sassulitch

Updated: May 1, 2025

It had never been seriously believed in Europe that a Russian army could be conquered by a Japanese in a fair fight, and probably that incredulity influenced Kuropatkin when he ordered Sassulitch to defy strategical principles by attempting to hold a radically defective position against a greatly superior force.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Sassulitch could muster for this purpose only five regiments and one battalion of infantry; forty field-guns; eight machine-guns, and some Cossacks twenty thousand combatants, approximately. Kuroki disposed his troops so that their front extended some twenty miles along the Yalu, the centre being at Kiuliencheng, a walled town standing about 180 feet above the river.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The idea was to retire gradually, drawing the Japanese into Manchuria towards the railway, and engaging them in the exceedingly difficult country crowned by the Motien Mountains. But at the last moment General Kuropatkin, Russian commander-in-chief in Manchuria, issued orders to General Sassulitch, commander of the Second Siberian Army Corps, to hold the line of the Yalu with all his strength.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era