Background

Zu Dashou was born in Ningyuan, present-day Xingcheng, Liaoning province, during the Ming dynasty. His year of birth is unknown. His courtesy name was Fuyu (复宇).

Defense of Beijing

In November 1629, the Manchu army under Hong Taiji invaded China, bypassing the heavily defended Ming fortress at Ningyuan north of the Great Wall, where Hong Taiji's father Nurhaci had been defeated three years earlier at the Battle of Ningyuan. Slipping through friendly Mongol territory, the Manchus attacked to the west through Xifengkou Pass in Hebei province, aiming towards the capital at Beijing. Yuan Chonghuan, 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 Manchus outside the city walls.

Recapturing Luanzhou

Although forced to retreat, Hong Taiji's forces had nevertheless captured the cities of Luanzhou, Qian'an, Zunhua, and Yongping (present-day Lulong County) during his 1629 expedition. In 1630, he 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. He had Amin arrested and imprisoned, using the opportunity to appropriate Amin's Bordered Blue Banner army by giving it to Amin's younger brother Jirgalang, who was close to Hong Taiji.

Siege of Dalinghe

In 1631, Zu Dashou was serving as commander of the Jinzhou garrison. He was leading his troops on an inspection of Dalinghe (present-day Linghai city) when Hong Taiji, commanding a force of 20,000 Manchu, Mongol, and Han Chinese troops, arrived to attack the city on September 1. At Dalinghe, Zu commanded an army of 14,000 men, half infantry and half cavalry, many of whom were veterans of his previous battles with Manchu forces. The presence of Zu's men was made known to Hong Taiji when his patrols captured a Chinese resident outside the city. Instead of attacking the city directly, the Manchu forces prepared for a long siege, building a moat around the city, and guarding the roads with newly formed artillery units armed with Portuguese cannons under the command of the Chinese general Tong Yangxing.

The Manchu 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. Meanwhile, several Ming relief forces were defeated by the Manchus outside the city. In October, a larger Ming army of 40,000 men arrived near Jinzhou under the command of Zu's brother-in-law, Wu Xiang. Hong Taiji mobilized his troops and engaged in a field battle with the Ming forces, emerging victorious. On October 13, Hong Taiji wrote Zu Dashou again to solicit his surrender, but received no response. On the 14th, Hong Taiji lured Zu's men to sally forth in an attempt to recapture one of the forts outside the city. The failure of Zu's attack led him to withdraw behind the walls, never attacking again for the duration of the siege. On October 19, another Ming army arrived under the command of Zhang Chun. Making use of Tong Yangxing's gunners, Hong Taiji broke the Ming lines. The Manchus defeated Zhang's army, taking heavy casualties in the process. Zhang Chun was captured and defected to the Manchu side.

First surrender

On November 5, Yuzizhang, the largest of the forts surrounding Dalinghe, surrendered after being pounded for several days by the "red barbarian" Portuguese cannons of Tong Yangxing. The remaining forts soon surrendered one by one. By mid-November, supplies were low in the Manchu camp, but 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 was sent to the Manchu 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.

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.

Escape to Jinzhou

Shortly after surrendering to Hong Taiji, Zu was dispatched to Jinzhou along with 26 retainers to execute his plan to capture the city. On November 26, he sent a letter from Jinzhou explaining that he needed more time to plan the coup. Hong Taiji's reply to this letter went unanswered. Despite leaving his sons and nephews in the care of the khan, Zu Dashou had returned to the Ming to once again command the Jinzhou garrison. In the following years, his sons would become important officers of the Manchu Qing military. Zu Zerun joined the Plain Yellow Banner as a general, while Zu Kefa become a leading architect of the conquest of the Ming.

Second surrender

In 1636, Hong Taiji declared himself Emperor Taizong of the Qing dynasty. After subjugating Korea and Inner Mongolia, he turned his sights upon Jinzhou once again. The Qing attacked Jinzhou in 1639 and again in 1640. Both times they were defeated by Zu Dashou. In 1641, Taizong sent an army to besiege Jinzhou and Songshan. The commander of Songshan was Hong Chengchou, commander-in-chief of frontier defenses. Songshan was captured on March 18, 1642 along with several brothers of Zu Dashou: Zu Dale, Zu Daming, and Zu Dacheng. Zu Dale was Zu Dashou's younger brother, and, along with Dashou's sons, were sent to speak with Zu Dashou during the siege of Jinzhou to convince him to surrender, which he did on April 8, 1642, after a long siege in which, just as at Dalinghe previously, his troops had resorted to cannibalism. Hong Taiji, now Emperor Taizong, chided Zu for his treachery after his first surrender at Dalinghe. Nevertheless, Zu was forgiven and permitted to serve the Qing alongside the other members of his clan, many of whom had already served with distinction.

Service under the Qing

After surrendering to the Qing, Zu wrote several letters to the commander of Ningyuan, his nephew Wu Sangui, to solicit his defection to the Qing. When the rebels of Li Zicheng captured Beijing in 1644, prompting the suicide of the Chongzhen Emperor, Wu cast his lot with the Manchus. He opened the gates of Shanhai Pass to the Qing army under Dorgon in order to mount a joint campaign to oust the rebels from the capital. With this act, the Qing captured Beijing. Although the war between Ming and Qing would last several decades longer, the Ming would never recover from this loss.

Zu Dashou died in Beijing in 1656. He was buried with full honors as a member of the Plain Yellow Banner.

Tomb

In 1921, Charles Trick Currelly, the archaeological director of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, purchased a set of Chinese artifacts from the fur trader George Crofts. Among the artifacts, the most spectacular was the so-called "Ming Tomb", which came from a village north of Beijing. It was rumoured to be the tomb of Zu Dashou, but the rumour was not confirmed until 90 years later, when researchers concluded that the tomb belonged to Zu Dashou and his three wives. The tomb is on the museum's list of "iconic objects".

In 2013, 25 fragments of Zu Dashou's tombstone were found in his hometown Xingcheng. The largest fragment weighs more than . Altogether the fragments comprise the upper half of his tombstone, inscribed with 81 Chinese characters. The tombstone was originally at least tall. His descendants still live in the area.

生平

世代为辽东望族，祖大寿、祖大乐、祖大弼三兄弟皆辽东将领，大寿最早是熊廷弼、王化贞的部将，后来随孙承宗，以大寿佐参将金冠守岛。天启三年（1623年）主持修筑宁远城。天启六年（1626年）正月，努尔哈赤攻宁远，大寿佐袁崇焕等守城，大败之，以功升副总兵。天启七年（1627年）五月，皇太极再攻宁远，大寿、满桂率兵与清兵激战，六月，清军又败走，史称「宁锦大捷」。崇祯元年（1628年）朝廷用袁崇焕督师辽东，赐尚方宝剑，六月，擢大寿为辽东前锋总兵，驻守锦州。后崇焕诛杀毛文龙，数月后清军迂回关宁锦防线从蒙古入塞南下，北京戒严，大寿从袁崇焕入卫京师。不久崇焕因皇太极的反间计下狱，大寿率部毁山海关东走，朝野震惊，是为己巳之变。思宗命袁崇焕以书招回，孙承宗亦遣使抚慰，大寿得书，受其感召，全军皆哭，奋勇杀敌，连克永平、迁安、滦洲，辽左乃安。

崇祯四年（1631年）祖大寿筑大凌河城。八月，皇太极兵围大凌河，孙元化急令孔有德救之，至吴桥兵变，有德倒戈回山东，登州城陷；孙承宗派宋伟、吴襄两将救援大寿，宋吴两将不和，在长山坡遭遇溃败，锦州告急；祖大寿四次突围均失败，明军4万多、分两路出击，全军皆没。祖大寿坚守三月，城内粮食殆尽，乃杀马而食之。马尽，则杀民及老兵，遂粮尽而降。副将何可纲不从，大寿执之，于后金诸将前杀之。可纲不变色，不出言，含笑而死。皇太极赠以御服黑狐帽、貂裘、雕鞍、白马，后回锦州为内应。后负约，与清兵多次激战。崇祯十一年（1638年）祖大寿击败多铎军，明廷擢为少傅左总督。崇桢十四年（1641年）七月，皇太极率师围锦州，崇祯即命蓟辽总督洪承畴率军十三万以解锦州之围，是为松锦之战，但洪承畴兵败被俘。崇祯十五年（1642年）锦州被困年馀，祖大寿粮尽援绝，遂再次降清。他曾经写信劝其外甥吴三桂投降。吴三桂当时还没有「冲冠一怒为红颜」，这种劝降信自然毫无作用。清兵入关后祖大寿任总兵。顺治十三年（1656年）病卒于北京，葬于北京。

家庭

有子祖泽润、祖泽溥、祖泽洪、祖泽清，一个养子祖可法。后人祖世增，辛亥革命时殉清。

后事

1919年，在天津做生意的英国皮货商克拉虎氏，接受了加拿大皇家安大略博物馆采购任务，采买一座明墓运回加拿大，当即有自称祖大寿的后人联系卖墓事宜。1920年，他亲自到丰台铁匠营墓地现场经过考察，经博物馆认可后，这才买下了这群石雕以及墓主人的八角形坟墓石雕壁，然后不远万里，通过轮船海运到加拿大安大略皇家博物馆。

注释