In Port Arthur were the 7th East Siberian Rifle Division—12 battalions, 2 reserve battalions, 3½ battalions of fortress artillery, and a sapper and mining company.
In Kuan-tung were the 5th, 13th, 14th, and 15th East Siberian Rifle Regiments, 1 battalion of the 16th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, 2 battalions of the 18th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, and 1 reserve battalion—12 battalions, 20 guns, and 1 sotnia of Cossacks.
On my arrival I approved the following scheme of engineering works: The fortification of the positions on the Fen-shui Ling (Passes), and at Liao-yang, Mukden, and Tieh-ling; the construction of roads across the passes to the Ya-lu, and of three parallel roads from Kai-ping to Mukden; the construction of crossings over the Liao River, and the hutting of three army corps. I at once took steps also to strengthen our advance guard on the Ya-lu, which was some 133 miles distant. Two regiments of the 6th East Siberian Rifle Division were sent there, in addition to the third battalions for the regiments of the 3rd East Siberian Rifle Division. By the time, therefore, that the enemy began crossing the Ya-lu, the Eastern (Advance) Force had been increased to eighteen battalions, besides which the 21st East Siberian Rifle Regiment had been moved towards Ta-shih-chiao. The advance guard was under General Zasulitch. Meanwhile the units of the 1st Siberian Division were detained by Alexeieff in Harbin, so that, from the middle of March to the middle of April, the Manchurian Army did not receive a single battalion from the rear.
Notwithstanding the orders Zasulitch had received to avoid a decisive engagement with the enemy, who had the superiority in numbers, on May 1 part of his force became hotly engaged in what developed into a serious fight at the Ya-lu, and after a disastrous finish his eastern force was withdrawn to the passes of the greater Fen-shui-ling range, which they reached on May 7. In this action only nine of our eighteen battalions took any active part, those of the 11th and 12th East Siberian Rifle Regiments showing great gallantry and determination. When asked why he had disobeyed the orders repeatedly given to him not to become entangled in a serious engagement, but to fall back on Feng-huang-cheng, Zasulitch gave as his reason that he had hoped to defeat the enemy. On May 5 the Japanese began debarking at Pi-tzu-wo, and a small force of all arms under General Zikoff was detached from the southern force in order to reconnoitre and ascertain the importance of this landing. The advance of this column incidentally enabled us to repair temporarily the portion of the line which the enemy had destroyed, and so to run a train-load of mélinite shells, machine-guns, and ammunition through to Port Arthur. The Emperor was fully alive to the danger of the situation caused by the dispersion of the Manchurian Army, and on May 11 telegraphed his orders for an immediate concentration. This was completed by the 14th, and the force was grouped on two points—Hai-cheng and Liao-yang. The former group consisted of twenty-seven battalions, twelve squadrons and sotnias, and eighty guns; the latter of twenty-eight battalions, six sotnias, and eighty-eight guns. The passes over the Fen-shui-ling range were guarded by small columns of infantry with guns, and advance and flank guards were thrown out. The independent cavalry, operating on our flanks east of the passes, was divided in two bodies, under Mischenko and Rennenkampf. West of Liao-yang was a small force under General Kossagovski, while five and a half battalions of the 1st Siberian Division lay at Mukden. At this time also, when the Viceroy returned to Port Arthur (after Admiral Makharoff’s death of April 13), the weakness of the place began to be shown up, and Alexeieff’s apprehensions as to its safety became acute. In a despatch of May 16 he questioned whether the place “would be able to hold out for more than two or three months, in spite of all the steps taken to strengthen its defences.” On April 25 the Chief of the Viceroy’s Staff telegraphed to me that, owing to the inadequacy of the garrison, Alexeieff considered it essential that if the fortress were attacked, the field army should support it as energetically and rapidly as possible. Alexeieff was not singular in his pessimistic views, for Stössel also gave up hope of a successful defence of Port Arthur directly after he had so unnecessarily abandoned the Chin-chou position on May 27. On the 28th I received a telegram from him urging me to support him speedily and in strength. This opinion was again endorsed by Alexeieff, who telegraphed on June 5 that “Port Arthur cannot strictly be called a storm-proof fortress, and it is a question whether it can even stand a siege of the length indicated in my telegram of May 16.”
The result of this volte-face on the part of Alexeieff as to the powers of resistance of the place was that he pressed me to send part of the army at once to assist it, though we were by no means ready for such an enterprise. On May 21 he wrote that he considered the moment in every way favourable for the army to assume the offensive in one of two directions—either towards the Ya-lu, with the object of defeating and throwing Kuroki back across the river, detaching a force to contain him there, and then moving on to relieve Port Arthur, or else direct on that place.
It should be borne in mind that these instructions were given at a time when the position of only two of the hostile armies had been fixed. Of these, one—of three divisions and three reserve brigades—had forced the crossing of the Ya-lu, and the other—of three divisions—had landed near Pi-tzu-wo. Moreover, a landing, of the extent of which we had no information, was then being carried out at Ta-ku-shan. Consequently we did not know the destination of one-half of the enemy’s army, and were thus not in possession of two important pieces of knowledge which were necessary before any operations of a decisive character could be undertaken—namely, the position of the enemy’s main forces and their probable plan of operations. It was incumbent on us, therefore, to exercise great caution, and to keep our forces as far as possible concentrated, so as to be ready to meet the attack of two or even three armies. Concerning the two directions in which the Viceroy advocated an advance, the following few points suggest themselves. For any operations towards the Ya-lu—bearing in mind the necessity for guarding our flank and rear against one hostile force landing at Pi-tzu-wo, and possibly others landing near Kai-ping or Newchuang—not more than sixty to seventy battalions were available of the ninety-four which in the middle of May constituted the army; the whole of the food for these troops had to be brought up by rail, owing to the exhaustion of the local resources—never very plentiful—in the hilly country between Liao-yang and Feng-huang-cheng: we had not got the transport to do this, for our ten transport trains could only have carried a three or four days’ supply for a force of this size; the usual May and June rains would have made the movement of our guns and baggage at first difficult, and then impossible, and we had at that time no mountain artillery or pack transport; we were by no means well placed in the matter of artillery parks: the horses for those of the 5th, 6th, and 9th East Siberian Rifle Artillery Divisions were still en route to Harbin, while the 1st and 2nd Siberian Divisions had arrived without any. Finally, if Kuroki should fall back behind the Ya-lu without accepting battle, we should have been obliged to retire and leave at least an army corps to contain him. When the rainy season came on, this corps itself would have been obliged to withdraw, as with interrupted communications it would have been seriously threatened by Kuroki’s far larger force, well provided with both mountain artillery and pack transport. For these reasons an offensive towards the Ya-lu was impracticable.
Under the conditions laid down by the Viceroy as to keeping screens on the Fen-shui Ling (Passes), and leaving a reserve at Hai-cheng[66] until such time as fresh reinforcements had been received, a direct advance on Port Arthur could only be made with one corps of twenty-four battalions. In view of the possibility of Kuroki taking the offensive in superior force (after reinforcement by the troops already beginning to land at Ta-ku-shan) against our cordon, which extended along the Fen-shui-ling range for more than sixty-six miles, and in view of the possibility of the Japanese cutting off any detachment moving on Port Arthur by landing somewhere in its rear, the despatch of this corps 130 miles to the south could not but be considered a most risky and difficult operation.
As our numerical weakness absolutely precluded a general assumption of the offensive on our part, I pointed out that by such a movement for the relief of Port Arthur we risked disorganizing the whole army. I also drew attention to the fact that, according to the report of Captain Gurko, who had just arrived from the fortress, its combatant strength amounted to at least 45,000 men (including sailors), and that the enemy could not therefore have any very overwhelming superiority. My views upon the inexpediency of any movement towards Port Arthur were communicated to the War Minister in my telegrams (Nos. 692 and 701) of May 28 and 30. But in a telegram of the 31st the Viceroy urgently requested me to advance to the relief of the fortress, and expressed the wish that four divisions should be detailed for the operation; while on June 6 he quoted to me a message from St. Petersburg in which it was stated that the time was “ripe for the Manchurian Army to assume the offensive.”
At the end of May the first reinforcements—the 3rd Siberian Division—began to arrive in the concentration area. This enabled me to increase the force detailed for the advance into Kuan-tung up to 32 battalions,[67] 22 squadrons and sotnias, and 100 guns. As a reserve to this force, the 2nd Brigade of the 31st Division was placed in the area Kai-ping—Hsiung-yao-cheng, and to a brigade of the 3rd Siberians was allotted the duty of watching the coast from Newchuang to the latter place. To hold Kuroki and the troops under Nodzu that had landed at Ta-ku-shan in check, 40 battalions, 52 sotnias, and 94 guns were left on the Fen-shui Ling (Passes), distributed over a length of more than sixty-six miles. The general reserve consisted of the 5th East Siberian Rifle Division at Liao-yang, and a brigade of the 3rd Siberian Division at Hai-cheng. Early in June the force detailed under General Shtakelberg for the operations towards Port Arthur began to concentrate at Te-li-ssu, with its advance guard at Wa-fang-tien. On the 13th the Japanese themselves began to advance from Pu-lan-tien, and by the evening of that day we had been able to rail two regiments of the 9th East Siberian Rifle Division into Te-li-ssu. On the 14th the enemy’s attack of our position there was repulsed, and on the following day Shtakelberg proposed to make a counter attack, having been reinforced at noon by the Tobolsk Regiment. However, the battle ended in our defeat, and we were forced to fall back. General Gerngross, who was in command of the 1st East Siberian Rifle Division, was wounded, but remained in action. Shtakelberg’s orders gave him freedom of action, but he was instructed not to accept decisive battle if the enemy were in superior numbers. Simultaneously with the enemy’s advance from the south, Kuroki moved forward on the 14th to the Ta Ling[68] (Pass) from Hsiu-yen, where three (according to some reports four) Japanese divisions were concentrated. Their 12th Division and three reserve brigades were left to watch our eastern force, and a further movement on Kai-ping, Ta-shih-chiao, or Hai-cheng was quite likely.
In order to be in a position to check the combined advance of the two Japanese groups, I thought it advisable to strengthen our southern force, and therefore so rearranged our dispositions that 87 out of 110 battalions were massed on the southern front, in the area Kai-ping—Hai-cheng, against Oku and Nogi. Fortunately for us, the critical position of our eastern front during the operations at Te-li-ssu was not appreciated by Kuroki, which fact favoured Count Keller’s demonstration towards Feng-huang-cheng in the middle of June. Otherwise Kuroki might have seized Liao-yang. On the 25th the enemy’s advance against our eastern force was commenced. On the 27th Keller withdrew some of his troops from the Fen-shui Ling (Passes) without opposition, and by July 1 the main body was concentrated seven miles east of Lang-tzu-shan and twenty-seven from Liao-yang. On June 27, without any serious engagement, but under pressure from the enemy, we abandoned the Fen-shui Ling (Passes), which they at once occupied. A few days previously—on June 23—about a division of the enemy had been located by Rennenkampf to the east of Sai-ma-chi. Believing that Hai-cheng constituted our greatest danger, as the enemy might, if they gained a success there, cut off Shtakelberg’s force close by, on the 29th I concentrated forty-one battalions and eighteen sotnias under Zasulitch at Hsi-mu-cheng, intending with them to hurl back the enemy on to their Hai-cheng line of advance. However, on the same day we discovered that those of the enemy who had moved at first from the Ta Ling (Pass) along the Hsi-mu-cheng road had again retired to it.