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.