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the Japanese had not been in earnest at the center and he attributed reverses on his right to the fact, that he had withdrawn a full division from Lieutenant-General Kaulbars, commanding there and he hoped, now that Kuroki seemed to have given up the struggle, that he could withdraw a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