casualties on the attackers. The defense was tenacious but ultimately unsustainable -- the garrison was running out of ammunition, and no relief force was coming. On the seventh day, the Jin launched a coordinated assault from both sea and land. The Ming defenders managed to repel the naval attack, keeping the harbor approaches secure. But the land assault broke through the walls and carried the fighting into the city streets. Commander Huang Long and his soldiers fought on until they were completely surrounded, at which point Huang committed suicide rather than face capture. His entire garrison -- 5,000 Ming soldiers -- perished in the siege.
The Jin left 2,500 men to garrison the conquered city, using Lushun as their base of operations for eliminating the remaining Ming naval presence in the Bohai Sea. The capture of the port was a significant step in the Later Jin's transformation into the Qing dynasty, which would formally replace the Ming in 1644. Control of Lushun gave the Manchus a southern anchor on the Liaodong Peninsula and denied the Ming a staging ground for counter-offensives in the region. The siege of 1634 established a pattern that would repeat at this same harbor for centuries: Lushun's geography -- a natural harbor protected by hills, commanding the approaches to the Bohai Gulf -- made it irresistible to every power that aspired to control northeastern China. The Russians would fortify it, the Japanese would besiege it twice, and the Soviets would occupy it. But the first great siege of Lushun belonged to the Manchus, and to a Ming commander who chose death over the dishonor of surrender.
Located at 38.81N, 121.26E at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. The natural harbor geography that made Lushun strategically valuable in 1634 is clearly visible from altitude -- a narrow entrance leading to a sheltered inner basin surrounded by defensive hills. Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport (ZYTL) is approximately 36 km northeast. The Bohai Sea lies to the west, and from higher altitudes the narrow peninsula connecting Lushun to the mainland is strikingly apparent.