CHAPTER NINETEEN.
THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR.
I have said nothing as to the part played by the _Yakumo_ in the battleof the Yellow Sea, for the simple reason that there is nothingparticular to relate; but that we played a not altogether unimportantpart in the fight is evidenced by the fact that only two of the Japaneseships, namely, the _Mikasa_ and the _Nisshin_, had a heavier list ofkilled than ourselves, although the _Kasuga_ scored one more in woundedthan 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, onebecomes so utterly engrossed in one's own particular share of the workthat there is little opportunity to note more than the most salientincidents of the battle. Moreover, the din of battle, the continuousroar of the guns, the crash of bursting shells, the deafening clang ofprojectiles upon armour, the screams of the wounded, the suffocatingfumes of powder, all tend to benumb one's powers of observation, so thatthe captain of a fighting ship has little opportunity to note anythingmore than the movements of the particular ship which he happens to beengaging at the moment.
The importance of the defeat of the Port Arthur fleet, indecisive as ithad at first seemed to be, soon began to be realised when our secretagents in the fortress sent us complete and carefully ascertainedinformation relative to the condition of the ships which had succeededin regaining the shelter of the harbour. From this information it atonce became apparent that, as fighting units, none of them could againbe made of service until the conclusion of the war, and Japan heaved agreat sigh of relief, which was intensified when, on the evening of 14thAugust, the news was flashed through the country that the gallant andsorely tried Kamimura had at last been granted his long-cherished wishto meet the Vladivostock squadron, and had defeated it. True, thedefeat, like that of the Port Arthur fleet, was not as decisive as couldhave been wished; for of the three cruisers--the _Gromovoi, Rossia_, and_Runk_--which sallied forth from Vladivostock, under the command ofAdmiral Jessen, in response to Admiral Vitgeft's call for support in hislast desperate sortie from Port Arthur, two of them, the _Gromovoi_ andthe _Rossia_, succeeded in regaining the shelter of Vladivostockharbour, while only the _Rurik_, the least formidable of the trio, wassunk. But again, as in the case of the Port Arthur fleet, although thebulk of the Russian force contrived to escape either capture ordestruction, it had been so severely handled as to be rendered innocuousfor many months to come, and Japan was at last free from the continualmenace of it. The destruction of the fast cruiser _Novik_ in Korsakovskharbour on 21st August, by the Japanese ship _Chitose_, drove the lastnail in the coffin of Russia's naval power in the Far East; and fromthat time forward, with the exception of maintaining the effectiveblockade of Port Arthur, the Japanese navy had little to do exceptprepare 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, andin the face of frightful sufferings and losses, Japan's land forces werebeginning to make progress. During the last days of July GeneralKuroki's forces fought and won the battles of Towan and the YushulingPass. On 3rd August, General Oku seized Hai-cheng and Newchwang oldtown, which is situated some twenty miles inland from the port ofNewchwang; and then there came a pause, during which the finalpreparations for the advance upon Liao-yang were being completed.
Liao-yang promised to be a very tough nut to crack, for GeneralKuropatkin, fully recognising the possibilities of the position, haddetermined to make his stand there and inflict upon the Japanese such acrushing defeat that all further capacity for taking the offensive wouldbe driven out of them, after which, the subjugation of a beaten anddisheartened enemy should prove an easy task, rendered all the easier,perhaps, by the fact that the great assault upon Port Arthur by theJapanese 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 powerfulguns, and mile upon mile of most carefully and elaborately constructedtrenches, but also with innumerable pitfalls, each with its sharpenedstake at the bottom, as in the case of the Nanshan Heights defences.These pitfalls were arranged in regular lines, interrupted at intervalsby patches of mined ground, while outside these again there ran apractically continuous girdle of barbed wire entanglements, the wirebeing charged with an electric current powerful enough to instantlydestroy any one who should be unfortunate enough to come into contactwith it. Liao-yang defences were, in fact, a repetition of the defencesof the Nanshan Heights--where the Japanese suffered such appallinglosses--except that they were of an even more elaborate and deadlycharacter.
The attack upon Liao-yang was indeed in many respects a repetition ofthe attack upon Kinchau; for, as in the case of Kinchau, there was aformidable hill position--that of Shushan--to be first stormed andtaken. This task was entrusted to the Second Japanese Army, under theleadership of General Oku; and they accomplished it on 1st September,after three nights and two days of desperate fighting, in the course ofwhich the heroic Japanese suffered frightful losses. On the same day,the Russians began to withdraw from Liao-yang under a heavy fire fromthe Japanese artillery. On the following day the Japanese captured theYentai mines; and a few hours later, General Nodzu, at the head of theFourth 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 landdefences, which began on 19th August 1904, resulted in disastrousfailure with frightful losses for the Japanese. Yet that failure,terrible as it was, was not by any means complete; its blackness wasirradiated by a gleam of light here and there which sufficed to keepalive that spirit of hope and indomitable resolution which no misfortunecould ever quite quench in the breast of the Japanese, and which wasundoubtedly the determining factor in the campaign. To particularise.On 14th August the 1st Japanese Division was ordered to capture the fiveredoubts on the crest of the ridge west of the railway, known as theSwishiying redoubts. These redoubts were taken on the following day,and their capture paved the way for the general assault, four dayslater. This began with the furious bombardment of the height known as174 Metre Hill, which was stormed and taken at the point of the bayonet,later in the day, by the 1st Division, which immediately pushedsouth-east, with the object of gaining possession of Namaokayama, or 180Metre Hill. This hill was protected by, among other devices, anintricate barbed wire entanglement charged with a high-tension electriccurrent, the penetration of which proved to be a task of almostinsuperable difficulty; nevertheless, it was eventually accomplished.On the morning of 22nd August, by a splendid act of heroism andself-sacrifice on the part of fifty Japanese, West Panlung fort wascaptured, and this cleared the way for the capture of the East fort.But the superhuman efforts made by the Japanese in capturing thesepositions completely exhausted them, with the result that the assaultended in failure, since the majority of the defences remained in thehands of the Russians.
On 23rd August, the battleship _Sevastopol_--which, it will beremembered, was one of the ships which contrived to make good her escapefrom the Japanese fleet after the battle of the Yellow Sea--having beenpatched-up, as far as the resources of Port Arthur dockyard would allow,got under way and, steaming round to Takhe Bay, proceeded to shell theJapanese lines in the neighbourhood of Ta-ku-Shan and the Panlungredoubts. It was a rather daring thing to do, for there was not a shipin the harbour capable of supporting her, while the Japanese blockadingsquadron in the offing was close enough in to be clearly visible fromthe heights. Included in that squadron were the new armoured cruisers_Nisshin_ and _Kasuga_, purchased from the Argentine just before thedeclaration of war; and no sooner was it seen that the _Sevastopol_ hadactually ventured outside the harbour, than these two powerful craftsteamed in and opened fire upon her, and also upon the Laolutze forts,which were supporting her. T
he approach of the Japanese cruisers wasthe signal for a hurried retirement on the part of the Russianbattleship, and she lost no time in effecting her retreat to theharbour. But while entering, she struck a contact mine, which explodedbeneath her bows, inflicting such serious damage that it was only withvery great difficulty she succeeded in returning to her berth, with herbow almost completely submerged. This was the last straw, so far as the_Sevastopol_ was concerned, and she was practically put out of actionfor the remainder of the war.
A week later our cruisers and destroyers effected a _coup_ which, thereis every reason to believe, must have materially hastened the fall ofthe fortress. This consisted in the capture, off Round Island, of agreat 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 becontraband of war, and confiscated by the Japanese.
These several successes, comparatively unimportant though they were,coupled with the practical destruction of the Port Arthur andVladivostock fleets, put new heart into the Japanese for a time; butwith the arrival and passage of the month of September, during which noappreciable progress was made in the operations before Port Arthur, eventhe unexampled patience and superb stoicism thus far displayed by theJapanese as a people showed signs of the wear and tear to which they hadso long been subjected, and murmurings at General Nogi's apparentnon-success began to make themselves heard. The casualty lists seemedto grow ever longer with the passage of the days, without any visibleresult, except that Nogi contrived to retain possession of the fewunimportant positions which he had gained, and a black cloud ofpessimism seemed to be settling down upon the Island Empire.
Meanwhile, however, in its silent, secret, undemonstrative way, theJapanese army had been making preparations of an important character,among which were included the construction of concrete emplacements foreighteen 11-inch howitzers, from which great things were expected. Theyfired a 500-pound projectile charged with high explosive, and had arange 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 thepresence of General Baron Kodama, who had crossed to Port Arthur fromJapan to administer, perhaps, a fillip to the officers and the armygenerally. North Kikwan fort was the first recipient of the new guns'delicate attentions, one hundred shells being poured into it. Hugeclouds of dust and smoke at once arose from the fort; but it wasenormously strong, and no very important results were apparent. On thefollowing day and for a few days afterwards the howitzers lobbed shellsupon the fleet, and the _Pobieda, Poltava, Retvisan_, and _Peresviet_were all struck, and their crews driven out of them, after which theywere moved to the East harbour, where they were hidden from the sight ofour gunners by the intervening high ground.
Meanwhile the Japanese engineers were resolutely and industriouslypushing their saps ever closer up to the Russian forts, in the progressof which task the most furious and sanguinary hand-to-hand fighting withbayonet and bomb was of daily, nay hourly, occurrence. The slaughterwas appalling, few of the combatants on either side surviving suchencounters.
Yet, although the advantages were all on the side of the defenders, thepatience and heroism of the Japanese steadily told, and on 4th Octoberthey attacked a work at Yenchang, near Takhe Bay, and destroyed the twomachine-guns with which it was armed. This success was followed up bythe capture, on 16th October, of an immensely strong Russian position onHashimakayana Hill. Ten days later, the Japanese troops stormed andtook, after hours of sanguinary fighting, the two important positions ofErhlung and Sungshushan, on the northern and north-western salients ofthe old Chinese Wall; and these successes were considered to havecleared the ground for the general assault which had been ordered fromheadquarters in Japan.
For four days--27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th October--the Russian workswere subjected to such a terrific bombardment as, up to then, mortaleyes had certainly never beheld. It reached its height about eighto'clock on the morning of the 30th, and continued until about oneo'clock in the afternoon, during which the din was terrific andindescribable. Shell and shrapnel fell upon the Russian works at therate of one hundred per minute, the forts resembled volcanoes ineruption, from the continuous explosions of the shells which fell uponthem, and the entire landscape became veiled in a thick haze of smoke.At one o'clock the preparation was thought to be complete; and tenminutes later the great assault began--to end in complete and disastrousfailure! The Russian forts, supposed to have been silenced by thosefour days of terrific bombardment, were as formidable as ever; and asthe stormers dashed forward they were met by so furious a rifle andartillery fire that they were literally annihilated. The second grandassault upon Port Arthur had failed, as completely and tragically as thefirst!
To have incurred such tremendous losses for such insignificant resultswas a terribly depressing experience for Japan; but the benumbing effectof the blow began to pass away when, in the first week of November, thenews arrived of General Oku's splendid success upon the Shaho; and withrenewed hope, and that indomitable patience and courage which is somarked a feature of Japanese character, the troops before Port Arthurset 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, thussecuring the command of Pigeon Bay. This success was followed, on the23rd of the month, by an attempt on the part of the Japanese to capturethe Russian trench on East Kikwan Hill. The attempt resulted infailure, with a loss of some three hundred slain, to say nothing ofwounded. This was followed, on the 26th, by an attack upon Q Fort,North Kikwan, Erhlung, and Sungshushan. This too resulted in failurefor the Japanese, with awful slaughter; the failure in this case,however, being tempered by the capture of the trench on East KikwanHill. This capture was of very great importance to the Japanese, fromthe fact that it commanded the approach to the fort on the summit of thehill; and the Russians, recognising this fact, fought madly to regainpossession of the trench, finally succeeding toward midnight. Thefighting on this occasion was most disastrous for the Japanese, theirwounded alone totalling over 6000, while it was estimated that in deadtheir losses must have exceeded 10,000!
The result of all this sanguinary fighting was to convince the JapaneseStaff, at last, that the defences on the eastern slope were impregnableto assault, and must be captured by other means. They accordingly nextturned their attention to 203 Metre Hill, which was the key to theeastern defences of Port Arthur, and determined to take it by assault.
This was a particularly tough proposition, and after the tremendouslosses which Nogi's army had already suffered in its disastrous assaultsupon the eastern defences, the Staff might well have been excused had ithesitated to undertake such a herculean task. For the position was soimmensely strong that the Russians regarded it as impregnable. Themerely natural difficulties of the adventure were great, for, as itsname indicates, it was a lofty hill, with steep, almost precipitousslopes, to scale which, even unopposed, was no light task. But when tothis difficulty was added the further one that the hill had two summits,each crowned by very strong earthworks constructed of sand-bags, timberand steel rails, connected by tunnels with bomb-proof works on the rearslope, and that it was further protected by two lines of trenches,themselves protected by strong barbed wire entanglements, and that theworks on the summit mounted several machine-guns and some heavier piecesof artillery, the reader may be able to form some slight idea of theobstacles which the Japanese undertook to surmount, as well as theindomitable courage which possessed them to make the attempt.
It must not be supposed, however, that the attack was about to be madeon the spur of the moment and without any previous preparation. On thecontrary; for two whole months the Japanese had been steadily sappingfrom the north and north-west, day and night, in face of the mostvigor
ous and determined opposition on the part of the Russians, firstconstructing a parallel about a hundred yards from the first line ofRussian trenches, and, from this parallel, driving saps which piercedthe wire entanglements and in two places reached to within fifty yardsof the Russian line. And while this was being done, four of the newJapanese 11-inch howitzers concentrated their fire upon the works on thetwin summits of the hill.
The assault was ordered for the evening of 27th November. Supported bya heavy bombardment from the howitzers and batteries in their rear, thetroops chosen for the assault broke cover and rushed the first line ofRussian trenches, bayoneting the occupants almost before the latter hadtime to open fire upon them. Then followed hand-to-hand fighting of themost ferocious and sanguinary character, which lasted all night.Morning found the assailants still in possession of the trench which hadbeen won; and now, strongly reinforced, the Japanese proceeded to pushforward to attack the summit and Akasakayama battery. Immediately, theRussian guns in the neighbouring forts opened fire upon the stormerswith shrapnel and heavy shell, and in a very few minutes the entirescene was so completely veiled in powder smoke that it was impossiblefor anyone to tell exactly how the fight was going. Four times theJapanese stormed the crest and were beaten back; and it was not untilthree o'clock in the afternoon, when they delivered their fifth assault,that they at last burst through the wire entanglements and reached thecrest. For a time they held it; but the Russian fire was too hot forthem, and at length they were not only driven off the crest but also outof 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_ wereordered round to Pigeon Bay to co-operate with the troops by coveringthe assault with their fire; but, unfortunately, as the _Sai-yen_ wasgetting into position on the 30th, she struck a mine and sank, not farfrom where the old _Hei-yen_ disappeared some two months earlier. Thisput an end to the plan for naval assistance, and the land forces wereobliged to rely entirely upon themselves. Fighting of the mostdesperate and sanguinary character proceeded all through the afternoonand night of 30th November, but it was not until the next day that theindomitable courage and persistence of the Japanese were rewarded withsuccess; the western summit of 203 Metre Hill being taken by them andheld all day, despite the most desperate efforts on the part of theRussians 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 handsof 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 onceturned in favour of the Japanese, for the heights commanded not only thetown but the harbour of Port Arthur; and the big 11-inch howitzers, aswell as a battery of naval 6-inch and 47-inch guns, were at once broughtup, and the bombardment of the Russian warships was begun. On 6thDecember the _Poltava_ was sunk by the Russians to save her fromdestruction by the Japanese fire. Next day the _Retvisan_ met a likefate, while a fire broke out aboard the _Peresviet_, and on the 8th sheand the _Pobieda_ were at the bottom of the harbour, while the _Pallada_was obviously following them. On the following day the _Bayan_ was hitno less than twenty-two times, bursting into flame shortly before noonand burning until shortly after four o'clock in the afternoon, while the_Sevastopol_ was seriously damaged. The mine-laying ship _Amur_ wasalso hit and sunk. The dockyard sustained serious damage, yet,strangely enough, all through this bombardment the Russians did littleby way of reply; they seemed overwhelmed and paralysed at themisfortunes which were now befalling them--or else, as some of us beganto shrewdly suspect, their ammunition was at last exhausted. On the 9thof the month the _Sevastopol_--the only Russian battleship stillremaining afloat in the harbour--moved from her moorings and soughtrefuge behind a big boom under the guns of Mantushan fort, on the Tigerpeninsula, where, a few nights later, she was energetically attacked byour destroyers. These attacks were repeated nightly, with considerableloss to our side, until the night of 15th-16th, when the ship wassuccessfully torpedoed. Her end was so evidently near now that weceased our attacks; but nothing could save her, and on the 20th of themonth her captain took her out into deep water, opened her Kingstonvalves, and sank her, so that she might not fall into the hands of theJapanese.
Meanwhile, North Kikwan fort was captured by our troops on the night ofthe 18th, after a fight which cost us close upon a thousand men. Twodays later, we took a battery close to it; and on the 28th, theformidable Erhlung became ours after a tremendous fight. Success aftersuccess on our part now followed each other rapidly, each additionalcapture firing our troops with renewed courage and determination. Thelast day of the year saw Sungshushan fort fall to us, and the first dayof 1905 saw the New Panlung and H batteries in our hands, the ChineseWall breached, and the Japanese flag planted well within the Russiandefences. Wangtai fort was stormed and taken on the afternoon of thesame day, and as twilight was closing down upon the scene a Cossack,bearing a large white flag, was seen riding out of the Swishiyingvalley, followed by a Russian officer.
The officer was the bearer of a letter from General Stoessel to GeneralNogi, inviting the latter to open negotiations with the writer "todetermine the conditions of surrender" of Port Arthur. Needless to say,the Japanese general gladly, yet without undue haste, acceded toStoessel's proposal; and at noon of 2nd January 1905, Major-GeneralIjichi met Major-General Reiss at Plum Tree Cottage, a miserable littlehovel situated in the village of Swishiying, and the negotiations wereopened which resulted in Port Arthur passing into the possession of theJapanese on the evening of that day, although the Russian evacuation didnot take place until the 5th of January.