this military system proved unviable in the long run and collapsed in the 1430s, with Ming reverted to a professional volunteer army similar to Tang, Song and Later Han. Throughout most of the Ming's history, the Ming armies were successful in defeating foreign powers such as the Mongols and Japanese and expanding China's influence. However, with the little Ice Age in the 17th century, the Ming dynasty was faced with a disastrous famine and its military forces disintegrated as a result of the famines spurring from this event. The Chinese defeated the Portuguese at the First Battle of Tamao (1521) and at the Second Battle of Tamao (1522) Chinese ships knocked out two Portuguese ships, who were armed with gunpowder weapons, and forced the Portuguese to retreat. The Ming dynasty defeated the Dutch in the Sino–Dutch conflicts in 1622–1624 over the Penghu islands and at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay in 1633. In 1662, Chinese and European arms clashed when a Ming-loyalist army of 25,000 led by Koxinga forced Dutch East India Company garrison of 2,000 on Taiwan into surrender, after a final assault during a seven-month siege. According to Frederick Coyett's account written after the siege to absolve himself of the Dutch defeat, the alleged final blow to the company's defense came when a Dutch defector, who would warn Koxinga of a life-threatening bombardment, had pointed the inactive besieging army to the weak points of the Dutch star-shaped fort. This claim of a Dutch defector only appears in Coyett's account and Chinese records make no such mention of any defector. While the mainstay of the Chinese forces were archers, the Chinese used cannons too during the siege, which however the European eyewitnesses did not judge as effective as the Dutch batteries. The Dutch lost five ships and 130 men in an attempt to relieve the siege of the fortress. Qing The Qing dynasty, founded by the Manchus, was, like the Yuan a conquest dynasty. The Manchus were a sedentary agricultural people who lived in fixed villages, farmed crops, practiced hunting and mounted archery., In the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, founder of the Later Jin dynasty (1616-1636) and originally a Ming vassal, began organizing "Banners", military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, Korean and Mongol elements under direct command of the Emperor. The main Manchu tactics were using infantry with bows and arrows, swords, and pikes while cavalry was kept