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Siege of Port Arthur

Russian 500 pound shell bursting near the Japanese siege guns, near Port Arthur

Date	30 July 1904 to 2 January 1905
Location	at modern Lüshunkou, China
Result	Japanese Victory

Combatants

Japan

Russia

Commanders

General Maresuke Nogi

Major-General Anatoly Stoessel

Strength

80,000-150,000

50,000

Casualties

57,780

31,306

Russo-Japanese War
1st Port Arthur –Chemulpo Bay –Yalu River – Nanshan – Telissu – Yellow Sea – Ulsan – 2nd Port Arthur – Motien Pass – Tashihchiao– Hsimucheng– Liaoyang – Shaho – Sandepu – Mukden – Tsushima

Location within China

The Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904-2 January 1905), the deep-water port and Russian naval base at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria was one of the longest and most vicious land battles during the Russo-Japanese War.

Port Arthur was widely regarded as one of the strongest fortified positions in the world. However, during the First Sino-Japanese War, General Nogi Maresuke had taken the city in only a few days. The ease of his victory during that conflict would lead to his overconfidence during the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent heavy casualties.

All the technology of modern war was pressed into action at Port Arthur from massive 11-inch mortars capable of hurling 500 kilogram shells over 8 kilometers, as well as rapid firing light howitzers, Maxim machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, barbed wire entanglements, hand grenades, trench warfare and even poison gas warfare.

1 Background
2 Initial phase of the fighting
3 Siege
4 Impact on History
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Background

The Japanese were determined to capture the Russian port, leased from China in 1898 and deny the Russians their only ice-free naval base in the Far East. This war was caused by the leasing of this port, and Liaoning Province, by the weak Chinese government to the Russians after the region had been captured by the Japanese during the First Sino-Japanese War and confirmed in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. But the conditions imposed by Japan on China led to the Triple Intervention of Russia, France, and Germany just three days after the treaty. They demanded that Japan withdraw its claim on the Liaotung peninsula, concerned that Port Arthur would fall under Japanese control.

[edit] Initial phase of the fighting

At the outbreak of the war, the port was serviced by a newly built single tracked spur line of the Trans-Siberian Railway the mainline of which terminated in the ice-plagued Russian port of Vladivostok, consequently, the Tsar was equally determined that the Russian forces (Land and Sea) should hold. The Russian garrison, about 40,000 strong, commanded by Major-General Baron Anatoly Stoessel had began to prepare their defenses as the Japanese dispatched the Third Army, about 90,000 strong, plus reinforcements, under the command of General Baron Maresuke Nogi to begin their advance towards the port starting on June 1, 1904.

Stoessel delayed Nogi for over two months in vicious fighting to give the engineers and garrison troops time to prepare the defenses which included deep-dug infantry trenches, supported with barbed wire, machine gun pits, and 506 heavy artillery guns. When Stoessel was forced with withdraw to Port Arthur on July 30, Nogi then set up the Third Army around the town, backed by 474 artillery guns, to begin an intense bombardment of the Russian defenses. By August 9th, the Russian Fleet, threatened by the artillery, felt it necessary to quit Port Arthur and attempt to make Vladivostok. This resulted in the related naval battle of Shantung on August 10th. Between August 19 and November 26, Nogi treated his army as cannon fodder in three separate and prolonged major frontal attacks against the Russian defenses. All of them were beaten back with heavy casualties. Even night attacks ended in dreadful casualties as the Russians used powerful searchlight batteries to illuminate the storming parties for the artillery gunners.

As the fighting progressed, all the technology of modern war was pressed into action at Port Arthur from massive 11-inch mortars capable of hurling 500-lb shells over five miles, as well as rapid firing light howitzers, Maxim machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, barbed wire entanglements, even hand grenades.

After the failure of the last big Japanese attack on November 26, which left over 10,000 Japanese troops killed or wounded in just 15 hours of fighting, Nogi reluctantly decided that Port Arthur would not fall under massive frontal assaults and settled down to siege techniques.

[edit] Siege

Under pressure from Tokyo, Nogi turned his attention to 203 Meter Hill, the highest point of ground in the Russian defense line. None of the Japanese positions afforded unobstructed observation of the harbor or town so the Japanese artillery could not be accurately directed against the port. 203 Meter Hill (so-called because of its height above sea-level) located about three miles north of Port Arthur and part of the Russian outer defense system, offered the best view upon which Japanese artillery spotters could offer the guns the exact points where the guns should direct their fire. Starting on November 27, Nogi had his engineers, called sappers or saps, dig siege trenches from the nearby hill, called Akasakayama, towards 203 Meter Hill, as the Japanese launched more attacks on the hill using hand-grenades and bayonet-fixed rifles. Japanese artillery poured more than 4,000 rounds on the Russian positions, which were manned by about 5,000 men.

The view of the city and port of Lüshun, formerly Port Arthur, from 203 Meter Hill - (November 2004)

Diversionary attacks around the Port Arthur perimeter prevented the Russians of 203 Meter Hill from being relieved with reinforcements. By December 6, with the Russians down to only 1,000 men, most of them wounded, fresh Japanese troops launched one final attack at dawn on the hill and it was captured by mid-afternoon.

Remnants of the Russian defences following the Japanese capture of Port Arthur

For General Maresuke Nogi, the cost to capture 203 Meter Hill was costly indeed when his last surviving son, a soldier among the attack force, was killed in action on that day during the assault. It was only the intervention of the Emperor that prevented an emotionally shattered Nogi from committing ritual suicide, or seppuku. The whole operation from November 27 to December 6 cost Nogi over 8,000 troops, but he had finally had the observation post he so desperately needed.

By the end of that day, Japanese artillery had begun a three-day bombardment of the Port Arthur harbor; most of the Russian warships there were already heavily damaged during the (naval) Battle of Port Arthur which opened the hostilities and had been unable to flee back on the August 10th breakout; these were sunk at their moorings.

After nearly another month of artillery bombardments, Stoessel decided, on humanitarian rather than military grounds, that the garrison should surrender rather than subject the troops and the civilian population, both Russian and Chinese, to further misery and bloodshed. A cease-fire was order on December 30, and after a few days of negotiations, Nogi accepted the Russian surrender on January 2, 1905.

The costs of the siege were terrible; out of the 40,000 strong Russian garrison, about 31,306 men had been killed, wounded or captured before the surrender. The Japanese casualties were later listed as 57,780 killed, wounded or missing.

[edit] Impact on History

The capture of Port Arthur, and the Japanese naval victory in the Battle of Tsushima five months later, did not convince the war-weary Russian government or ( Tzar Nicholas II) to sue for peace but only a diplomatic tour de force by US President Theodore Roosevelt initiated after a secret request by the war weary Japanese government got the Russians to the Peace Table. The United States mediated and under the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in September 1905, the Russo-Japanese War came to an end which established Japan as the dominant power in Asia. President Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his offices as intermediary and mediator. In the face of Russian willingness to continue the conflict, Roosevelt got the Japanese to concede terms unwillingly (esp. reparations), and these generated riots in Japan as they were perceived as a loss of face, and these same perceptions (i.e. That America and other western powers had treated Japan as the 'defeated party' of the Russo-Japanese war) subsequently became part of the Japanese rationale for the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, as they explicitly stated in the communication declaring war.

[edit] References

Connaughton, Richard (2003). Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear. Cassell. ISBN 0-304-36657-9
Kowner, Rotem (2006). Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War. Scarecrow. ISBN 0-8108-4927-5
Repington, Charles A. (1905). The War in the Far East, 1904-1905. London, 1905.
Sedwick, F.R. (1909). The Russo-Japanese War. Macmillan.