AFTER SEVEN MONTHS.
The time was now ripe for the simultaneous advance of the three Japanese armies, and while Oku and Nodzu attacked the Russians at Anshanchan, and forced them to retire, Kuroki drove the Russians out of Anping. The great battle of Liaoyang began on August 29, and continued until September 1, when Kuroki, having crossed the Taitse-Ho, threatened the Russian left flank, and forced them to retreat. On September 6 the Japanese occupied the Yentai Mines. The army besieging Port Arthur captured the Laotishan and Sushiyen Hills on August 15, and on the 28th took Palungshan.
The shaded portion shows the Japanese advance.
"In spite of the failure of this first attack, another was ordered to begin at two on the following morning (August 30th). The cold grey morning witnessed another scene of slaughter on the Russian right as the defenders again hurled the attack back. The Japanese attacked with valor and deserved success, but the enfilading fire on every salient swept each rush away before the men could even lay hands on the entanglements. But the 5th Division had more success against the Russian left. The position here was composed of a brush-covered hogsback, sloping to the east, defended by a triple line of trenches with a glacis protected by a 10 foot entanglement covering a honeycomb of pits containing spikes at the bottom. In the semi-darkness of the morning the 41st Regiment carried this underfeature after losing seventy-five of the one hundred pioneers who hacked their way through the entanglement with axes. The men, rushing through the gap, overpowered the sentries in the trenches before the supports, sleeping in splinter proofs behind, could reinforce them. But daybreak brought a tragedy of the kind which is so common in modern war. Shell fire, believed to be from Japanese guns, drove this gallant storming party from its hold, filling the Russian trenches with Japanese dead. But now for the fighting on the 31st. The weather was now fine, and the energy of this southern attack all the morning was concentrated in an artillery fire on the bushy hill that had been won and lost. At 10 o'clock we could see the 5th Division moving up against the Russian left. There is a moment of intense excitement while the summit of the Russian position is like a miniature Mount Pelée in eruption owing to the bursting of dozens of Shimoshi shells. The head of the assault is in the gap in the entanglement. The artillery is supporting the assault. Three or four ground mines explode in the midst of the leading assaulting groups. Then as the smoke clears the black-coated Russians are seen leaving the position. In a moment the Japanese are in, and the whole of the lines in support on the crest are firing down the slope into the retreating Russians. But one swallow does not make a summer. Although the underfeature of the bushy hill was carried, the rest of the assault failed miserably. No Japanese could live within 500 yards of the bastion hill, and though the Japanese came out of the corn until the groups were so numerous that I can liken them only to swarming bees, it was only to be swept backwards into cover again, leaving behind the heavy price of their valor."
CAPTURE OF THE "RESHITELNI" AT CHIFU.
CHAPTER XI.
The Opposing Armies in Manchuria—The Russian Advance—Reinforcements for Both Sides—Battle of the Sha-ho—Two Hundred Hours of Carnage—Awful List of Casualties—Threat and Counterthreat—The Veil Lifted from Port Arthur—Capture of Forts—Devices of the Besiegers—The Undaunted Stoessel—The Gallant Podgorsky—World-Wide Admiration—Uncertain News.
The Opposing Armies in Manchuria
The great battle of Liao-yang was fought in the last week of August and the first week of September; and for nearly five weeks after that tremendous struggle the opposing armies remained inactive, or rather gathered up their exhausted strength for the next desperate encounter. The Japanese had advanced as far as Yentai, a station about one-third of the distance—40 miles or so—that separates Liao-yang from Mukden. The position was valuable as giving the command of the Yentai coal mines—a most important acquisition to any general with a long line of railway communication to maintain. The Japanese entrenched themselves along a front of some 25 miles, stretching from Yentai on the railway to Pensihu, a village in the hilly country which lies north and south between the two rivers Taitse and Hun. There they settled down to replenishing the exhausted supplies, refilling the depleted ranks, and reorganizing the dislocated commands. Above all did they make speed to reconstruct the railway behind them, a work which had diligently been carried on pari passu with the advance. Early in October through trains of the new 3 ft. 6 in. gauge were running from Dalny to Yentai, and thus the fighting-line was brought within an easy six days' journey of Japan. The Russians, on the other hand, in spite of the completion of the Circum-Baikal railway towards the end of September, were still from three to five times as distant from their prime base; for if the express time from Mukden to Moscow was sixteen days, the ordinary troop train's time was much nearer thirty days. In this all-important matter of rapidity of communication the Japanese possessed an advantage inherent to the situation and of the profoundest strategical influence. While they were recuperating thus at Yentai, the Russians were busy entrenching themselves behind the Hun-ho, the course of which from Mukden follows a line, roughly speaking, due east. At first it was asserted by those in the confidence of the Russian General Staff, that no determined stand would be made at the Hun-ho, and that Kuropatkin would only hold the enemy there until the defences at Tieling were completed. But as the days passed, and the Japanese showed no disposition to renew their advance, and as reinforcements continued to pour over the Siberian railway, counsels were modified. In the last week of September General Stackelberg, attending a banquet at Mukden, proposed the toast "To the March on Liao-yang"; and this startling suggestion of a new development in the Russian plan of campaign was speedily confirmed by a remarkable manifesto to his troops which General Kuropatkin issued on the 2nd of October. After the usual high-flown exordium, in which "the arrogant foe" was described as having suffered repeated repulse—a rather daring travesty of the facts—Kuropatkin explained that he had not thought the time ripe "to take advantage of these successes; but", he added, "the time of retreat was now at an end. Hitherto the enemy in operating has relied on his great forces and, disposing his armies so as to surround us, has chosen as he deemed fit his time for attack; but now the moment to go and meet the enemy, for which the whole army has been longing, has come, and the time has arrived for us to compel the Japanese to do our will, for the forces of the Manchurian army are strong enough to begin the forward movement. Bear in mind the importance of victory to Russia, and, above all, remember how necessary victory is the more speedily to relieve our brothers at Port Arthur, who for seven months have heroically maintained the defence of the fortress entrusted to their care."