CHAPTER XVIII.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE RUSSIAN FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.
THE RUSSIAN FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.
THE RUSSIAN FLEET IN THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE RETREAT FROM MUKDEN.
THE RETREAT FROM MUKDEN.
THE RETREAT FROM MUKDEN.
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 manœuvre 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.
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.