Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
On the following day the Japanese captured the Yentai mines; and a few hours later, General Nodzu, at the head of the Fourth Japanese Army, entered the town of Liao-yang unopposed. Meanwhile, what was the state of affairs on land before Port Arthur?
The village was called Moe-tung. It was on the edge of the big main road which leads from Liao-yang to Ta-shi-chiao. It consisted of a few baked mud-houses, a dilapidated temple, a wall, a clump of willows, and a pond.
"The Japanese told me themselves they had entered Liao-Yang without firing a shot." The cable operator was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what it meant and delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a patient he cannot recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy he said, "They have been fighting for six days."
Outgeneralled and driven back from their strong position on the Yalu River; decisively beaten in the great battle of Liao-yang; checked in their offensive movement on the Shakhe River, with immense loss; and finally utterly defeated in the desperate two weeks' struggle around Mukden; the field warfare ended in the two great armies facing each other at Harbin, with months of manoeuvring before them.
This point is of supreme importance, as practically the whole conduct of a great battle depends on a correct solution of this question viz., How long can a given command prolong its resistance? If this is incorrectly answered in practice the whole manoeuvre depending on it may collapse e.g., Kouroupatkin at Liao-Yang, September 1904.
I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of it. "Why?" I asked. The Chinaman bowed and smiled. "Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of Liao-Yang." The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed. "There was no battle," I protested.
This task was entrusted to the Second Japanese Army, under the leadership of General Oku; and they accomplished it on 1st September, after three nights and two days of desperate fighting, in the course of which the heroic Japanese suffered frightful losses. On the same day, the Russians began to withdraw from Liao-yang under a heavy fire from the Japanese artillery.
Liao-yang defences were, in fact, a repetition of the defences of the Nanshan Heights where the Japanese suffered such appalling losses except that they were of an even more elaborate and deadly character.
Not only was Liao-yang the Russian point of concentration, but it also was a sound position both for defending Korea and covering the siege of Port Arthur. Once secured, it gave the Japanese all the advantages of defence and forced the Russians to exhaust themselves in offensive operations which were beyond their strength. Nor was it only ashore that this advantage was gained.
Liao-yang promised to be a very tough nut to crack, for General Kuropatkin, fully recognising the possibilities of the position, had determined to make his stand there and inflict upon the Japanese such a crushing defeat that all further capacity for taking the offensive would be driven out of them, after which, the subjugation of a beaten and disheartened enemy should prove an easy task, rendered all the easier, perhaps, by the fact that the great assault upon Port Arthur by the Japanese had failed disastrously, with frightful loss to the assailants.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking