But the culminating fact in the entire plan was an entirely separate blow at the Russian rear north of Mukden by an army which, while it no doubt figured in the Russian calculations of probabilities, eventually burst into the plain eastward from Sinmintin with a fury of surprise attack which ultimately crumbled the entire scheme of Russian defence.
Nogi to Strike Culminating Blow
That army was made up of the conquerors of Port Arthur. The fall of that fortress released a host of 80,000 seasoned fighters, flushed with a victory that filled the world with awe and admiration. Just so soon as the details of the surrender had been completed this force was under way northward to reinforce Marshal Oyama. At its head was the savagely brave Nogi, who had just won for himself undying place in the history of Japan by successfully reducing the Gibraltar of the Orient. Swift from the scene of one great triumph he was speeding to another. It was in the disposition of this force that all of the genius of Oyama was expended. When he sent Nogi westward in a wide circuit to swing completely around the Russian right army, to plunge northward by forced marches as far as Simintin and then bend eastward to burst upon the Russian rear, sweeping within five miles of their lines before an adequate defence could be provided, he settled the fate of Russia's great army of nearly a half million men. He struck a blow that made an awful rout possible, and the blow that made possible the final disaster, the forced abandonment of Tie Pass, that left the Russian Army a demoralized horde of panicked troops facing northward into the bleak stretches of Northern Manchuria.
By this blow he added the final humiliation to Russia's greatest soldier, Kuropatkin, and lost that erstwhile leader with half of a century of popular adulation behind him, the command of Russia's Armies in Manchuria. He ended every hope of an offensive campaign in Manchuria, achieving at a stroke every result that for which a year's campaign had been allotted.
"Out of the Way for Us"
Nogi's army swept into the ranks of the opposing Russians, shouting, "Out of the way for us; we're from Port Arthur". To them fighting in the open country face to face with the enemy was as child's play compared with the horrors they had faced in scaling the bristling mountainsides north of Port Arthur. There they advanced against hidden terrors that lurked behind dull gray walls of huge forts; they braved the cunningly devised high priests of death that are hidden underground and work havoc and disaster when victory seems within grasp. They had looked death in the face in a hundred hidden forms unflinchingly, had fought and conquered a foe behind vast walls. Here there was only man to man. Shells burst overhead, scattering deadly shrapnel, but what was that to the rain of ponderous steel from siege guns that tore out the face of hillsides and annihilated regiments at a single puff. These were the men who, with a strident battle cry of scorn for the ease of the task, swept through thirty miles in a single day, trampling Russian regiments under foot, storming over fortified towns as though no men or guns were there, right up to the gates of Mukden, right where their guns could search the huddled ranks of Russians, fleeing from the destructible force that was welding a ring around them. Nature finally checked them. Up from the Manchurian plains a mighty wind swept a blinding simoon that halted their irresistible host at the moment when they were driving home the last fatal blow. For a day the whole battlefield was wrapped in a blinding curtain of sweeping sand. When once again Nogi's men could take up the work they had begun the bulk of the Russian force had fled past. Undaunted they swept northward, and four days later, when the beaten and dispersed army was reorganizing its ranks from the chaos of the flight, it was Nogi's men, springing once more out of the west, that set Kuropatkin's whole remnant in flight again, leaving behind them the last fortified position in Southern Manchuria. Oyama planned, but the palm for the victories of Mukden and the further flight from Tie Pass belongs to Nogi and the host that took Port Arthur.
Master Stroke of the Battle
This was indeed the master stroke of the battle, nevertheless a way had to be prepared for it by tremendously desperate work on every quarter of the long battle line. As vigorous as was the assault made on the Russian front, there can be no doubt that this was nothing more than a feint. The readiness with which the Japanese Commander-in-Chief sacrificed thousands of lives in assaults of a secondary nature is one of the significant things of the story of the battle. Such methods are reminiscent of Grant's massed attacks in the closing days of the Civil War, when life was counted as nothing when in the scale beside the value of victory. No pang for the sacrifice reached the heart of Oyama or the Generals under him who were directing the assaults. Victory was the stake, and the soldiers were there to die, if need be. They died by files and ranks and regiments. But victory was won. Over against the total of the blood-letting in their own ranks was the awful slaughter of the enemy, here, as in every battle of the war, far heavier in the Russian totals than with the Japanese. Two generations have come since the famous struggle of Gettysburg, yet statisticians are still struggling to determine the exact number who fought and died there or who remained alive, as victor and vanquished. The actual figures are still only approximately known. Multiply the difficulties of accounting for the less than two hundred thousand who fought at Gettysburg an hundredfold, and something of the difficulty of getting at the actual facts of the battle at Mukden begin to be realized. Ultimately, the Japanese may give the details, but no actual statement of the number of Russians engaged, of the losses in killed, wounded and missing, may be expected. The story forms too tragic a page in the history of the nation ever to be willingly spread broadcast.
ON BOARD A JAPANESE BATTLESHIP DURING THE BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA.