The battle was close and at one point it appeared that the western guard tower was about to fall, but the commander Zhao Shuaijiao [zh] rallied the defenders in that area and repelled the Jin soldiers.

After half a day of fighting, Hong Taiji sounded the retreat and pulled back out of the range of Ming cannons.

As Hong Taiji approached Ningyuan, he was intercepted by a Ming army led by Man Gui, You Shilu, and Zu Dashou.

The Jin army disengaged after losing several thousand men and retreated to Jinzhou, where Hong Taiji tried once again to take the city.

Despite the Ming success in battle, Yuan Chonghuan was impeached for lack of agency, engaging with the Jin in peace talks, and allowing them to invade the kingdom of Joseon, for which he was dismissed from office.

"[4] Chongzhen's petty and mercurial ways exacerbated the situation by constantly switching grand secretaries, which prevented a coherent government response from coalescing.

[5] To prevent further depletion of the imperial treasury, Chongzhen cut funding for the Ming postal service, which saw the mass unemployment of large numbers of men from the central and northern provinces around the Yellow River region.

In the spring of 1628, Wang Jiayin started a revolt in Shaanxi with some 6,000 followers, one of whom was Zhang Xianzhong, who would go on to depopulate Sichuan in the future.

In early 1629 the veteran anti-rebel leader Yang He was called into service and made Supreme Commander of the Three Border Regions.