I have said nothing as to the part played by the _Yakumo_ in the battle
of the Yellow Sea, for the simple reason that there is nothing
particular to relate; but that we played a not altogether unimportant
part in the fight is evidenced by the fact that only two of the Japanese
ships, namely, the _Mikasa_ and the _Nisshin_, had a heavier list of
killed than ourselves, although the _Kasuga_ scored one more in wounded
than we did.
The fact is that, in a general engagement such as that referred to,
after the initial movements of the various ships have been noted, one
becomes so utterly engrossed in one's own particular share of the work
that there is little opportunity to note more than the most salient
incidents of the battle. Moreover, the din of battle, the continuous
roar of the guns, the crash of bursting shells, the deafening clang of
projectiles upon armour, the screams of the wounded, the suffocating
fumes of powder, all tend to benumb one's powers of observation, so that
the captain of a fighting ship has little opportunity to note anything
more than the movements of the particular ship which he happens to be
engaging at the moment.
The importance of the defeat of the Port Arthur fleet, indecisive as it
had at first seemed to be, soon began to be realised when our secret
agents in the fortress sent us complete and carefully ascertained
information relative to the condition of the ships which had succeeded
in regaining the shelter of the harbour. From this information it at
once became apparent that, as fighting units, none of them could again
be made of service until the conclusion of the war, and Japan heaved a
great sigh of relief, which was intensified when, on the evening of 14th
August, the news was flashed through the country that the gallant and
sorely tried Kamimura had at last been granted his long-cherished wish
to meet the Vladivostock squadron, and had defeated it. True, the
defeat, like that of the Port Arthur fleet, was not as decisive as could
have been wished; for of the three cruisers--the _Gromovoi, Rossia_, and
_Runk_--which sallied forth from Vladivostock, under the command of
Admiral Jessen, in response to Admiral Vitgeft's call for support in his
last desperate sortie from Port Arthur, two of them, the _Gromovoi_ and
the _Rossia_, succeeded in regaining the shelter of Vladivostock
harbour, while only the _Rurik_, the least formidable of the trio, was
sunk. But again, as in the case of the Port Arthur fleet, although the
bulk of the Russian force contrived to escape either capture or
destruction, it had been so severely handled as to be rendered innocuous
for many months to come, and Japan was at last free from the continual
menace of it. The destruction of the fast cruiser _Novik_ in Korsakovsk
harbour on 21st August, by the Japanese ship _Chitose_, drove the last
nail in the coffin of Russia's naval power in the Far East; and from
that time forward, with the exception of maintaining the effective
blockade of Port Arthur, the Japanese navy had little to do except
prepare itself at every point to meet the menace of the Baltic Fleet,
which at this time was beginning to materialise and take definite shape.
Meanwhile, after almost superhuman struggles against enormous odds, and
in the face of frightful sufferings and losses, Japan's land forces were
beginning to make progress. During the last days of July General
Kuroki's forces fought and won the battles of Towan and the Yushuling
Pass. On 3rd August, General Oku seized Hai-cheng and Newchwang old
town, which is situated some twenty miles inland from the port of
Newchwang; and then there came a pause, during which the final
preparations for the advance upon Liao-yang were being completed.
Liao-yang promised to be a very tough nut to crack, for General
Kuropatkin, fully recognising the possibilities of the position, had
determined to make his stand there and inflict upon the Japanese such a
crushing defeat that all further capacity for taking the offensive would
be driven out of them, after which, the subjugation of a beaten and
disheartened enemy should prove an easy task, rendered all the easier,
perhaps, by the fact that the great assault upon Port Arthur by the
Japanese had failed disastrously, with frightful loss to the assailants.
The defences of Liao-yang were of great extent and enormous strength,
including not only formidable forts and earthworks armed with powerful
guns, and mile upon mile of most carefully and elaborately constructed
trenches, but also with innumerable pitfalls, each with its sharpened
stake at the bottom, as in the case of the Nanshan Heights defences.
These pitfalls were arranged in regular lines, interrupted at intervals
by patches of mined ground, while outside these again there ran a
practically continuous girdle of barbed wire entanglements, the wire
being charged with an electric current powerful enough to instantly
destroy any one who should be unfortunate enough to come into contact
with it. Liao-yang defences were, in fact, a repetition of the defences
of the Nanshan Heights--where the Japanese suffered such appalling
losses--except that they were of an even more elaborate and deadly
character.
The attack upon Liao-yang was indeed in many respects a repetition of
the attack upon Kinchau; for, as in the case of Kinchau, there was a
formidable hill position--that of Shushan--to be first stormed and
taken. This task was entrusted to the Second Japanese Army, under the
leadership of General Oku; and they accomplished it on 1st September,
after three nights and two days of desperate fighting, in the course of
which the heroic Japanese suffered frightful losses. On the same day,
the Russians began to withdraw from Liao-yang under a heavy fire from
the Japanese artillery. On the following day the Japanese captured the
Yentai mines; and a few hours later, General Nodzu, at the head of the
Fourth Japanese Army, entered the town of Liao-yang unopposed.
Meanwhile, what was the state of affairs on land before Port Arthur?
As has already been said, the great general assault upon the land
defences, which began on 19th August 1904, resulted in disastrous
failure with frightful losses for the Japanese. Yet that failure,
terrible as it was, was not by any means complete; its blackness was
irradiated by a gleam of light here and there which sufficed to keep
alive that spirit of hope and indomitable resolution which no misfortune
could ever quite quench in the breast of the Japanese, and which was
undoubtedly the determining factor in the campaign. To particularise.
On 14th August the 1st Japanese Division was ordered to capture the five
redoubts on the crest of the ridge west of the railway, known as the
Swishiying redoubts. These redoubts were taken on the following day,
and their capture paved the way for the general assault, four days
later. This began with the furious bombardment of the height known as
174 Metre Hill, which was stormed and taken at the point of the bayonet,
later in the day, by the 1st Division, which immediately pushed
south-east, with the object of gaining possession of Namaokayama, or 180
Metre Hill. This hill was protected by, among other devices, an
intricate barbed wire entanglement charged with a high-tension electric
current, the penetration of which proved to be a task of almost
insuperable difficulty; nevertheless, it was eventually accomplished.
On the morning of 22nd August, by a splendid act of heroism and
self-sacrifice on the part of fifty Japanese, West Panlung fort was
captured, and this cleared the way for the capture of the East fort.
But the superhuman efforts made by the Japanese in capturing these
positions completely exhausted them, with the result that the assault
ended in failure, since the majority of the defences remained in the
hands of the Russians.
On 23rd August, the battleship _Sevastopol_--which, it will be
remembered, was one of the ships which contrived to make good her escape
from the Japanese fleet after the battle of the Yellow Sea--having been
patched-up, as far as the resources of Port Arthur dockyard would allow,
got under way and, steaming round to Takhe Bay, proceeded to shell the
Japanese lines in the neighbourhood of Ta-ku-Shan and the Panlung
redoubts. It was a rather daring thing to do, for there was not a ship
in the harbour capable of supporting her, while the Japanese blockading
squadron in the offing was close enough in to be clearly visible from
the heights. Included in that squadron were the new armoured cruisers
_Nisshin_ and _Kasuga_, purchased from the Argentine just before the
declaration of war; and no sooner was it seen that the _Sevastopol_ had
actually ventured outside the harbour, than these two powerful craft
steamed in and opened fire upon her, and also upon the Laolutze forts,
which were supporting her. The approach of the Japanese cruisers was
the signal for a hurried retirement on the part of the Russian
battleship, and she lost no time in effecting her retreat to the
harbour. But while entering, she struck a contact mine, which exploded
beneath her bows, inflicting such serious damage that it was only with
very great difficulty she succeeded in returning to her berth, with her
bow almost completely submerged. This was the last straw, so far as the
_Sevastopol_ was concerned, and she was practically put out of action
for the remainder of the war.
A week later our cruisers and destroyers effected a _coup_ which, there
is every reason to believe, must have materially hastened the fall of
the fortress. This consisted in the capture, off Round Island, of a
great fleet of Chinese junks, bound from Wei-hai-wei to Port Arthur,
conveying to the beleaguered city vast quantities of food, clothing,
ammunition, explosives, and supplies of every imaginable description.
The junks were taken into Dalny, where their cargoes were declared to be
contraband of war, and confiscated by the Japanese.
These several successes, comparatively unimportant though they were,
coupled with the practical destruction of the Port Arthur and
Vladivostock fleets, put new heart into the Japanese for a time; but
with the arrival and passage of the month of September, during which no
appreciable progress was made in the operations before Port Arthur, even
the unexampled patience and superb stoicism thus far displayed by the
Japanese as a people showed signs of the wear and tear to which they had
so long been subjected, and murmurings at General Nogi's apparent
non-success began to make themselves heard. The casualty lists seemed
to grow ever longer with the passage of the days, without any visible
result, except that Nogi contrived to retain possession of the few
unimportant positions which he had gained, and a black cloud of
pessimism seemed to be settling down upon the Island Empire.
Meanwhile, however, in its silent, secret, undemonstrative way, the
Japanese army had been making preparations of an important character,
among which were included the construction of concrete emplacements for
eighteen 11-inch howitzers, from which great things were expected. They
fired a 500-pound projectile charged with high explosive, and had a
range which enabled them to command the entire area of the fortress,
including the harbour.
On the 1st October the first six of these howitzers opened fire, in the
presence of General Baron Kodama, who had crossed to Port Arthur from
Japan to administer, perhaps, a fillip to the officers and the army
generally. North Kikwan fort was the first recipient of the new guns'
delicate attentions, one hundred shells being poured into it. Huge
clouds of dust and smoke at once arose from the fort; but it was
enormously strong, and no very important results were apparent. On the
following day and for a few days afterwards the howitzers lobbed shells
upon the fleet, and the _Pobieda, Poltava, Retvisan_, and _Peresviet_
were all struck, and their crews driven out of them, after which they
were moved to the East harbour, where they were hidden from the sight of
our gunners by the intervening high ground.
Meanwhile the Japanese engineers were resolutely and industriously
pushing their saps ever closer up to the Russian forts, in the progress
of which task the most furious and sanguinary hand-to-hand fighting with
bayonet and bomb was of daily, nay hourly, occurrence. The slaughter
was appalling, few of the combatants on either side surviving such
encounters.
Yet, although the advantages were all on the side of the defenders, the
patience and heroism of the Japanese steadily told, and on 4th October
they attacked a work at Yenchang, near Takhe Bay, and destroyed the two
machine-guns with which it was armed. This success was followed up by
the capture, on 16th October, of an immensely strong Russian position on
Hashimakayana Hill. Ten days later, the Japanese troops stormed and
took, after hours of sanguinary fighting, the two important positions of
Erhlung and Sungshushan, on the northern and north-western salients of
the old Chinese Wall; and these successes were considered to have
cleared the ground for the general assault which had been ordered from
headquarters in Japan.
For four days--27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th October--the Russian works
were subjected to such a terrific bombardment as, up to then, mortal
eyes had certainly never beheld. It reached its height about eight
o'clock on the morning of the 30th, and continued until about one
o'clock in the afternoon, during which the din was terrific and
indescribable. Shell and shrapnel fell upon the Russian works at the
rate of one hundred per minute, the forts resembled volcanoes in
eruption, from the continuous explosions of the shells which fell upon
them, and the entire landscape became veiled in a thick haze of smoke.
At one o'clock the preparation was thought to be complete; and ten
minutes later the great assault began--to end in complete and disastrous
failure! The Russian forts, supposed to have been silenced by those
four days of terrific bombardment, were as formidable as ever; and as
the stormers dashed forward they were met by so furious a rifle and
artillery fire that they were literally annihilated. The second grand
assault upon Port Arthur had failed, as completely and tragically as the
first!
To have incurred such tremendous losses for such insignificant results
was a terribly depressing experience for Japan; but the benumbing effect
of the blow began to pass away when, in the first week of November, the
news arrived of General Oku's splendid success upon the Shaho; and with
renewed hope, and that indomitable patience and courage which is so
marked a feature of Japanese character, the troops before Port Arthur
set to work to repair their disasters.
Their first success was achieved in the middle of the month of November,
when they gained possession of the little village of Kaokiatun, thus
securing the command of Pigeon Bay. This success was followed, on the
23rd of the month, by an attempt on the part of the Japanese to capture
the Russian trench on East Kikwan Hill. The attempt resulted in
failure, with a loss of some three hundred slain, to say nothing of
wounded. This was followed, on the 26th, by an attack upon Q Fort,
North Kikwan, Erhlung, and Sungshushan. This too resulted in failure
for the Japanese, with awful slaughter; the failure in this case,
however, being tempered by the capture of the trench on East Kikwan
Hill. This capture was of very great importance to the Japanese, from
the fact that it commanded the approach to the fort on the summit of the
hill; and the Russians, recognising this fact, fought madly to regain
possession of the trench, finally succeeding toward midnight. The
fighting on this occasion was most disastrous for the Japanese, their
wounded alone totalling over 6000, while it was estimated that in dead
their losses must have exceeded 10,000!
The result of all this sanguinary fighting was to convince the Japanese
Staff, at last, that the defences on the eastern slope were impregnable
to assault, and must be captured by other means. They accordingly next
turned their attention to 203 Metre Hill, which was the key to the
eastern defences of Port Arthur, and determined to take it by assault.
This was a particularly tough proposition, and after the tremendous
losses which Nogi's army had already suffered in its disastrous assaults
upon the eastern defences, the Staff might well have been excused had it
hesitated to undertake such a herculean task. For the position was so
immensely strong that the Russians regarded it as impregnable. The
merely natural difficulties of the adventure were great, for, as its
name indicates, it was a lofty hill, with steep, almost precipitous
slopes, to scale which, even unopposed, was no light task. But when to
this difficulty was added the further one that the hill had two summits,
each crowned by very strong earthworks constructed of sand-bags, timber
and steel rails, connected by tunnels with bomb-proof works on the rear
slope, and that it was further protected by two lines of trenches,
themselves protected by strong barbed wire entanglements, and that the
works on the summit mounted several machine-guns and some heavier pieces
of artillery, the reader may be able to form some slight idea of the
obstacles which the Japanese undertook to surmount, as well as the
indomitable courage which possessed them to make the attempt.
It must not be supposed, however, that the attack was about to be made
on the spur of the moment and without any previous preparation. On the
contrary; for two whole months the Japanese had been steadily sapping
from the north and north-west, day and night, in face of the most
vigorous and determined opposition on the part of the Russians, first
constructing a parallel about a hundred yards from the first line of
Russian trenches, and, from this parallel, driving saps which pierced
the wire entanglements and in two places reached to within fifty yards
of the Russian line. And while this was being done, four of the new
Japanese 11-inch howitzers concentrated their fire upon the works on the
twin summits of the hill.
The assault was ordered for the evening of 27th November. Supported by
a heavy bombardment from the howitzers and batteries in their rear, the
troops chosen for the assault broke cover and rushed the first line of
Russian trenches, bayoneting the occupants almost before the latter had
time to open fire upon them. Then followed hand-to-hand fighting of the
most ferocious and sanguinary character, which lasted all night.
Morning found the assailants still in possession of the trench which had
been won; and now, strongly reinforced, the Japanese proceeded to push
forward to attack the summit and Akasakayama battery. Immediately, the
Russian guns in the neighbouring forts opened fire upon the stormers
with shrapnel and heavy shell, and in a very few minutes the entire
scene was so completely veiled in powder smoke that it was impossible
for anyone to tell exactly how the fight was going. Four times the
Japanese stormed the crest and were beaten back; and it was not until
three o'clock in the afternoon, when they delivered their fifth assault,
that they at last burst through the wire entanglements and reached the
crest. For a time they held it; but the Russian fire was too hot for
them, and at length they were not only driven off the crest but also out
of the trench which they had won on the previous night.
The attack was resumed the next day, and again resulted in failure.
Then the Japanese Staff put its foot down and declared that both hills
_must_ be taken, at all costs! The cruisers _Sai-yen_ and _Akagi_ were
ordered round to Pigeon Bay to co-operate with the troops by covering
the assault with their fire; but, unfortunately, as the _Sai-yen_ was
getting into position on the 30th, she struck a mine and sank, not far
from where the old _Hei-yen_ disappeared some two months earlier. This
put an end to the plan for naval assistance, and the land forces were
obliged to rely entirely upon themselves. Fighting of the most
desperate and sanguinary character proceeded all through the afternoon
and night of 30th November, but it was not until the next day that the
indomitable courage and persistence of the Japanese were rewarded with
success; the western summit of 203 Metre Hill being taken by them and
held all day, despite the most desperate efforts on the part of the
Russians to retake it.
This was the beginning of the end, so far as Port Arthur was concerned.
On 5th December the eastern summit of the hill also fell into the hands
of the Japanese, and next day they secured possession of Akasakayama,
thus obtaining command of the entire Metre range.
These important positions in their possession, the tide of war at once
turned in favour of the Japanese, for the heights commanded not only the
town but the harbour of Port Arthur; and the big 11-inch howitzers, as
well as a battery of naval 6-inch and 47-inch guns, were at once brought
up, and the bombardment of the Russian warships was begun. On 6th
December the _Poltava_ was sunk by the Russians to save her from
destruction by the Japanese fire. Next day the _Retvisan_ met a like
fate, while a fire broke out aboard the _Peresviet_, and on the 8th she
and the _Pobieda_ were at the bottom of the harbour, while the _Pallada_
was obviously following them. On the following day the _Bayan_ was hit
no less than twenty-two times, bursting into flame shortly before noon
and burning until shortly after four o'clock in the afternoon, while the
_Sevastopol_ was seriously damaged. The mine-laying ship _Amur_ was
also hit and sunk. The dockyard sustained serious damage, yet,
strangely enough, all through this bombardment the Russians did little
by way of reply; they seemed overwhelmed and paralysed at the
misfortunes which were now befalling them--or else, as some of us began
to shrewdly suspect, their ammunition was at last exhausted. On the 9th
of the month the _Sevastopol_--the only Russian battleship still
remaining afloat in the harbour--moved from her moorings and sought
refuge behind a big boom under the guns of Mantushan fort, on the Tiger
peninsula, where, a few nights later, she was energetically attacked by
our destroyers. These attacks were repeated nightly, with considerable
loss to our side, until the night of 15th-16th, when the ship was
successfully torpedoed. Her end was so evidently near now that we
ceased our attacks; but nothing could save her, and on the 20th of the
month her captain took her out into deep water, opened her Kingston
valves, and sank her, so that she might not fall into the hands of the
Japanese.
Meanwhile, North Kikwan fort was captured by our troops on the night of
the 18th, after a fight which cost us close upon a thousand men. Two
days later, we took a battery close to it; and on the 28th, the
formidable Erhlung became ours after a tremendous fight. Success after
success on our part now followed each other rapidly, each additional
capture firing our troops with renewed courage and determination. The
last day of the year saw Sungshushan fort fall to us, and the first day
of 1905 saw the New Panlung and H batteries in our hands, the Chinese
Wall breached, and the Japanese flag planted well within the Russian
defences. Wangtai fort was stormed and taken on the afternoon of the
same day, and as twilight was closing down upon the scene a Cossack,
bearing a large white flag, was seen riding out of the Swishiying
valley, followed by a Russian officer.
The officer was the bearer of a letter from General Stoessel to General
Nogi, inviting the latter to open negotiations with the writer "to
determine the conditions of surrender" of Port Arthur. Needless to say,
the Japanese general gladly, yet without undue haste, acceded to
Stoessel's proposal; and at noon of 2nd January 1905, Major-General
Ijichi met Major-General Reiss at Plum Tree Cottage, a miserable little
hovel situated in the village of Swishiying, and the negotiations were
opened which resulted in Port Arthur passing into the possession of the
Japanese on the evening of that day, although the Russian evacuation did
not take place until the 5th of January.