Battle of Sarhu - The Eastern Route

The Eastern Route

On the 3rd, Nurhaci and Daišan rested and recuperated. Reports on Liu Ting and Li Rubai's routes arrived. Nurhaci decided to attack Liu Ting first, as Li Rubai's forces were mainly traversing mountain routes. Nurhaci ordered some of his troops to disguise themselves as Ming Troops and mix them into Liu Ting's forces. He also sent a message to Liu Ting with his messengers disguised as Du Song's messengers and they reported to Liu Ting that Du Song was already approaching their destination and asked him to speed up. Liu Ting took the bait and increased the pace of his advance. This ruse induced Liu Ting's troop lose cohesion with other Ming forces and advanced into a deep valley and walked straight into an ambush.

He was then ambushed in Abudali (阿布達里) Pass as his troops stretched themselves in a serpentine form to traverse the valley. His forces met Daišan's forces and were cut to pieces. He himself, wielding his glaive fought valiantly, but was cut to pieces. He also had around 15,000 Zhejiang contingent whose armour and protection was made of bamboo and were useless against the steel blades of the Jurchen warriors: they were completely slaughtered.

The 13,000 strong Korean force, including at least 10,000 musketeers, were not effective due to direction of windage against them. Also they delivered volley withought arrowheads because they did not intend to fight with them in the first place. They wanted to maintain neutral policy between the Manchus and Ming Dynasty. Korean contingent commander Gang Hong-Rip then surrendered with the remaining troops.