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Updated: June 4, 2025
But surely on every theory of the war the first objective of the Japanese on land was Seoul, where they expected to have to fight their first important action against troops advancing from the Yalu; and surely their second was Port Arthur, with its fleet and arsenal, which they expected to reduce with little more difficulty than they had met with ten years before against the Chinese.
And the advances made by Ito and others would have been reciprocated by Witte and Lamsdorff were it not that the Tsar, interested in Bezobrazoff's Yalu venture, subordinated his policy to those vested interests, and compelled Japan to fight.
Its people were the descendants of Ki-tzse, a famous Chinese sage and statesman who, eleven hundred years before Christ, moved with his tribesmen over the river Yalu because he would not recognize or submit to a new dynasty that had usurped power in China. His followers doubtless absorbed and were influenced by still older settlers in Korea.
Through me Hamel taught our soldiers drill and tactics and taught the Red Heads strategy. The fighting was grand, and though it took a year, the year's end saw peace on the northern border and no Red Heads but dead Red Heads on our side the Yalu. I do not know if this invasion of the Red Heads is recorded in Western history, but if so it will give a clue to the date of the times of which I write.
First the control of Korea was secured, then the command of the sea, then the Yalu was crossed; and while one division of the army was pouring into Manchuria, threatening Niu-Chwang and beyond that Mukden, a second division landed at Pitsewo, making a rapid descent upon Port Arthur, the chief stronghold of China, which was captured by assault Nov. 20, 1894.
It is easy to conceive that the distracted man, grateful for protection, did at this time, as is supposed, consent to the purchase of lands and cutting of timber by the Russians on the Yalu, which the following year expanded into a grant of an extended tract, and became the centre of a large Russian industry in Northern Korea.
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.
Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little sleight-o'-hand, bow-legged bull terriers give 'em another of them Yalu looloos, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg.
Hence the advance of the Japanese, which was made in a leisurely manner with the utmost circumspection and attention to detail, involved so much time that April had drawn to its close before the troops deployed on the banks of the Yalu.
From the moment when war became inevitable, the problem of absorbing interest was to determine Russia's strategy, and it was ultimately seen that the two main groups of her forces were to be posted at Port Arthur and on the Yalu; the latter to resist an advance from Korea, and the former to defend the Liaotung peninsula, which constituted the key of the Russian position.
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