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.
CHAPTER XIX.
Battle of the Japan Sea—Fleet Russia's Last Hope—Tragedy of the North Sea—Reaches Asiatic Waters—On the Eve of the Struggle—Russians in Double Line—Borodino First to Go Down—Russians in Full Flight—Admiral Nebogatoff Surrenders—Togo's Reports of the Battle—Rozhdestvensky a Prisoner—Searching Sea for Remnants—Japan's Loss Only 424 Men—Your Utmost for the Empire—Russian Line Enveloped—Destroyers Took Last Thrust—As Sailors Saw the Battle—Blowing up the Izumrud—The News Reaches Russia—Russian Story of Disaster—Why Russians Were Defeated.
Battle of the Japan Sea
The Japanese-Russian war has added many pages of awe-inspiring achievement to the vast volume of the world's valorous records of land and sea. Notable, among all of the amazing array, ever will stand the naval battle of the Sea of Japan, fought in the Straits of Korea, Sunday, May 28; Monday, May 29, and continuing as a pursuit on Tuesday, May 30, 1905. Russia's enormous armada of thirty-seven fighting ships, and one hundred ships in all, had been sent to the Far East to recover command of the sea from Japan, which had been won from her in the naval campaign of 1904, when the Russian Port Arthur fleet had been destroyed and the Russian Vladivostok squadron had been weakened to a helpless condition. The result was overwhelming victory for Japan, achieved at the cost to Russia of the annihilation of her entire armada. No naval battle of history equals this in the enormous power of the fighting array; none exceeds it in the degree of its decisiveness. Trafalgar, a hundred years earlier, affords the only possible parallel, and Trafalgar, for a century the world's greatest naval struggle, was outdone.
The story begins eight months before these thrilling events in the Straits of Korea, when the Russian fleet, variously called the Baltic Fleet and the Second Pacific Fleet, sailed from Cronstadt, in the Baltic, on its 20,000 mile journey, around Africa and by way of the Indian Ocean to the Orient.
Fleet Russia's Last Hope
The fleet represented every available Russian warship. A half dozen others, too old for active service or still in course of building, were left in Russian waters, the Czar deciding to leave the home shores practically unprotected after securing a secret agreement with Germany, which amounted to a temporary offensive and defensive alliance. The fighting strength of the squadrons included seven battleships, two armored cruisers, six cruisers, with a full complement of torpedo boat destroyers, a fleet equal, on paper, to the entire available navy of Japan, and in some aspects stronger than any Japan could hope to muster. Supreme command of the armada was entrusted to Vice-Admiral Rozhdestvensky, with three divisional commanders, Vice-Admiral Volkersham, Rear Admiral Nebogatoff, and Rear Admiral Enquist. The ultimate task of the fleet was to regain mastery of the sea from Japan, in undisputed possession by reason of having destroyed the Russian Pacific squadrons at Port Arthur and Vladivostok. Vladivostok, Russia's sole remaining port in the Orient, was the destination. From that point it was intended to assail Japan on the sea; to interrupt her transport service, which was vital to her army then in the midst of a victorious campaign, 300 miles from the sea, in the heart of Manchuria, and thus cripple and harass the Island Empire until no other course than to sue for peace would be open to her. The task was enormous; so vastly difficult, indeed, that until the actual departure of the fleet few, anywhere, believed that such a plan was seriously contemplated. Even when departure had been made, experts rather held to the view that Russia, herself, meant to ask for peace and was merely making a demonstration that might be counted on to modify Japan's demands.
Tragedy of the North Sea