Qing victory Tsardom of Russia The Sino-Russian border conflicts[3] (1652–1689) were a series of intermittent skirmishes between the Qing dynasty of China, with assistance from the Joseon dynasty of Korea, and the Tsardom of Russia by the Cossacks in which the latter tried and failed to gain the land north of the Amur River with disputes over the Amur region.

The hostilities culminated in the Qing siege of the Cossack fort of Albazin in 1686 and resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 which gave the land to China.

The Ming dynasty Nurgan Regional Military Commission[4] built a fort on the Northern bank of the Amur at Aigun,[5] and established an administrative seat at Telin, modern Tyr, Russia above Nikolaevsk-on-Amur.

[citation needed] Next summer he sailed down the Amur and built a fort near modern Achan [ru] (Wuzhala (乌扎拉)) probably near present-day Khabarovsk.

[7][8][9] Cattle and horses in the hundreds were looted and 243 ethnic Daur Mongolic girls and women were raped by Russian Cossacks under Yerofey Khabarov when he invaded the Amur river basin in the 1650s.

Second they appointed the experienced general Sarhuda (who himself was from the Nierbo village from the mouth of Sungari) as the garrison commander at Ninguta.

[7][8][9] In 1665 Nikifor Chernigovsky murdered[19] the voyvoda of Ilimsk and fled to the Amur and reoccupied the fort at Albazin, which became the center of a petty kingdom which he named Jaxa.

In total, the Qing force included 100-150 light artillery, 40-50 large siege guns, and 100 musketeers, with the rest of the men using traditional weapons.

The Qing general, Langtan, abandoned assaults in August and instead decided to starve the fort out by blocking Russian access to the nearby river.

Moscow sent elite musketeers to relieve the fort but the Qing controlled all approaches and no sled or sleigh could slip in.

Both armies suffered from disease and starvation: Russian combatants and civilians alike died en masse from scurvy, typhus, and cholera, while the Chinese starved and froze outside the walls and were sometimes driven to cannibalism.

Former Ming dynasty loyalist Han Chinese troops who had served under Zheng Chenggong and who specialized at fighting with rattan shields and swords (Tengpaiying) 藤牌营 were recommended to the Kangxi Emperor to reinforce Albazin against the Russians.

Kangxi was impressed by a demonstration of their techniques and ordered 500 of them to defend Albazin, under Lin Xingzhu (Chinese: 林兴珠) and He You (Chinese: 何佑), former Koxinga followers, and these rattan shield troops did not suffer a single casualty when they defeated and cut down Russian forces traveling by rafts on the river, only using the rattan shields and swords while fighting naked.

[22][23][24] see also Outer Manchuria "[the Russian reinforcements were coming down to the fort on the river] Thereupon he [Marquis Lin] ordered all our marines to take off their clothes and jump into the water.

written by Yang Hai-Chai who was related to Marquis Lin, a participant in the war[28] Most of the Russians withdrew to Nerchinsk, but a few joined the Qing, becoming the Albazin Cossacks at Peking.

The Chinese withdrew from the area, but the Russians, hearing of this, returned with 800 men under Aleksei Tolbuzin and reoccupied the fort.

In 1860, with the Convention of Beijing, Russia annexed the Primorye (i.e. the "Maritime Region") down to Vladivostok, an area that had not been in contention in the 17th century.

Page 133 -152 China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia By Peter C. Perdue Published by Harvard University Press, 2005