Chapter VII Beginning the Siege of Port Arthur
As soon as the Japanese learned of Kuroki’s success at the Yalu, they hurried troops ashore at Takushan and Pitsewo, on the eastern shore of the Liaotung Peninsula north of Port Arthur. This was on May 5. The landing was quite unexpected by the Russians; there was no sufficient force to attempt any resistance, and in three days an army was marching southward to begin the closing-in movement that ended in the fall of Russia’s supposedly impregnable fortress. On May 26, after fighting in and about Kinchow for nine days, Nanshan Hill, on the narrow isthmus joining the Port Arthur Peninsula to the main part of the Liaotung Peninsula, was captured by assault. Every device of modern warfare—the railway, telegraph, telephones, a captive balloon, mine-fields, barbed wire network, iron-roofed trenches, searchlights, illuminating star-shells—was used at Nanshan Hill to increase the natural strength of the fort. The ranges were known and the approach was from but one direction. There had been three months and a half since the war began and three weeks since the landing at Pitsewo. If Russian troops could be driven from such a position, and under such circumstances, by the Japanese, it seemed perfectly certain that no fortifications that Russia could devise could withstand the enemy. One last and unsuccessful attempt was made to cut the Japanese off before it was too late. The Russian army at Tashichao, under General Stakelberg, made a sortie southward and met General Oku’s army on June 14 at Wafengtien. The Russians were completely defeated. The Liaotung Peninsula was then open to the Japanese, and as soon as General Nogi and his army arrived to hold it and to begin to close in on Port Arthur, Oku was free to wheel north, and to co-operate with the armies of Kuroki and Nodzu in the general movement toward Liao-Yang. By the middle of June parallel columns of Japanese were moving northward through the valleys of Manchuria like so many fingers of one giant hand.
Meanwhile Admiral Togo had maintained a strict blockade of the harbor and the Russian fleet had been practically destroyed. Beginning with the destruction of the “Variag” and “Korietz” in February, and including the tragic sinking of the “Petropavlovsk,” and the death of Admiral Makaroff and the painter Verestchagin on April 13, the Japanese successes gradually wore down the Port Arthur fleet until the Russian naval power in the East was no longer a factor in the reckoning. Up until the end of April the Japanese losses were practically nothing at all. Then came the sinking, by submarine mines, of the battleship “Hatsuse,” the third class cruiser “Miyako,” and Torpedo Boat No. 48. The battleship “Yoshino” was sunk in a collision. These losses came too late, however, for the Russians to take advantage of them, and the death of Admiral Makaroff may be said to mark the climax of the naval campaign against Port Arthur. After that the land campaign against the “Gibraltar of the East” began in earnest.
SCENES ALONG THE WATER FRONT AT PORT ARTHUR BEFORE THE DECLARATION OF WAR
NAVAL AND CIVILIAN ACTIVITY IN PORT ARTHUR AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
GETTING READY FOR THE JAPANESE ON A RUSSIAN WARSHIP AT PORT ARTHUR
RUSSIAN SHIPS AT PORT ARTHUR BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF THE JAPANESE
PART OF RUSSIA’S FIGHTING FLEET AT PORT ARTHUR
THE MAN WHO BOTTLED UP PORT ARTHUR, AND THE FLAGSHIP OF HIS FLEET