CONCLUSIONS UPON THE BATTLE OF MUKDEN[93]

Both the nearness of the events related above and our ignorance about the enemy make it impossible for any detailed and absolutely impartial judgment to be formed upon the reasons for our defeat in this great battle. The records that have been collected so far, however, are sufficient to throw light upon a few facts—upon certain of our dispositions that did not correspond to the requirements of the case. Those made by the commander of the 2nd Army, to which force was entrusted the duty of stopping Nogi’s turning movement towards our rear, are of particular interest, and certain of them which had a very important bearing on the issue of the operations are now described.

General Kaulbars made neither a sufficient nor a clever use of his cavalry. This fact, coupled with the unfortunate selection of its leaders, was the reason why the mounted branch did such bad work,[94] and behaved in a manner that can hardly be called “devoted” during the Mukden operations. In the instructions given on March 1 to Grekoff’s cavalry to operate against Nogi, the object to be attained was plainly set forth, but how it was to be attained was not clearly defined. The execution of its most important task was also made the more difficult by the fact that Grekoff’s force was, on the same day as the orders were issued, split up into two almost equal groups, of which the eastern was found to be fighting Oku instead of Nogi. To rectify this, the cavalry under Pavloff was ordered on the same day by Kaulbars to undertake a special task against the turning columns, but on the 2nd the order was changed, and eight of Pavloff’s sotnias were put under the command of Launits, who was operating against Oku. No touch was maintained between their different groups, and the greater part of the mounted forces clung to the infantry, and did practically no fighting (the losses suffered by this Arm during the twenty-three days’ operations in February and March were quite insignificant). Yet most of our regiments were quite capable of performing the most difficult tasks of war. The action of the infantry of the 2nd Army on the positions which they had taken up was completely passive. They did not try to get into touch with the enemy to ascertain their strength and dispositions (by taking prisoners), or to occupy advanced posts where these would be advantageous. The reconnoitring patrols of this army also did but little work. The consequence of such unsatisfactory performance of their duties by the cavalry and advanced infantry units of the 2nd Army was that information of the enemy was so meagre that the appearance of a great mass of Nogi’s army on and to the east of the Hsin-min-tun road came as a complete surprise to Kaulbars.

Owing to the appearance of large hostile bodies near Ka-liao-ma, I had on February 28 already ordered him[95] to take immediate steps to ascertain their exact strength, the direction in which they were moving, and their intentions. I repeated this order[96] on March 2, instructing him to find out their strength and dispositions more accurately if possible, and to frame some plan of action. I pointed out the necessity for energetic steps to ascertain the whereabouts of Nogi’s main body—whether it was opposite Sha-ling-pu, or whether it was executing a wider turning movement. On the morning of March 5 I for the third time[97] asked Kaulbars to find out where Nogi’s left flank was. Not one of these orders was carried out, with the result that I had inadequate and incorrect information upon which to form a decision as to the strength and whereabouts of the enemy operating on the right bank of the Hun. Tserpitski’s alarmist reports to the effect that more than three divisions were opposed to him made the fog worse. Kaulbars, who had been ordered to stop Nogi’s flanking movement, on the strength of incorrect information, all the time turned his chief attention towards the western front to Oku, whom he took for Nogi. The latter, owing to the 2nd Army’s inaction on March 3, 4, 5 and 6, was made a present of four days in which to complete his sweeping movement to the north-east,[98] and Kaulbars continued to see danger only on the west, paying insufficient attention to what was happening on the Hsin-min-tun road, north-west of Mukden. On March 1 he conceived a most complicated “castling” manœuvre, which he endeavoured to carry out when in direct touch with the enemy. The Composite Rifle Corps was ordered to cross from the right bank of the Hun on to the left, and the 8th Corps from the left to the right. The Rifle regiments crossed over the river, and by so doing evacuated the most important section near Chang-tan, but the 8th Corps was unable to get across. The enemy at once took advantage of this, and, rapidly throwing their 8th Division forward along the right bank of the river, drove back the relatively weak force of ours still on that side. Kaulbars, moreover, stopped the movement on Sha-ling-pu (of the Composite Division under Golembatovski), which had already been started, and by so doing deprived us of the possibility of checking the heads of the enemy’s columns on March 2. Finally, the 5th Rifle Brigade under Churin—which was moving by my orders to operate against Nogi—was stopped on March 3 by Kaulbars in the valley on the right bank of the Hun, and found itself among the troops opposing Oku.

After weakening Topornin by sixteen battalions, Kaulbars, on reaching his force, countermanded the advance on Sha-ling-pu, which had been begun on the morning of the 3rd, and suddenly withdrew thirty-two battalions to Mukden without fighting. This made our position distinctly worse. He took no steps to establish and maintain touch with Birger’s brigade on the Hsin-min-tun road, and never informed the latter of the order to retire he had given to Topornin on the 3rd. In telling Launits on the morning of March 3 of his decision (to withdraw Topornin’s force to Mukden), he stated that “Grekoff’s column and Birger’s brigade are probably cut off from Mukden,” but he made no attempt to help Birger. And yet up to 2 p.m. on the 3rd Birger’s brigade was not even engaged. Our attempt to retake Ssu-hu-chia-pu on March 4 was stopped by Launits, owing to the receipt of orders from Kaulbars not to attack if it was likely to be a costly operation. Kaulbars did nothing that day, although he had under his command 119 battalions[99] on the right bank of the Hun, and although I had ordered him to assume the offensive. Moreover, he did not even know the whereabouts of the troops under him. Although he had 113 battalions under his command on the right bank on March 5, he again did nothing. He did not carry out my orders to attack the enemy’s left energetically, and permitted these troops, which were at Khou-kha—next to Gerngross’s force—to deploy very slowly, and stopped their advance before they had got in touch with the enemy. Moreover, yielding to the preconceived idea of the main danger lying in the west, he moved sixteen splendid battalions of the 10th Corps from Gerngross’s force, operating towards Hsin-min-tun, on to the left flank of the army. Yet again on the 6th, although he had 116 battalions on the right bank, he effected scarcely anything, for our active operations towards Hsin-min-tun were conducted with an insufficient force, and therefore failed.

The result of his dispositions from March 2 to 5 was that on the 6th we did not have a single battalion of the 2nd Army operating against Nogi, whereas we should have had forty.[100] All ninety-six battalions of the 2nd Army were on that day distributed on the defensive against Oku. This distribution of troops, which in no way met either the general requirements or the definite task given to Kaulbars—to stop Nogi’s army—constituted one of the main reasons of the failure of our operations at Mukden.

On the 2nd and 3rd the following troops were given to Kaulbars from my reserve for his operations against Nogi:

Moreover, sixteen battalions of the 10th Corps (2nd Army) were by my orders concentrated opposite Sha-ling-pu on the 2nd, and on the 7th the 10th Rifle Regiment and two battalions of the 4th Siberians were sent from my reserve to join Kaulbars’ army—i.e., he was given in all eighty-one battalions, of which sixty-five had not previously belonged to the 2nd Army. Of these, as transpired later, as many as thirty-five battalions did not take part, or only took very little part, in any fighting up to the 10th—i.e.:

These units either occupied defensive positions, and merely watched the Japanese making a flank march past them,[101] or were moved for no reason from one place to another (2nd Brigade of the 9th Division). Their losses from the 3rd to 9th were trifling.

On the 4th, when I ordered Kaulbars to “move every available man on to the right flank near the Hsin-min-tun road,” the reverse was done. Two regiments (Tambov and Zamost) were moved from the right bank of the river on to the left; the 2nd Brigade of the 9th Division was ordered to move away from the Hsin-min-tun road, and crossed from Huang-ku-tun to Liu-kou-tun, and the Primorsk Dragoons from an important position on this road were sent to the rear to Hu-shih-tai.[102] On March 5 we were able to collect more than 100 battalions for operations against Nogi, 70 being concentrated by my instructions. But although Kaulbars had received orders to send an army corps on to the right bank of the Hun to engage Nogi, he not only did not carry out the order, but lost five days (March 2 to 6), and thus allowed the turning movement to develop so far that part of the force I had collected (25th Division) was on the 7th operating, not against Nogi, but against Oku’s left flank. Moreover, as he had on the 5th also weakened the force collected by me to act against Nogi by sending 16 battalions to the left flank of the 2nd Army, the result of these dispositions and our inaction during these five days was that on the 7th only 37 battalions operated against Nogi instead of 100. The loss of time, and the weakness of the force that actually opposed Nogi, were largely contributory to our failure.

Having so far employed only a very small part of the troops entrusted to him for offensive operations, on the 7th Kaulbars definitely and finally assumed the defensive. He did not even seize the opportunity of the repulses suffered by the enemy at Wu-kuan-tun and against Tserpitski’s force to attack. On the 7th, 8th, and 9th, with 140 battalions at his disposal, he assumed a passive rôle everywhere. While allowing a great confusion of units, he did not take proper steps, which he was quite able to do, to re-establish the corps, divisional and brigade organization, and on the 8th he did not take advantage of the possibility of forming a reserve from the entire 10th Corps, which would have enabled him to re-establish the organization of the other corps. On the 4th he removed Generals Muiloff, Topornin, and Kutnevich from the command of their corps for no reason, and as he did not replace them by other officers, the staffs of these corps were headless. The employment of the reserves in the 2nd Army was neither carried out by arrangement, nor in accordance with the actual necessities of the situation, so that there were instances of reserves being sent up when not required (Gerngross on March 8). In spite of my order, which he received on the 5th, to send back the baggage and transport to the north, Kaulbars only obeyed this instruction in regard to Tserpitski’s and Gerngross’s columns on the 9th, and thus made our retirement, especially that of our rearguards, most difficult. He failed to observe the appearance or concentration of the enemy on the northern front, and took no steps to avert this danger. The concentration of our forces on this side was carried out under my own orders. Had it not been for this, the enemy would have seized the village of San-tai-tzu and the grove of the Imperial tombs on the 7th.

One occasion when Kaulbars did issue orders that met the case was when he ordered Launits to attack the enemy on March 10 at Hei-ni-tun so as to assist the retirement, and he got together a strong force for this purpose. But then, when these troops were on the point of commencing the attack, he went to Launits and countermanded it, without even informing me of this most important change in his previous dispositions. Yet, had this attack been only partially successful, it would have greatly relieved the situation. Right up to March 13 not one of the arrangements made by him was fully carried out, and it is clear that he did not even then in the least appreciate the conditions. In addition to wasting time, extending his front, and acting only on the defensive, he did not realize the danger of Nogi’s appearance at such a moment north of Mukden, nor of his movement round our flank. In a letter to me of August 11, he wrote that on March 8 and 9, “although we had been retiring for a week, circumstances were going very well for us, as, the further the enemy moved northwards, the nearer they were getting to their Poltava.”

From the above it can be seen that Kaulbars’ dispositions, his inaction, and his misunderstanding of the whole situation, could not lead the 2nd Army to Poltava. On the contrary, on March 8 and 9, 1905, it was nearly a case of Tsushima.

It only remains for me to conclude with a few pages out of the short report on the war which I submitted to His Majesty the Emperor.

In my letters of March 31 and May 13, 1905, to His Majesty the Emperor, I reviewed generally the factors which made the war extraordinarily difficult for us.[104]

Has the army survived its Tsushima? No; it went through nothing nearly so bad as that. We fought hard everywhere, and we inflicted greater losses on the enemy than they on us. We were weaker in numbers than they were, and we retired. Even the Mukden reverse owes its reputation as a decisive Japanese victory to the impressions of our own correspondents, who were with the baggage and in rear. Can one say that the Russian land forces were defeated, when in the first important battles (at Liao-yang and on the Sha Ho) we only put into action a fourteenth part of our armed forces, and at Mukden, at a time when the Japanese had already put forth their greatest efforts, we had less than a sixth of our force? Nor must it be forgotten that we fought against a nation of 50,000,000 martial and ardent souls, who, hand in hand with their Emperor, were able to grasp victory by fearing no sacrifice. To defeat such a foe in such a distant theatre of war, great and continued efforts were required of the whole of our country as well as of the army. In the beginning of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we waged great wars with such leaders as Charles XII. and Napoleon. In these we also experienced defeat, but in the end we issued absolute victors. In the eighteenth century, between defeat at Narva and victory at Poltava nine years elapsed; in the nineteenth, between defeat at Austerlitz and our entry into Paris there was also nine years’ interval.

The events which happened in the Far East in 1904–05 can, owing to their historical importance and their significance for Russia and the whole world, be placed alongside those through which Russia passed in the early years of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the struggle with Charles XII. and Napoleon the Russian people was at one with the Tsar, and bravely bore all trials and sacrifices, strengthening and improving the army, treating it with kindness, believing in it, wishing it well, and profoundly respecting it for its gallant deeds. The people realized the necessity for success, hesitated at no sacrifice, and were not troubled by the time required to gain it, and the harmonious efforts of Tsar and people gave us complete victory. The way to victory is in the present day by the same road which our ancestors followed in the early years of the last two centuries.

If mighty Russia, headed by the Tsar, had been permeated by a brave and single-minded desire to defeat the Japanese, and had not stinted the sacrifices and time necessary to preserve Russia’s integrity and dignity, our glorious army, supported by the trust of its ruler and a united people, would have fought until the enemy had been vanquished.