THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR.
I have said nothing as to the part played by the Yakumo in the battle of the Yellow Sea, for the simple reason that there is nothing particular to relate; but that we played a not altogether unimportant part in the fight is evidenced by the fact that only two of the Japanese ships, namely, the Mikasa and the Nisshin, had a heavier list of killed than ourselves, although the Kasuga scored one more in wounded than we did.
The fact is that, in a general engagement such as that referred to, after the initial movements of the various ships have been noted, one becomes so utterly engrossed in one’s own particular share of the work that there is little opportunity to note more than the most salient incidents of the battle. Moreover, the din of battle, the continuous roar of the guns, the crash of bursting shells, the deafening clang of projectiles upon armour, the screams of the wounded, the suffocating fumes of powder, all tend to benumb one’s powers of observation, so that the captain of a fighting ship has little opportunity to note anything more than the movements of the particular ship which he happens to be engaging at the moment.
The importance of the defeat of the Port Arthur fleet, indecisive as it had at first seemed to be, soon began to be realised when our secret agents in the fortress sent us complete and carefully ascertained information relative to the condition of the ships which had succeeded in regaining the shelter of the harbour. From this information it at once became apparent that, as fighting units, none of them could again be made of service until the conclusion of the war, and Japan heaved a great sigh of relief, which was intensified when, on the evening of 14th August, the news was flashed through the country that the gallant and sorely tried Kamimura had at last been granted his long-cherished wish to meet the Vladivostock squadron, and had defeated it. True, the defeat, like that of the Port Arthur fleet, was not as decisive as could have been wished; for of the three cruisers—the Gromovoi, Rossia, and Runk —which sallied forth from Vladivostock, under the command of Admiral Jessen, in response to Admiral Vitgeft’s call for support in his last desperate sortie from Port Arthur, two of them, the Gromovoi and the Rossia, succeeded in regaining the shelter of Vladivostock harbour, while only the Rurik, the least formidable of the trio, was sunk. But again, as in the case of the Port Arthur fleet, although the bulk of the Russian force contrived to escape either capture or destruction, it had been so severely handled as to be rendered innocuous for many months to come, and Japan was at last free from the continual menace of it. The destruction of the fast cruiser Novik in Korsakovsk harbour on 21st August, by the Japanese ship Chitose, drove the last nail in the coffin of Russia’s naval power in the Far East; and from that time forward, with the exception of maintaining the effective blockade of Port Arthur, the Japanese navy had little to do except prepare itself at every point to meet the menace of the Baltic Fleet, which at this time was beginning to materialise and take definite shape.
Meanwhile, after almost superhuman struggles against enormous odds, and in the face of frightful sufferings and losses, Japan’s land forces were beginning to make progress. During the last days of July General Kuroki’s forces fought and won the battles of Towan and the Yushuling Pass. On 3rd August, General Oku seized Hai-cheng and Newchwang old town, which is situated some twenty miles inland from the port of Newchwang; and then there came a pause, during which the final preparations for the advance upon Liao-yang were being completed.
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. The defences of Liao-yang were of great extent and enormous strength, including not only formidable forts and earthworks armed with powerful guns, and mile upon mile of most carefully and elaborately constructed trenches, but also with innumerable pitfalls, each with its sharpened stake at the bottom, as in the case of the Nanshan Heights defences. These pitfalls were arranged in regular lines, interrupted at intervals by patches of mined ground, while outside these again there ran a practically continuous girdle of barbed wire entanglements, the wire being charged with an electric current powerful enough to instantly destroy any one who should be unfortunate enough to come into contact with it. 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.
The attack upon Liao-yang was indeed in many respects a repetition of the attack upon Kinchau; for, as in the case of Kinchau, there was a formidable hill position—that of Shushan—to be first stormed and taken. 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. 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?
As has already been said, the great general assault upon the land defences, which began on 19th August 1904, resulted in disastrous failure with frightful losses for the Japanese. Yet that failure, terrible as it was, was not by any means complete; its blackness was irradiated by a gleam of light here and there which sufficed to keep alive that spirit of hope and indomitable resolution which no misfortune could ever quite quench in the breast of the Japanese, and which was undoubtedly the determining factor in the campaign. To particularise. On 14th August the 1st Japanese Division was ordered to capture the five redoubts on the crest of the ridge west of the railway, known as the Swishiying redoubts. These redoubts were taken on the following day, and their capture paved the way for the general assault, four days later. This began with the furious bombardment of the height known as 174 Metre Hill, which was stormed and taken at the point of the bayonet, later in the day, by the 1st Division, which immediately pushed south-east, with the object of gaining possession of Namaokayama, or 180 Metre Hill. This hill was protected by, among other devices, an intricate barbed wire entanglement charged with a high-tension electric current, the penetration of which proved to be a task of almost insuperable difficulty; nevertheless, it was eventually accomplished. On the morning of 22nd August, by a splendid act of heroism and self-sacrifice on the part of fifty Japanese, West Panlung fort was captured, and this cleared the way for the capture of the East fort. But the superhuman efforts made by the Japanese in capturing these positions completely exhausted them, with the result that the assault ended in failure, since the majority of the defences remained in the hands of the Russians.
On 23rd August, the battleship Sevastopol —which, it will be remembered, was one of the ships which contrived to make good her escape from the Japanese fleet after the battle of the Yellow Sea—having been patched-up, as far as the resources of Port Arthur dockyard would allow, got under way and, steaming round to Takhe Bay, proceeded to shell the Japanese lines in the neighbourhood of Ta-ku-Shan and the Panlung redoubts. It was a rather daring thing to do, for there was not a ship in the harbour capable of supporting her, while the Japanese blockading squadron in the offing was close enough in to be clearly visible from the heights. Included in that squadron were the new armoured cruisers Nisshin and Kasuga, purchased from the Argentine just before the declaration of war; and no sooner was it seen that the Sevastopol had actually ventured outside the harbour, than these two powerful craft steamed in and opened fire upon her, and also upon the Laolutze forts, which were supporting her. The approach of the Japanese cruisers was the signal for a hurried retirement on the part of the Russian battleship, and she lost no time in effecting her retreat to the harbour. But while entering, she struck a contact mine, which exploded beneath her bows, inflicting such serious damage that it was only with very great difficulty she succeeded in returning to her berth, with her bow almost completely submerged. This was the last straw, so far as the Sevastopol was concerned, and she was practically put out of action for the remainder of the war.
A week later our cruisers and destroyers effected a coup which, there is every reason to believe, must have materially hastened the fall of the fortress. This consisted in the capture, off Round Island, of a great fleet of Chinese junks, bound from Wei-hai-wei to Port Arthur, conveying to the beleaguered city vast quantities of food, clothing, ammunition, explosives, and supplies of every imaginable description. The junks were taken into Dalny, where their cargoes were declared to be contraband of war, and confiscated by the Japanese.
These several successes, comparatively unimportant though they were, coupled with the practical destruction of the Port Arthur and Vladivostock fleets, put new heart into the Japanese for a time; but with the arrival and passage of the month of September, during which no appreciable progress was made in the operations before Port Arthur, even the unexampled patience and superb stoicism thus far displayed by the Japanese as a people showed signs of the wear and tear to which they had so long been subjected, and murmurings at General Nogi’s apparent non-success began to make themselves heard. The casualty lists seemed to grow ever longer with the passage of the days, without any visible result, except that Nogi contrived to retain possession of the few unimportant positions which he had gained, and a black cloud of pessimism seemed to be settling down upon the Island Empire.
Meanwhile, however, in its silent, secret, undemonstrative way, the Japanese army had been making preparations of an important character, among which were included the construction of concrete emplacements for eighteen 11-inch howitzers, from which great things were expected. They fired a 500-pound projectile charged with high explosive, and had a range which enabled them to command the entire area of the fortress, including the harbour.
On the 1st October the first six of these howitzers opened fire, in the presence of General Baron Kodama, who had crossed to Port Arthur from Japan to administer, perhaps, a fillip to the officers and the army generally. North Kikwan fort was the first recipient of the new guns’ delicate attentions, one hundred shells being poured into it. Huge clouds of dust and smoke at once arose from the fort; but it was enormously strong, and no very important results were apparent. On the following day and for a few days afterwards the howitzers lobbed shells upon the fleet, and the Pobieda, Poltava, Retvisan, and Peresviet were all struck, and their crews driven out of them, after which they were moved to the East harbour, where they were hidden from the sight of our gunners by the intervening high ground.
Meanwhile the Japanese engineers were resolutely and industriously pushing their saps ever closer up to the Russian forts, in the progress of which task the most furious and sanguinary hand-to-hand fighting with bayonet and bomb was of daily, nay hourly, occurrence. The slaughter was appalling, few of the combatants on either side surviving such encounters.
Yet, although the advantages were all on the side of the defenders, the patience and heroism of the Japanese steadily told, and on 4th October they attacked a work at Yenchang, near Takhe Bay, and destroyed the two machine-guns with which it was armed. This success was followed up by the capture, on 16th October, of an immensely strong Russian position on Hashimakayana Hill. Ten days later, the Japanese troops stormed and took, after hours of sanguinary fighting, the two important positions of Erhlung and Sungshushan, on the northern and north-western salients of the old Chinese Wall; and these successes were considered to have cleared the ground for the general assault which had been ordered from headquarters in Japan.
For four days—27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th October—the Russian works were subjected to such a terrific bombardment as, up to then, mortal eyes had certainly never beheld. It reached its height about eight o’clock on the morning of the 30th, and continued until about one o’clock in the afternoon, during which the din was terrific and indescribable. Shell and shrapnel fell upon the Russian works at the rate of one hundred per minute, the forts resembled volcanoes in eruption, from the continuous explosions of the shells which fell upon them, and the entire landscape became veiled in a thick haze of smoke. At one o’clock the preparation was thought to be complete; and ten minutes later the great assault began—to end in complete and disastrous failure! The Russian forts, supposed to have been silenced by those four days of terrific bombardment, were as formidable as ever; and as the stormers dashed forward they were met by so furious a rifle and artillery fire that they were literally annihilated. The second grand assault upon Port Arthur had failed, as completely and tragically as the first!
To have incurred such tremendous losses for such insignificant results was a terribly depressing experience for Japan; but the benumbing effect of the blow began to pass away when, in the first week of November, the news arrived of General Oku’s splendid success upon the Shaho; and with renewed hope, and that indomitable patience and courage which is so marked a feature of Japanese character, the troops before Port Arthur set to work to repair their disasters.
Their first success was achieved in the middle of the month of November, when they gained possession of the little village of Kaokiatun, thus securing the command of Pigeon Bay. This success was followed, on the 23rd of the month, by an attempt on the part of the Japanese to capture the Russian trench on East Kikwan Hill. The attempt resulted in failure, with a loss of some three hundred slain, to say nothing of wounded. This was followed, on the 26th, by an attack upon Q Fort, North Kikwan, Erhlung, and Sungshushan. This too resulted in failure for the Japanese, with awful slaughter; the failure in this case, however, being tempered by the capture of the trench on East Kikwan Hill. This capture was of very great importance to the Japanese, from the fact that it commanded the approach to the fort on the summit of the hill; and the Russians, recognising this fact, fought madly to regain possession of the trench, finally succeeding toward midnight. The fighting on this occasion was most disastrous for the Japanese, their wounded alone totalling over 6000, while it was estimated that in dead their losses must have exceeded 10,000!
The result of all this sanguinary fighting was to convince the Japanese Staff, at last, that the defences on the eastern slope were impregnable to assault, and must be captured by other means. They accordingly next turned their attention to 203 Metre Hill, which was the key to the eastern defences of Port Arthur, and determined to take it by assault.
This was a particularly tough proposition, and after the tremendous losses which Nogi’s army had already suffered in its disastrous assaults upon the eastern defences, the Staff might well have been excused had it hesitated to undertake such a herculean task. For the position was so immensely strong that the Russians regarded it as impregnable. The merely natural difficulties of the adventure were great, for, as its name indicates, it was a lofty hill, with steep, almost precipitous slopes, to scale which, even unopposed, was no light task. But when to this difficulty was added the further one that the hill had two summits, each crowned by very strong earthworks constructed of sand-bags, timber and steel rails, connected by tunnels with bomb-proof works on the rear slope, and that it was further protected by two lines of trenches, themselves protected by strong barbed wire entanglements, and that the works on the summit mounted several machine-guns and some heavier pieces of artillery, the reader may be able to form some slight idea of the obstacles which the Japanese undertook to surmount, as well as the indomitable courage which possessed them to make the attempt.
It must not be supposed, however, that the attack was about to be made on the spur of the moment and without any previous preparation. On the contrary; for two whole months the Japanese had been steadily sapping from the north and north-west, day and night, in face of the most vigorous and determined opposition on the part of the Russians, first constructing a parallel about a hundred yards from the first line of Russian trenches, and, from this parallel, driving saps which pierced the wire entanglements and in two places reached to within fifty yards of the Russian line. And while this was being done, four of the new Japanese 11-inch howitzers concentrated their fire upon the works on the twin summits of the hill.
The assault was ordered for the evening of 27th November. Supported by a heavy bombardment from the howitzers and batteries in their rear, the troops chosen for the assault broke cover and rushed the first line of Russian trenches, bayoneting the occupants almost before the latter had time to open fire upon them. Then followed hand-to-hand fighting of the most ferocious and sanguinary character, which lasted all night. Morning found the assailants still in possession of the trench which had been won; and now, strongly reinforced, the Japanese proceeded to push forward to attack the summit and Akasakayama battery. Immediately, the Russian guns in the neighbouring forts opened fire upon the stormers with shrapnel and heavy shell, and in a very few minutes the entire scene was so completely veiled in powder smoke that it was impossible for anyone to tell exactly how the fight was going. Four times the Japanese stormed the crest and were beaten back; and it was not until three o’clock in the afternoon, when they delivered their fifth assault, that they at last burst through the wire entanglements and reached the crest. For a time they held it; but the Russian fire was too hot for them, and at length they were not only driven off the crest but also out of the trench which they had won on the previous night.
The attack was resumed the next day, and again resulted in failure.
Then the Japanese Staff put its foot down and declared that both hills must be taken, at all costs! The cruisers Sai-yen and Akagi were ordered round to Pigeon Bay to co-operate with the troops by covering the assault with their fire; but, unfortunately, as the Sai-yen was getting into position on the 30th, she struck a mine and sank, not far from where the old Hei-yen disappeared some two months earlier. This put an end to the plan for naval assistance, and the land forces were obliged to rely entirely upon themselves. Fighting of the most desperate and sanguinary character proceeded all through the afternoon and night of 30th November, but it was not until the next day that the indomitable courage and persistence of the Japanese were rewarded with success; the western summit of 203 Metre Hill being taken by them and held all day, despite the most desperate efforts on the part of the Russians to retake it.
This was the beginning of the end, so far as Port Arthur was concerned. On 5th December the eastern summit of the hill also fell into the hands of the Japanese, and next day they secured possession of Akasakayama, thus obtaining command of the entire Metre range.
These important positions in their possession, the tide of war at once turned in favour of the Japanese, for the heights commanded not only the town but the harbour of Port Arthur; and the big 11-inch howitzers, as well as a battery of naval 6-inch and 47-inch guns, were at once brought up, and the bombardment of the Russian warships was begun. On 6th December the Poltava was sunk by the Russians to save her from destruction by the Japanese fire. Next day the Retvisan met a like fate, while a fire broke out aboard the Peresviet, and on the 8th she and the Pobieda were at the bottom of the harbour, while the Pallada was obviously following them. On the following day the Bayan was hit no less than twenty-two times, bursting into flame shortly before noon and burning until shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon, while the Sevastopol was seriously damaged. The mine-laying ship Amur was also hit and sunk. The dockyard sustained serious damage, yet, strangely enough, all through this bombardment the Russians did little by way of reply; they seemed overwhelmed and paralysed at the misfortunes which were now befalling them—or else, as some of us began to shrewdly suspect, their ammunition was at last exhausted. On the 9th of the month the Sevastopol —the only Russian battleship still remaining afloat in the harbour—moved from her moorings and sought refuge behind a big boom under the guns of Mantushan fort, on the Tiger peninsula, where, a few nights later, she was energetically attacked by our destroyers. These attacks were repeated nightly, with considerable loss to our side, until the night of 15th-16th, when the ship was successfully torpedoed. Her end was so evidently near now that we ceased our attacks; but nothing could save her, and on the 20th of the month her captain took her out into deep water, opened her Kingston valves, and sank her, so that she might not fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Meanwhile, North Kikwan fort was captured by our troops on the night of the 18th, after a fight which cost us close upon a thousand men. Two days later, we took a battery close to it; and on the 28th, the formidable Erhlung became ours after a tremendous fight. Success after success on our part now followed each other rapidly, each additional capture firing our troops with renewed courage and determination. The last day of the year saw Sungshushan fort fall to us, and the first day of 1905 saw the New Panlung and H batteries in our hands, the Chinese Wall breached, and the Japanese flag planted well within the Russian defences. Wangtai fort was stormed and taken on the afternoon of the same day, and as twilight was closing down upon the scene a Cossack, bearing a large white flag, was seen riding out of the Swishiying valley, followed by a Russian officer.
The officer was the bearer of a letter from General Stoessel to General Nogi, inviting the latter to open negotiations with the writer “to determine the conditions of surrender” of Port Arthur. Needless to say, the Japanese general gladly, yet without undue haste, acceded to Stoessel’s proposal; and at noon of 2nd January 1905, Major-General Ijichi met Major-General Reiss at Plum Tree Cottage, a miserable little hovel situated in the village of Swishiying, and the negotiations were opened which resulted in Port Arthur passing into the possession of the Japanese on the evening of that day, although the Russian evacuation did not take place until the 5th of January.