Eastern vs Western Siegecraft: When the Chinese Besieged a Russian Star Fortress in 1686
1,521,627
Published 2024-07-14
In 1686, Chinese cannons bombarded the Russian fortress of Albazin for several weeks. The Qing Kangxi Emperor had sent an army to the frigid and inhospitable east of Siberia to capture the fortress and stop the expansion of the Tsardom of Russia in the region. But despite relentless bombardment, superior numbers, and ferocious assaults, his troops still struggled to capture the fortress. This was not due to any fundamental inferiority of the Chinese forces to the Tsardom’s troops. Instead, the trouble arose from the clash of Eastern siege methods with a Western-style star fortress with bastions. Chinese siege tactics differed significantly from those practiced in the West, which typically featured massive fortifications with bastions, systematic trench digging, and the use of heavy artillery. In this video, we’ll investigate the reasons for these differences and examine how early modern Chinese siege warfare differed from that in Europe.
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Bibliography
Andrade, Tonio, Siegecraft in Ming and Qing China, in: Fischer-Kattner, Anke / Ostwald, Jamel (Eds.), The World of the Siege. Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, Leiden/Boston 2019, pp. 243-264.
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Andrade, Tonio, Lost Colony. The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West, Princeton 2011.
Chung, Michael Yan Hon, The Introduction of European-Style Artillery and the Reform of Siege Tactics in 17th Century China-a Case Study of the Tragedy of Jiangyin (1645), in: Journal of Chinese Military History 9 (2020), pp. 1-37.
De Lucca, Denis, Jesuits and Fortifications: The Contribution of the Jesuits to Military Architecture in the Baroque Age, Leiden 2012.
All Comments (21)
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It's sometimes easy to forget that Russia and China are both massive nations, that actually have a very long border together.
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Prob to Langtan though the dude adapted to his mistake rather quickly, rather than sticking with traditional method that went nowhere.
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Interesting to think how asymmetrical development can lead to both sides struggling with the other's fortifications.
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3:30 In case you didn't know. The word "town" in english stems from the germanic language tree and has the same root as the german word "Zaun" meaning fence. By definition a town is a fenced/walled off village. What I am saying here is that it isn't just the chinese using walls to denominate cities.
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Fun extra fact: after the first siege concluded, a few dozen cossacks were captured and brought to the Chinese emperor's court. They were offered lucrative bonuses to join the Chinese army ranks (for propaganda reasons mostly). Some declined the offer and returned home, but most of them agreed, giving the birth to the "Albazinians", one of the first Orthodox Christian communities in China. They assimilated a few generations later, but preserved their faith, and a lot of them martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. I believe that to this day, there are people in China who claim to be the descendants of the defenders of Albazin!
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fun fact, some Chinese walls are so thick that it still been used against the Japanese in WWII
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Apparently earthquakes are more common in China, so thin wall construction and European castle design was never a real option.
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That's how you do comparative history well! None of the nonsense like "Who would win in 20,000 ninjas vs 50,000 vikings?" that pollutes so much of the web. Just grounded comparisons highlighting the differences, where the differences likely come from, and the impact they had.
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How neat! I didn't know that Chinese siege warfare wasn't as well studied. I would love to know how Japanese, Korean, and Chinese siege tactics developed separately.
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Actually the signee of the 1689 agreement was not Tzar Peter, he was still too young. The actual ruler of Russia was his sister Sofia and her lover/Prime Minister of Russia Golitsin who was the actual master mind of all the Siberian politics
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The song of the Volga boatmen tune playing in the background :D I almost couldn't hear it.
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I love the helmets that the Qing Musketeers were wearing. Very practical but still stylish.
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"In Chinese, the word for city and the word for wall is the same" - as is in most other languages. The Greek polis and the Slavic grad are all words for some type of wall, as is the Germanic *burg*.
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The idea of the defenders in a siege actually coming outside the walls to counterattack when an assault failed is novel to me. Just never thought about it.
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8:01 "I am fortifying this position"
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China underestimated what Russian penetration of Siberia meant. The first treaty China ever signed on equal terms , instead of one with an acknowledged vassal, was with Russia. Many of the early leaders in Russian employ in Siberia were not Russians but were Poles, Germans, or Scandinavians. Russia knew that it could hire a foreign exploration and administration talent pool to lay a foundation for later Russian inertial rule. China could not.
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China built thicker walls than Europe because of tectonic plates. Walls are useless if they get destroyed by your run of the mill earthquake, and Japan and China had more Earthquakes than Europe because of their geological position. The Forbidden Palace was specifically designed to be earthquake resistant, and it makes sense to transfer that logic to the defensive walls of the region, where it caught on elsewhere as the norm.
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In Russian language "City" is litterally means Walled 😂
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