Prelude to the Great Battle--Gripenberg Fails and Quits Army--The
Battle Begins--The Struggle on the East Front--The Battle at
the Center--Battle Culminates on the West--Village by Village
Taken--Russian Artillery Impotent--When the Crushing Blow
Fell--A Cloud in the West--Kuropatkin Ignores Danger--Center
Positions Abandoned--Japanese Ingenuity Marvelous--Retreat a
Carnival of Slaughter--Oyama's Prophecy Fulfilled.
[Sidenote: Prelude to the Great Battle]
There was a prelude to the actual battle fought early in January by a
portion of the Russian right flank under General Gripenberg, which is
chiefly interesting for its effect in the Russian ranks. Whatever may
have been the purpose of the attack, it failed. Heiketau, a town in the
angle of the Hun and Liao Rivers, was the scene of the opening attack.
Here the Japanese had an outpost in sight of the Russian lines.
Resistance was made to the advance until it was seen that the Russians
were in earnest and that a large force was actually about to give
battle. Thereupon the Japanese outpost fell back on the main position
at Sandiapu, three miles away, the Russians following. For two days a
severe fight waged around their position, and General Gripenberg made
enough gains on the first day to give rise to the belief that he was in
position to break the entire Japanese line, divide their army, flank
the centre, and compel a retreat. He sent an urgent representation of
the situation to General Kuropatkin, asking for reinforcements, and,
taking for granted that these would be sent, he plunged in on the
second day to win, at last, a victory for Russia. The force against
which he had thrown three divisions consisted of a single division of
the Japanese, who counted on stopping the advance by dint of the
earthworks protecting Sandiapu. Before morning of the second day
General Oku, exhibiting the rare initiative and resourcefulness common
to all of the Japanese generals, was ready to deal a crushing blow to
Gripenberg, and the Russian General in his eagerness to take advantage
of the opportunity which he believed had been opened by the apparent
advantages of the first day of the fight, fell into one of the most
deadly of the many traps from time to time set for Russian commanders.
[Sidenote: Gripenberg Fails and Quits Army]
To make sure that the Russians would not fail to renew the attack,
General Oku caused a decoy battery of useless guns to sweep into
position in full view of the Russian lookouts. The bait was too
tempting. Gripenberg advanced on the dummy battery into a triangle of
death. Batteries on three sides held their fire until the Russian lines
had swept into practically point blank range. Then there burst over
them a rain of shrapnel and a deadly sweep of rifle fire which spread
confusion as hundreds were mowed down. Retreat from the death zone
became rout, and General Gripenberg, with Oku's men in full pursuit,
left ten thousand dead and wounded behind him in their flight to safety
within the main Russian lines north of the Sha-ho. The fight was
unimportant in itself, but it led to a personal encounter between
Generals Kuropatkin and Gripenberg, which added to the demoralization
already existing among the officers of the Russian Army. General
Gripenberg bitterly assailed Kuropatkin for having failed to send
reinforcements. Kuropatkin declared the only possible value of attack
at that time and place was to uncover the strength of the enemy and to
reconnoitre his positions, that a general engagement was folly and
could not hope to achieve anything. For be it known, the initial
advance had been made in a driving blizzard. General Gripenberg gave up
his command and left the front for St. Petersburg to lay charges of
incapability against the Commander-in-Chief and to join the group at
the Russian Capital engaged in intrigue for the downfall of Kuropatkin.
In the army the line and staff officers took sides in the bitter
controversy that followed, and possibly the fight at Sandiapu, itself
so insignificant, did more in the end to bring the disaster of Mukden
and Tie Pass than can be estimated. A commander-in-chief, without the
confidence of the officers of staff and line, can hardly hope to
command the confidence of the men in the ranks. To say the least, the
incident, coming so soon before the army was to be locked in a life and
death struggle, was not calculated to add to the chances that victory
would crown Russian arms.
[Sidenote: The Battle Begins]
The battle was actually begun on the initiative of the Japanese. By
February 19, Marshal Oyama believed he was ready to begin the struggle
for Mukden. He prefaced the battle by the prophecy that Mukden would be
occupied by his army on March 10, a prophecy which caused only
merriment in Russia, but which was literally fulfilled. To General
Kuroki was given the honor of firing the first guns of the renewal of
the campaign. General Kuroki, after the battle of the Sha-ho River, had
wintered on the southern bank of the Taitze River, the centre of his
army resting in the neighborhood of Bensihu, thirty-five miles east of
Yentai. The Russian line was ten miles north, and the first place to be
taken was Tsinkhetchen, at a point where the level river country began
to rise to the Tie range of mountains, running in a generally
northwest-southeast direction across all of Manchuria, into Mongolia
northward, and into Korea southward, passing along the eastern side of
the Russian triangle. The task assigned to Kuroki was to drive the
Russians from Tsinkhetchen into the foothills to the passes of the
mountains, then to take these and to debouch his army on the plains of
the Hun River, twenty miles east of Mukden, and eastward of Fushun,
then to strike northwestward toward the railroad and line of retreat of
the Russian Army northward from Mukden, joining at the railroad the
forces under Oku and Nogi, which were to attack from the west.
Kuroki's army got under way February 19, crossing the first of the
rivers, the Taitse, without opposition. Then the advance was made
northward to the Sha-ho, and here the Russian lines were encountered. A
surprise night attack cleared away the Russians guarding the Sha-ho at
Vanupudza, ten miles east of the railroad. Kuroki then bent
northeastward toward the outermost position of the Russian left,
avoiding the forces commanding the hills north of the Sha-ho.
[Sidenote: The Struggle on the East Front]
On February 24 his army delivered a tremendous assault on the Russian
positions at Tsinkhetchen, preceding the infantry advance by a
bombardment of great force and effectiveness. Three lines of
entrenchments were literally destroyed by the fire of siege guns which
had been brought from Port Arthur, and despite the tremendous
difficulty involved had been placed within range of the Tsinkhetchen
positions. The Russian defence was stubborn, but the Japanese were
irresistible, and after a few hours of awful carnage General
Rennenkampff, commanding the Russians, ordered a retreat. Kuroki failed
in an effort to envelop the position, and the Russians reached in
safety their main position on this flank at Da Pass. Here one of the
bloodiest struggles of the war followed, opening on February 28 and
continuing until March 1, when, despite one of the most gallant
resistances credited to the Russians, General Kuroki flanked the Pass
notwithstanding insuperable obstacles offered by the rugged nature of
the country. Then followed a retreat and pursuit, every step of which
was marked by fighting of the most desperate nature, thousands of
bodies carpeting the gradually rolling country, which finally became
the plains along the Hun. Fushun was the Japanese objective. Kuroki
bent every energy to roll back the front which Rennenkampff presented,
but for ten days after the plain had been reached his army was fought
to a standstill. General Linevitch, commanding the division of which
Rennenkampff's command was part, checkmated every attempt made to cross
the Hun and flank him, while at his front he rolled back as many as
thirteen infantry assaults in a single day. This section of the field
was remote from the main battle line and few of the details reached the
world. With the slow filtering of the story of this fighting it has
become apparent that here was waged a struggle even more desperate than
that which made history west of Mukden. Kuropatkin appreciated the
vital necessity of preventing the turning of his left flank at Fushun,
and it must be said to the credit of the Japanese that they were
fighting here a force twice the size of their own and one that was
continually being reinforced by every battalion that could be spared
from the west. The marvel is that Kuroki's army was not utterly
annihilated. It was the tremendous fight he made that compelled
Kuropatkin to weaken his right to support Linevitch, and it was the
fact that the right had been so weakened that made possible the
brilliant victories won by the Japanese on the west. Hence, in addition
to credit for the great fight he made in carrying out his own share in
the battle, Kuroki stands for credit in drawing strength from other
positions which materially aided in the ultimate outcome. Nevertheless,
until fateful March 10, his army had been fought to a standstill within
five miles of Fushun, its objective. The outcome here even encouraged
Kuropatkin in the belief that the battle was going his way.
[Sidenote: The Battle at the Center]
It is necessary, in recording the story of the battle, to leave Kuroki,
still fighting in vain to take Fushun and open the road to the Russian
rear, and to record events on other parts of the field. The battle
line, when both armies had actually been joined, extended for a
distance between eighty and one hundred miles. Every event at every
position dovetailed into the whole strategy of the battle, yet a vast
difficulty is imposed in collating all of the scattered events into a
continuous story. No one observer, possibly not the Generals-in-chief
themselves, could follow all of the swift moving events, and the best
and at that a most difficult achievement was to follow the main trend
of events interpreting separate achievements, advances, retrogressions,
as they bore on the grand object of each army.
The battle of Mukden was, in fact, four battles in one. One of those
battles was fought between Kuroki and Linevitch on the east. The second
battle within the battle of Mukden was fought between the centre armies
and focussed in the beginning of the conflict at Lone Tree, or Putiloff
Hill, just east of the railroad, forty-five miles south of Mukden. Here
General Nodzu commanded the Japanese and General Kuropatkin in person
and General Zassulitch, divisional commander, directed the Russian
defence. The battle here began on February 24, the date on which
General Kuroki delivered the attack on Tsinkhetchen. General Nodzu's
immediate task was to keep the Russian centre too well occupied and in
fear of a general assault, thus preventing the sending of
reinforcements to the flank, where Kuroki was at his important work.
The artillery duel which waged around the centre positions has never
been equalled in the history of war. The Russians had at this point
alone 530 guns, fifty of them siege guns on permanent emplacements
firing eight-inch shells. Putiloff and Novgorod Hill bristled with
field and machine guns, and these commanding hills were flanked east
and west by fortifications upon which five months' work had been
expended and which are perhaps the finest defensive works ever erected
on a battlefield.
The Russian centre was the hope of the Russian Commander. He claimed
impregnability for it, and impregnable it proved. Nevertheless Nodzu
sent scores of assaults at its steep slopes, and the later advances
were made by the Japanese over the bodies of comrades who had fallen in
earlier efforts. The Russian centre resisted without a break, and only
left its positions March 7, when events elsewhere resulted in the order
to fall back north of the Sha-ho. The story of the struggle here is an
exact replica of many which waged in the bloody days of the siege of
Port Arthur, though here the loss of life was heavier, since none of
the protective engineering devices used at Port Arthur were resorted
to. The assaults were simply dashes by Japanese infantry up the bare
slopes of a hill rising five hundred feet in the air. It was man
unprotected against steel in armor, and the man lost. Behind the
Russians was the Sha-ho River. Their second line of defences was sunk
in the hillsides and hilltops there. With the river in front, the ice
weakened until it was questionable whether men in any numbers could
make safe crossing, this position was only a little less strong than
the first. All in all, it is little wonder that the Japanese Commander
elected only to feint here and deal his blow at other positions. The
second line, however, availed the Russians little except to hold in
check the pursuit and leave General Nodzu to be only a minor factor in
the culmination of the disaster that finally befell the Russians. The
centre army, while it played no conspicuous part in the battle, while
it was not called upon to repel, and was not expected to take the
Russian positions as a vital part of the Japanese strategy, possibly
even greater credit belongs to these men who died in droves, knowing
that they were being sacrificed as a matter of secondary importance,
that upon others elsewhere, miles and miles away, was falling the
really great events and upon whom would fall the glory. Whether they
knew it or not, there was no faltering. With cries of "banzai" they
stormed up Putiloff Hill, up Novgorod Hill; by regiments they fell, and
regiments as loyal and heroic took their places, apparently satisfied
that all the sacrifice was only to prevent reinforcements from the
centre from being sent to the lines northeast, northwest, where their
brothers were writing victory in blood across Manchuria's plains. War
is essentially waste; waste of men, waste of money. Here the spirit of
waste was fully exemplified, yet the waste was a factor if victory was
to be won, and Oyama sent his armies to their work bent on victory as
perhaps never an army was bent on victory.
[Illustration: THE RUSSIAN FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.]
[Sidenote: Battle Culminates on West]
The battle of Mukden, as the whole struggle has been officially called,
had its climax on the west. The strategy of Marshal Oyama, as has been
explained, culminated in the attack by the army of Port Arthur
veterans, commanded by General Nogi. This attack was but part of the
assault on the Russian right. The actual Japanese left army was
commanded by General Oku, and during the long winter season had
occupied a position extending westward from the Sha-ho River to the
Hun, upon which at the front the Russian right rested, though when the
battle had gotten under way this line was extended fifteen miles
farther west to the banks of the Liao River. General Oku's lines and
also the Russian lines, which he opposed, occupied a series of unmapped
villages, most of them only occupied during the spring, summer and
fall, when the fertile river valleys are in cultivation, the products
of the region being similar to those of the Northern Central United
States, east and west from Chicago as a centre. The village huts are
built of rough hewn stone, the walls being of primitive build and
oftentimes twelve inches thick. Stone walls around fields are of common
occurrence, so that while the country generally was level, it had in
these houses and walls many features offering protection to soldiery.
To-day not a wall or fence in the whole region but shows the signs of
the struggle that waged around them. Immediately after the battle heaps
of dead marked every one of these shelters, showing where hand to hand
struggles had taken place, as the Japanese, foot by foot, from house to
house, from wall to wall, from village to village, had advanced across
the plain.
General Oku's attack was ferocious. To him had been assigned the task
of turning the Russian right back upon Mukden at the centre to make it
impossible for this force to assume an offensive initiative and swing
northward to cut off Nogi when the culminating attack had been
delivered. Sandiapu, that had been the scene of the desperate failure
of Gripenberg, was the pivot for the Japanese attack. General Oku
avoided the Russian right centre just left of the railroad, because
these positions were in part commanded by Putiloff Hill, and the taking
of the Russian fortifications here would only mean a falling back under
the protection of Russia's impregnable centre. With Sandiapu as a
pivot, however, Oku drove the attack in a northeasterly direction,
rather than northward, parallel to the Russian lines. His assaults
began simultaneously with Kuroki's attack at Tsinkhetchen, and in one
tremendous dash the Russian line was broken, crumbled in the plain five
miles north of Sandiapu, and the struggle had begun which after ten
days' fighting had doubled the Russian flank back until its line,
beginning at a point five miles west of the railroad, was bent back at
right angles to the line it had occupied at the opening of the battle.
This achievement had been accomplished in the face of a determined
resistance. Throughout the struggle the artillery was rendered useless
for hours at a time, while the infantry engaged in hand-to-hand
struggles. The story of the attack on a single of the score or more of
villages is typical of all of them.
[Sidenote: Village by Village Taken]
There was a brief lull just at dawn. Then for an hour field guns roared
all along the line searching for the infantry lines and batteries of
the enemy. House and walls were the targets. Shells in deadly showers
ground walls to dust, ploughed the fields, shaved the crowns from
broken ground that might hide creeping lines of troops. An hour of
systematic, sweeping bombardment, then the army was ready for the
business of the hour. From cover on every side little squads of
Japanese troops dashed into the open. Ten yards they sped then threw
themselves prone on the ground wherever any approach to protection
could be found.
Now it was the turn of the Russian guns to bark. From all along their
lines in the dusk of dawn resounded the din of artillery. The open,
when the advance had begun, instantly grew lividly aflame with bursting
shrapnel. It seemed that nothing could live under that awful baptism of
steel. Then the din subsided before the Japanese, glasses glued to
their eyes, could catch telltale feathers of smoke that even the
smokeless powder sends out from big guns. The echoes of the guns are
still reverberating far away among the foothills, when up from the
ground again spring those lithe, invincible shadows that speed once
more ten yards or more and then vanish as they hug the earth. Where
there were five, three have survived; here and there a single one gets
up to continue the advance where a group had been. But from behind
others are making these short dashes, too. The plain finally is fairly
alive with troops, dashing forward, taking cover, dashing forward
again. Five hundred yards away when they started, their numbers are
already thinning when the first hundred yards has been crossed. Others
fill the gaps and two hundred yards are crossed, and in the growing
light it can be seen that strewn all along the line of the advance are
forms that lie stark and still when the living spring to action for
those unhalting sprints.
Now Russian riflemen are heard from. Rifles crackle from every side,
and then death begins high carnival. But the advance goes on. No rising
now and speeding those few yards. The Japanese are crawling. The living
use the bodies of the dead for protection. Often pushing these before
them they cover yard by yard, the zone of death. Now only a hundred
yards divides them from the outermost huts of the village. Hotter and
hotter becomes the fire of the defenders. In a moment the assault has
begun. A hundred, two hundred, are on their feet. Bullets eat holes in
their ranks, but only the dead falter. Presently, with the ring of
steel on steel, the ranks close. The rifle fire is fitful in the
disorder of hand-to-hand fighting. Then up from all parts of the open
rise scores of Japanese. They sweep into the midst of the fray, whole
companies still coming press the fight. Back through the village from
house to house, from wall to wall, goes on the hand-to-hand, man to man
duel. Never once did the Japanese fail in the early days of the
struggle to drive back the Russian defenders, for when one such attack
failed there were countless others eager to begin again the same
tactics.
[Sidenote: Russian Artillery Impotent]
The Russians seemed demoralized by the apparent impotency of their
artillery to prevent these advances. Often the Russian lines suffered
by their shrapnel, so thoroughly was the ground in front of their
positions searched by their gunners. Nevertheless, the guns had
hardly hushed before men seemed to spring from the ground and speed
on toward them. To the more superstitious there was something uncanny
about this little foe. The only solution was the open ranks, the
each-man-for-himself, the use of every fragment of shelter. Russian
solid formations fairly melted as they rushed into the Japanese
shrapnel fire. A single shell mowed down a score. It took ten shells
at least to disable a single Japanese because of the way they
scattered out over the field.
Just behind the final advance of the main force which never moved until
the skirmish attack had engaged the Russians too closely for either
artillery or a destructive rifle fire, came the engineers with
telegraph and telephone equipment. Bamboo poles were swiftly in place,
and yard by yard the wire followed the advance. Presently at Oku's
headquarters, usually the shelter of a hut within a mile of the actual
fighting, would come the thick click, click of the telegraph or the
jingle of the telephone. "We have taken the village" was usually the
message.
Thus village after village was taken in this memorable struggle, until,
as has been told, the Russian line had been driven from miles of
positions upon which months of labor had been expended and in the
closing days of the battle were paralleling the railroad from the
Sha-ho to a point five miles northwest of Mukden. Oku had done his part.
[Sidenote: When the Crushing Blow Fell]
Thus we have told the story of the battle on the Japanese right, centre
and rear, up to the time when the assault of the Port Arthur army was
to be launched. The battle had continued without intermission from
February 24 to March 5. The Japanese on the right or east front had
driven back the enemy from his advanced positions across the rugged
hills of the Tie range and was battling to drive back that flank on the
railroad and to effect an advance to reach a position in the rear of
Mukden. At the centre a struggle had gone on without decisive result
because, largely, the Japanese only planned to keep this part of the
enemy's line busy with fighting until the flank-attack armies achieved
positions, either in the rear of Mukden or near enough to strike, and
strike hard at the foe should he be compelled to retreat. Oku's army,
we have seen, came nearest to accomplishing this task. So far as the
actual results of the fighting of these three armies were concerned,
while the Japanese everywhere had outfought and had outgeneralled the
Russians, there was nothing accomplished which made the situation
particularly alarming to Kuropatkin. His left flank, eastward had been
driven in twenty miles but with the aid of heavy reinforcements he had
checked the enemy five miles away from Fushan and when March 5 drew to
a close the reports from that direction to the Commander-in-Chief not
only recounted that every assault by the Japanese had been repulsed but
that after thirteen bloody reverses on March 4, Kuroki seemed to be
drawing away to the south.
Hope rose high in the mind of the Russian General. He believed that
this attack on the east had been the real strength of the Japanese
attack. He perceived that the Japanese had not been in earnest at the
center and he attributed reverses on his right to the fact, that he had
withdrawn a full division from Lieutenant-General Kaulbars, commanding
there and he hoped, now that Kuroki seemed to have given up the
struggle, that he could withdraw a force from the east, throw it into
the fight west of the railroad, turn the tide against Oku and win a
negative victory by defeating the manifest purpose of the Japanese to
drive him from the Sha-ho River positions. While his right flank had
been bent back through an arc of ninety degrees from the original
position on the Hun River they still held a strong line five miles west
of the railroad. The falling back of these troops had resulted in a
loss of ground but had also resulted in a strong concentration and his
lines were capable of greater resistance as a result. Then, too, the
Japanese had been fighting continuously for twelve days and must be
near the limits of human endurance. Altogether when the sun went down
on the field the Russian Commander felt that victory was near. He did
not expect a decisive, positive victory but after so long a series of
disasters even that sort of victory which consisted only in having
prevented the enemy from forcing the abandonment of a position, would
have sent a thrill of joy and hope through the army and the Russian
nation. It would have inspired the army with confidence for its work.
It would have been a weapon at home against the revolutionist, the
opponent of the war, the foes of the dynasty. For the General himself
it meant a return of confidence in his leadership on the part of the
army, on the part of the Emperor. It would go far toward wiping out the
record of unbroken defeat, retreat, disaster which had marked the
entire campaign. Victory was more vital to Kuropatkin, personally, than
to Russia. The General was fighting as much for personal vindication as
for the glory of Russian arms. To him, therefore, the outlook for even
a negative success was charged with personal happiness.
[Sidenote: A Cloud in the West]
This was the outlook when day dawned, March 5, 1905. By nightfall of
that same day a cloud, no larger then than a man's hand, was rising in
the west that was to break in a storm, crushing the Russian defense,
banishing the dreams of Kuropatkin. That cloud was the army of General
Nogi.
The tale must be told from the beginning.
Port Arthur capitulated January 2, 1905. A week later General Nogi
stood within the heart of the Russian settlement there and reviewed
companies from the various army units that had participated in the
siege. Out to the world went the message that Nogi's great task was
accomplished. But there was other work for Nogi. Within three weeks
after the Gibraltar of the Orient had fallen, 80,000 troops, released
by that event were bound northward to join the armies under Marshal
Oyama, then in winter quarters facing Kuropatkin. The army had been
reinforced largely from Japan with fresh troops who had not known the
smell of smoke. Enough of these had been sent to equal any possible
reinforcement that could be sent to Kuropatkin, as nearly as this
number could be estimated. Nogi's army meant reinforcement of an
entirely different kind. Here were men inured to the rigors of
campaigning by eleven months of as arduous fighting as ever fell to
troops in all of the history of war. By the first week in February the
entire army had reached its new position west of Liao-yang, ready for
whatever mission might be assigned to it. That task was the actual
capture of Mukden. More than that, Nogi's men were called upon to break
the defence on the east, to strike the railroad north of Mukden, to
intercept the line of retreat and to join with Kuroki in the enveloping
of the Russian army. It was the crowning work of the battle. It was a
tribute to the bravery and skill of the men who had humbled Port
Arthur. It was one that meant hardship, all but superhuman exertion,
but if they succeeded it meant that chief credit for another great
victory would belong to this army of veterans.
Nogi's work did not begin until the battle had been well developed on
every front. His was to take up the work begun against the Russian
right flank by Oku and with a fresh army carry it to a conclusion. As
has been shown, Oku prepared the way in a splendid manner. He broke the
Russian lines and rolled back the flank from the plains east and west
of the Hun River. When this had been accomplished Nogi's army got under
way. Leaving their positions west of Liao-yang, the veterans sped
northwards. They crossed the Hun at a point a few miles above the
junction of the Hun and Liao Rivers where two days before Oku had begun
forcing back the Russians. His army after the crossing, was divided,
one small detachment, amply supplied with artillery moving swiftly
northeastward to the Liao; thence northward to Sinmintin, thirty-five
miles due west of Mukden. This city was outside the limits of the war
zone as laid down by the Powers in their agreement to preserve the
neutrality of China. Nevertheless it had been a veritable supply depot
for the Russians, caravans of foodstuffs of all kinds and even of
ammunition coming from Chinese points on the Siberian border and from
southern coast cities to deliver contraband here to waiting bands of
Cossacks. As a result of this use of the city by the Russians the
Japanese did not hesitate to enter there. They found a few Cossacks and
a great horde of Russian civil officials together with great stores of
supplies most of it in carts as it had reached the city ready to start
westward for the Russian base at Mukden. Some prisoners were taken but
no goods that were not actually in the possession of Russian civil and
military officials were seized.
[Sidenote: Kuropatkin Ignores Danger]
The detachment then began the dash westward along the Sinmintin-Mukden
road toward Mukden. On the morning of January 5, they formed a junction
with the main force that had marched northward on a line parallel with
the railroad, twenty miles west of the Russians and, of course, had met
no opposition, so effectively had Oku prepared the way. The news of the
arrival of the Japanese at Sinmintin, March 5, was the first intimation
of this movement and General Kuropatkin ignored the news imagining that
the force had only been a handful of Japanese cavalry raiders. They
were raiders, in fact, but there were 80,000 of them and they were
under orders from Marshal Oyama to enter Mukden as conquerors on March
10.
[Sidenote: Center Positions Abandoned]
In their four days' march northward Nogi's army covered 30 miles the
first day, 25 miles the second day, 23 miles the third day and 28 miles
the fourth day, and after that tremendous feat their real work was
before them. The army turned eastward at the Sinmintin-Mukden road,
twenty miles from Mukden, and five miles nearer Mukden they met the
first resistance. As a protection to Mukden, Kuropatkin had thrown
three lines of protective works eastward. Nogi's army came upon the
first of these March 6. His troops, swept over the Russian defenders
like the sea over a sunken wreck, so swiftly had come the overwhelming
attack. March 7, the veterans covered the distance to the second line
of defences. In the meantime Kuropatkin had awakened. He saw that he
was in danger of being overwhelmed from this unexpected quarter. His
visions of victory of March 4, were already fleeting and only two days
had gone by. Every available squadron from centre and left were ordered
post-haste to meet the danger. The Russian lines that up to this time
had only been called upon to concentrate by orderly retrograde
movements were called upon to reform the whole line, falling back from
his impregnable position at the center, south of the Sha-ho. There was
movement everywhere. On the east regiment after regiment moved out and
the remaining regiments realigned themselves. This fact is important
because it brought Kuroki's opportunity to fulfil the mission that had
been entrusted to him and will be told later. Meantime Nogi's veterans
rushed on unchecked until March 8, when the Russian resistance showed
the strength that had come with the reinforcements. Baron General
Kaulbars took immediate command, met and placed the arriving Russian
regiments and displayed finer generalship than any general in the
entire Russian line throughout the battle. On the east Rennenkampf had
splendid plans for offensive movements until General Kuroki made a
move, then his plans crumbled like houses of cards and he fought only a
defensive fight from start to finish, brilliant though his resistance
may have been. But Kaulbars, when his force had been completed, met
Nogi manfully and the duel between these great captains forms a notable
addition to the history of military achievement.
For all the magnificent offensive ability of the Russian General,
however, Nogi's veterans would not be denied. The first fifteen miles
of their advance was like the rush of a hurricane. Then came the real
fighting. This continued March 8, 9, 10, in which time the Russians had
been forced back literally step by step on Mukden. Calmly the Japanese
General ordered assault after assault on the Russian lines ignoring the
heaps of the dead that, when the third day of the battle had brought
decisive victory, numbered 20,000 choked into the narrow line of
advance through those last five miles to Mukden. The shells from his
artillery swept the railroad and the Trade Road that runs beside the
railroad over which the Russian center was retreating. If Nogi, in
those three days saw 20,000 of his brave men fall and if this
imperturbable soldier felt any pang there was balm in the fact that he
had inflicted a loss on the enemy of three for every one of his own men
who had fallen.
[Sidenote: Japanese Ingenuity Marvellous]
In the course of the three days whole new chapters were written into
books of strategy. The Japanese General and troops answered once for
all the accusation that they were mere imitators of western methods.
Among the uncanny tricks that they successfully used many have no equal
in military annals. Taking advantage of the first dust which began to
rise on the second day and played an important part in the whole of the
battle, a Japanese force turned their backs on the Russians and fired
into the ranks of their own men pushing on behind them. The Russians
took the force thus engaged for reinforcements and valorously aided
them in holding off the Japanese pursuit. Meantime, back, back, step by
step this mock Russian battle line drew nearer and nearer the duped
Russians. Presently when only a few yards separated them they turned
with the savage battlecry that had carried them over the ramparts of
Rihlung fort and practically annihilated the victims of the ruse. This
was only one of many unheard of acts which marked the path of Nogi to
victory. When shells from his artillery began to reach the railroad his
battle front turned as on a pivot around the little town of Tatchekiao
and the advance was directed not directly toward Mukden but to a point
five miles north of that city as part of the effort to envelop the
Russians and more particularly to cut off the retreat. Thereupon the
Russian resistance was redoubled in fury. With reinforcements that had
been sent to this danger point the Russians outnumbered the Japanese
two to one. But just as it was of more and more importance for the
Russians to hold Nogi in check so it was more and more important for
Nogi to crush the resistance and to drive his wedge in on Mukden. The
struggle at every moment was hand to hand. The artillery on both sides
fired into the indiscriminate masses of struggling men. Absolute frenzy
marked the struggle as waged on both side.
[Illustration: THE RETREAT FROM MUKDEN.]
[Sidenote: Retreat a Carnival of Slaughter]
Slowly but surely the Russian resistance weakened and with dismay
Kuropatkin saw that his flank could not withstand the weight of the
incessant attack. If the flank should be broken it meant annihilation
or surrender for his entire force. Retreat would be impossible except
at inhuman sacrifice of life. Already shells were reaching the railroad
while the battle was swinging northeastward toward the line of retreat
and every possible man had been thrown into the defence. There was only
one thing to be done--retreat, and the order went forth on the evening
of March 7. Under cover of darkness every available car had been loaded
with stores, guns, whatever could be saved. Troops in Mukden piled into
miles of box-cars that soon after midnight began the dash northward.
The rearguard was organized of the troops then opposing Nogi and such
of those from the center as could be made available. These retreated
eastward from Mukden leaving as the last of the center army passed
northward toward Tie Pass, the next station. The flank that had so long
opposed Kuroki in the last crumbling of the Russian defence was
completely cut off. The disorder along the front occasioned by the
hasty withdrawal of reinforcements for the hard pressed right flank
west of Mukden has been mentioned. Kuroki, who amazed the Russians by
the readiness with which he interpreted every move that they made, saw
in this disorder his opportunity. He had been battling for an
opportunity to pierce the Russian line and join with Nogi, but fairly
had been checked and held by the tremendous resistance of Rennenkampf.
A brigade fell back from in front of the left flank of his army.
Another stood ready to fall into its place. But while the very
manoeuvre was being carried out Kuroki struck hard directly between
the two forces. His wedge went deep into the Russian ranks and the
Japanese General threw in behind them every available unit of his army.
Desperately the Russians struggled to crush the foe and rejoin their
broken lines but the Japanese, every man of them, knew that their hour
had come. Thousands fell but thousands took their places. Mile by mile
went Kuroki's wedge and by March 10, when on the west Nogi was forcing
the vanguard of his fighting line into Mukden, Kuroki at last had won a
position from which to strike the long line of Russians now surging
northward in a retreat that had now become a rout.
[Sidenote: Oyama's Prophecy Fulfilled]
Mukden had been taken. Nogi had fulfilled Oyama's prophecy. So far as
the long struggle had been for possession of the Sha-ho River position
and Mukden it was over. The Japanese had won a momentous victory. Vast
spoils had fallen into their possession. Fully twenty thousand
prisoners had surrendered when Kuroki had broken through the Russian
left, completing the circle of steel around whatever of the Russian
army had not already made good its escape north of the line from Fushan
to Mukden. There were hundreds of thousands of shells, millions of
rounds of small ammunition; there were stores enough to feed the army
for months, there was Russian property valued at millions, there were
guns, horses, wagons, railroad material, enough for one hundred and
fifty miles of track. There was also the knowledge that a loss in men
had been inflicted three times as great as the Japanese had suffered.
Mukden and Fushan and a score of smaller towns and cities had been
taken, invaluable coal mines were now within the Japanese lines
practically the last upon which the Russians could rely for fuel with
which to operate the railroad. The victory, indeed, from every
standpoint, save one, was complete.
The Russian army had escaped.
This escape had been effected, because despite the wonderful extent of
their victory the Japanese armies had failed to meet across the north
of the Russian position before the bulk of Kuropatkin's army had swept
out of the mouth of the bottle. Nature herself saved them. When on the
evening of March 7, Kuropatkin ordered the retreat the great
battlefield had already become enveloped in tremendous clouds of
blinding dust and snow swirled up from the dry plains by a tremendous
gale. Beginning on March 7, this veritable cyclone increased in fury
throughout the night of March, 8, and continued with unbroken severity
during March 9, 10 and 11, days vital to the Russian army. In the main
the Japanese suffered most from the storm. Their object was to find the
foe and attack, the Russian object was simply to plunge northward
toward safety. Ultimately the storm had reached a degree of violence
which made sight impossible and the Japanese pursuit was halted at a
moment when it seemed that the full purpose of their Generals' strategy
was to be realized. When two days later they were able to take up the
pursuit the possibility of complete success had passed. But there was
still opportunity to strike the fleeing army and the horrors of that
flight and pursuit, from March 12 to March 15, will never adequately be
told. The Japanese forced a way parallel to the line of pursuit on both
sides and clung relentlessly to the routed army. Here a company was
annihilated by furious cavalry charge. Here a regiment was cut off,
surrounded and compelled to surrender after awful slaughter. Forty
thousand prisoners were taken in the four days of this carnival of
slaughter and when the remnants of the Russian army had reached Tie
Pass, forty-three miles away, Kuropatkin had lost 170,000 men, killed,
wounded and missing. His army had lost fifty per cent. of its strength,
a slaughter not equalled in the history of civilization. No parallel
exists until the half mythological days of Asian conflicts are reached.