Battle of Liaoyang, 1904: Kuropatkin gives up the field

By the summer of 1904 Japan had landed three armies on the mainland. The glossary of the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), drawing on Japanese army records, traces them: the First Army of General Kuroki Tamemoto crossed to Korea in February and March and forced the Yalu River in May; the Second Army of General Oku Yasukata landed on the Liaodong peninsula in May; and a Fourth Army under General Nozu Michitsura was formed in June. All three came under Marshal Oyama Iwao's Manchurian Army headquarters, while a Third Army under General Nogi Maresuke besieged Port Arthur.²

The Russian commander was Aleksey Kuropatkin, the former minister of war. Britannica's article on the war judges that he was a competent minister but proved irresolute and passive in the field: his policy was to avoid battle until he had a clear superiority in numbers. A direct order from the tsar that made the fate of Port Arthur his responsibility led him to place his main forces south of Mukden around Liaoyang, and after the defeat at Wafangdian in June the Japanese advanced on the town in three columns. Late in July Kuropatkin fought Kuroki's First Army, then fell back on Liaoyang and stayed on the defensive, although, in Britannica's view, he had good chances to strike at the separate Japanese columns as they advanced.³

Three lines of defense

Kuropatkin meant to fight his decisive battle at Liaoyang and had three defensive lines prepared. According to S. A. Zalesskii in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, he had 152,000 men with 606 guns; Britannica gives 180,000. Oyama had about 130,000 men and 508 guns, and planned to envelop both Russian flanks, a plan Zalesskii judges too ambitious for the forces he had.⁴

On 23 August the Russians held the first line, some 30 kilometers south and southeast of Liaoyang. Japanese attacks on it were beaten back on 24 to 26 August. But Zalesskii writes that Kuropatkin, working from exaggerated reports of Japanese strength, read too much into a partial setback on his left and fell back to a second line only eight kilometers from the town, running to the Taitzu River.⁵

Across the Taitzu

On 30 August the Japanese Second and Fourth Armies and part of the First attacked this line fiercely around the villages of Mayetun and Tsofangtun, without result, and a renewed assault on Mayetun on 31 August was also thrown back. The attempt to turn the Russian right failed, and the Japanese lost heavily.⁶

During the night of 30 August, however, part of Kuroki's First Army crossed the Taitzu near Lengtouwan, aiming at the Russian left and rear. In Zalesskii's account the Russian command did not react in time. Kuropatkin pulled his right wing back to the main position around Liaoyang and began a complicated regrouping on his left to prepare a counterstroke. On 1 September the First Army took a number of hills on the Russian left but could not push further, and the poorly organized Russian counterattacks of 2 September failed.⁷

Those partial failures, and reports from commanders that did not reflect the real situation, Zalesskii writes, led Kuropatkin to order a retreat to Mukden, which began on 3 September. Britannica notes that the Russians withdrew in good order.⁸

A costly victory

Japan had won a significant victory against a larger army, but at a heavy price. Britannica puts the Japanese loss at some 23,000 men and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia at 24,000, against about 16,000 Russians. Britannica stresses what that meant for Japan, which had limited trained reserves, while the Russians at Mukden were receiving some 30,000 reinforcements a month over the Trans-Siberian Railway. Zalesskii puts the result down to the mistakes of the Russian command and calls it an operational success for Japan rather than a decisive one.⁹

Kuropatkin, sure that Japan was nearing the end of its resources, now went over to the offensive. The battles that followed on the Shaho River in October and at Sandepu in January 1905 were indecisive, Britannica writes, and the war on land was settled only by the great battle for Mukden in February and March 1905, in which the First, Second, Third and Fourth Armies all fought.¹⁰ › Battle of Mukden, 1905