{ "slug": "liaoyang", "title": "Battle of Liaoyang", "status": "draft", "era": "1900–1918", "date_text": "24 August – 4 September 1904 (11–22 August Old Style)", "start": "1904-08-24", "end": "1904-09-04", "war": "Russo-Japanese War", "cdb90_war": "RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR", "place": { "name": "South and east of Liaoyang, on both banks of the Taitzu river, Liaoning, north-east China", "lat": 41.27, "lon": 123.17, "wikidata": "Q2440191" }, "lede": "In the rain and tall sorghum of late summer 1904, Ōyama's three armies drove Kuropatkin from the prepared lines round Liaoyang. It was the first great land battle of the Russo-Japanese War: a costly Japanese victory, but the Russian army escaped to Mukden.", "result": "Japanese victory; Russian army withdraws to Mukden in good order", "result_cdb90": "attacker win", "belligerents": [ { "role": "attacker", "name": "Japanese Manchurian Armies (First, Second and Fourth Armies)", "commanders": [ "Field Marshal Ōyama Iwao", "General Kuroki Tamemoto (First Army)", "General Oku Yasukata (Second Army)", "General Nozu Michitsura (Fourth Army)" ], "strength": { "value": 125000, "low": 120000, "high": 134500, "source": "s5" }, "casualties": { "value": 23782, "low": 22922, "high": 24140, "source": "s4" } }, { "role": "defender", "name": "Russian Manchurian Army", "commanders": [ "General Aleksei Kuropatkin", "General Nikolai Zarubaev (Southern Force)", "General Alexander Bilderling (Eastern Force)", "General Georgii Stakelberg (1st Siberian Corps)" ], "strength": { "value": 158000, "low": 140000, "high": 158000, "source": "s5" }, "casualties": { "value": 19112, "low": 17024, "high": 20000, "source": "s4" } } ], "sections": { "background": "Russia and Japan went to war in February 1904 over Manchuria and Korea. Japan struck at the Russian squadron in Port Arthur, landed armies in Korea and on the Liaotung peninsula, and laid siege to Port Arthur with Nogi's Third Army. Kuroki's First Army crossed the Yalu and pushed through the mountains; Oku's Second Army drove north along the railway; Nozu's Fourth Army came up between them. Through June and July the Russians fought delaying actions in the passes and at Tashihchiao, then fell back.\n\nKuropatkin had always meant to concentrate at Liaoyang, a walled town on the railway from Port Arthur to Harbin, and to fight there on ground of his own choosing while the Trans-Siberian railway brought up reinforcements. The town was ringed by three lines of defence built to stop an advance from the south: an outer line some 55 miles long from Anshanchan (Anshan) to Anping, a second line on the heights from Shoushanpu (Shoushan) to the Taitzu (Taizi) river, which the Russians called the advanced position, and a main position of forts and redoubts round the town itself, forming a great bridgehead over the river.\n\nŌyama, now commanding all three field armies, had to win quickly. Port Arthur had held against Nogi's first general assault, and every month brought more Russian troops from Europe. His plan was to fix the Russians from the south while Kuroki worked round their eastern flank towards the railway behind Liaoyang. The British official history calls the twelve days from 23 August to 3 September the most critical period of the war.", "forces": "Ōyama had about 125,000 men and 470 mobile guns. Kuroki's First Army (the Guard, 2nd and 12th Divisions) was in the eastern mountains; Nozu's Fourth Army (5th and 10th Divisions) in the centre; Oku's Second Army (3rd, 4th and 6th Divisions) along the railway in the west. Kobi (reserve) brigades filled gaps. Ōyama's only general reserve was Oku's 4th Division, and he could expect no more than a few battalions from the lines of communication.\n\nKuropatkin had about 140,000–158,000 combatants and some 560–610 mobile guns, with more than a hundred older pieces in the town works. Zarubaev's Southern Force (1st, 2nd and 4th Siberian Corps) faced Oku and Nozu; Bilderling's Eastern Force (3rd Siberian and 10th Corps) faced Kuroki; the 17th Corps held the north bank of the Taitzu. More troops kept arriving by rail during the battle. Russian intelligence put the Japanese at nearly 158,000 men, and Kuropatkin's caution owed much to that estimate.\n\nThe ground mattered as much as the numbers. Heavy rain had flooded the rivers and turned the roads to mud, and the plain was covered with kaoliang (sorghum) eight to twelve feet high, which Hamilton said gave it the character of dense forest. The Russians laid wire, mines and pits in front of Shoushanpu and flew an observation balloon over the field.", "course": "**The outer line, 24–28 August.** In heavy rain Kuroki attacked the eastern end of the outer line. The Guard Division was checked on 25 August, but on the night of 25–26 August the 2nd and 12th Divisions stormed the passes round Hungshaling, and the Russians gave up Anping that night. Oku and Nozu, facing Zarubaev at Anshanchan, met little resistance: on 26–27 August Kuropatkin drew his whole army back to the advanced position, the Eastern Force crossing the Tang river. By the evening of 28 August Ōyama's armies stood in one line about 30 miles long from the Taitzu to Tuntai, but the Russians had escaped envelopment.\n\n**Shoushanpu, 30–31 August.** On 30 August Ōyama attacked the whole advanced position. The Guard, the Fourth Army and Oku's right were all repulsed; the British official history says that for the first time in the war Japanese troops went to their bivouacs with a sense of defeat. At Shoushanpu Stakelberg's 1st Siberian Corps held hill 693 (Cairn Hill to the British), a steep spur above the railway embankment, wired, mined and entrenched. On 31 August Oku attacked again. The 34th Regiment carried two lines of trenches before dawn but was driven off the hill by 8 a.m., losing 487 killed and 632 wounded; its battalion commander Major Tachibana Shūta, killed there, was later honoured in Japan as a war god.\n\n**Kuroki crosses the Taitzu, 30–31 August.** Believing the Russians were about to evacuate Liaoyang, Kuroki sent the 12th Division and Okasaki's 15th Brigade across the Taitzu by night at Lientaowan, a ford about 200 yards wide and three feet deep, some eight miles east of the Russian lines. The crossing began at midnight unopposed. A Russian cavalry colonel saw the column at 6 a.m., but a broken telephone line meant Kuropatkin did not hear until 11 a.m. That afternoon he decided to give up the advanced position, hold the town forts with Zarubaev's 2nd and 4th Siberian Corps, and mass the rest of his army north of the river against Kuroki. The Russians slipped away from Shoushanpu in the night; Oku's men took the empty heights at about 3 a.m. on 1 September.\n\n**Manjuyama and Orlov, 1–3 September.** North of the river the Japanese faced a line from hill 131 through Hsikuantun village to a low hillock the soldiers named Manjuyama, 'rice-cake hill' (Nezhinsk Hill to the Russians), and the hills towards the Yentai coal mines. Okasaki's brigade took Manjuyama after dark on 1 September and held it through counter-attacks. Kuropatkin gathered about 90,000 men for a counter-stroke on 2 September, but it fell apart on its left. Orlov's brigade of reservists, newly arrived from Europe, met part of the 12th Division in the kaoliang near the Yentai mines, fell back about 1 p.m. and dissolved into rout; Orlov was badly wounded, and his fugitives disordered Stakelberg's corps as it came up. That night repeated Russian attacks on Manjuyama, at about 8.30 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., broke down in darkness and confusion, Russian units firing on one another.\n\n**Withdrawal, 3–4 September.** Early on 3 September Zarubaev reported his reserves down to three battalions, Stakelberg reported his corps unfit to attack and fell back, and Bilderling reported Manjuyama lost. Kuropatkin ordered a retreat on Mukden. Zarubaev held the forts through 3 September and withdrew across the bridges from 7.30 p.m. in silence, guns man-handled out of action; the last regiment crossed about 1 a.m. and the railway bridge was set alight. The Fourth Army entered Liaoyang on the morning of 4 September.", "aftermath": "Japanese losses were about 23,000–24,000, Russian about 17,000–20,000. The attacker, assaulting entrenchments, lost more. Kuropatkin withdrew in good order behind the Sha and Hun rivers to Mukden, about 65 km north, and the exhausted Japanese followed no further than the river bank. They took the town but few trophies; Ōyama's hope of cutting the railway behind Liaoyang had failed. Kuropatkin reported a great victory to St Petersburg, a claim the war minister Sakharov derided; in Tokyo the celebrations were muted by the casualty lists and the knowledge that the decisive battle was still to come.\n\nThe British official history called it 'a splendid tactical triumph' and credited Kuroki's perseverance above all, while judging his crossing possibly premature and his luck in Orlov's collapse considerable. Kuropatkin's choices remain open to criticism: he committed his reserves piecemeal, never counter-attacked south of the river when the Japanese were repulsed on 30 August, and abandoned a strong position on an exaggerated estimate of Kuroki's strength. Russian losses in matériel were soon made good, and within five weeks Kuropatkin attacked on the Sha.\n\nLiaoyang was watched closely by foreign officers, among them Ian Hamilton with Kuroki's headquarters, and its entrenchments, wire, quick-firing guns and costly frontal assaults filled the reports they sent home.", "wargaming": "Liaoyang is an army-sized battle over about ten days and a front of some 30 miles, but its phases come apart neatly. For the whole battle, an operational game with brigades or regiments as units and half-day turns lets Ōyama's pinning attacks, Kuroki's crossing and Kuropatkin's redeployment all play out. For a single evening, Shoushanpu on 30–31 August (a division against a fortified hill) or Manjuyama and the Orlov rout on 1–3 September make strong brigade-to-division actions at battalion scale.\n\nThe terrain is the game. South of the river it is steep spurs, wire and mines against open approaches turned to mud; north of it, kaoliang taller than a man that should block sight lines, slow movement, confuse friend and foe and make every counter-attack a gamble. The Taitzu, in flood, divides the field, and the bridges at Liaoyang are the Russian lifeline.\n\nThe decisions are rich on both sides. The Japanese player must decide how long to keep paying for frontal assaults to pin the Russians, and when to send Kuroki across a river with no reserve behind him. The Russian player has more men and the better ground, but uncertain intelligence: hidden strengths, or a Russian estimate that inflates the Japanese by a quarter, recreate Kuropatkin's dilemma. What-ifs include a Russian counter-attack south of the river on 30 August, a well-led Orlov, or Kuroki held back a day. Victory should turn on the railway and the bridges, not the town." }, "images": [ { "file": "File:Map-of-Liao-Yang.jpg", "kind": "map", "caption": "French map of the battle, 25 August – 3 September 1904: Japanese positions on the evening of 26 August and on 31 August – 1 September, Russian corps on the morning of 1 September, and Kuroki's First Army across the Taitzu east of the town.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Map-of-Liao-Yang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Map-of-Liao-Yang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-of-Liao-Yang.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "loki11", "credit": "Le Patriote Illustré", "width": 842 }, { "file": "File:Russian General Aleksey Kuropatkin during the Battle of Liaoyang.jpg", "kind": "photo", "caption": "General Kuropatkin and his staff in the field at Liaoyang, 1904.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Russian_General_Aleksey_Kuropatkin_during_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Russian_General_Aleksey_Kuropatkin_during_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang.jpg/960px-Russian_General_Aleksey_Kuropatkin_during_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_General_Aleksey_Kuropatkin_during_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "P. F. Collier & Son", "credit": "Russo-Japanese War: A Photographic and Descriptive Review of the Great Conflict in the Far East", "width": 1440 }, { "file": "File:Oyama Iwao.jpg", "kind": "portrait", "caption": "Field Marshal Ōyama Iwao, commander of the Japanese armies in Manchuria.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Oyama_Iwao.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/Oyama_Iwao.jpg/960px-Oyama_Iwao.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oyama_Iwao.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author", "credit": "This image is available from the website of the National Diet Library", "width": 1024 }, { "file": "File:Russian Baloon in the Battle of Liaoyang 1.jpg", "kind": "photo", "caption": "A Russian observation balloon at Liaoyang, 1904.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Russian_Baloon_in_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Russian_Baloon_in_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_Baloon_in_the_Battle_of_Liaoyang_1.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "P. F. Collier & Son", "credit": "Russo-Japanese War: A Photographic and Descriptive Review of the Great Conflict in the Far East", "width": 818 }, { "file": "File:Russian positions in the passes of Liao-yang.jpg", "kind": "photo", "caption": "A Russian 76 mm quick-firing field gun of the 6th East Siberian Artillery Brigade on the heights in the passes before Liaoyang, 1904. Photograph by Viktor Bulla.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Russian_positions_in_the_passes_of_Liao-yang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Russian_positions_in_the_passes_of_Liao-yang.jpg/960px-Russian_positions_in_the_passes_of_Liao-yang.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_positions_in_the_passes_of_Liao-yang.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "Victor K. Bulla.", "credit": "Scanned from \"The Russo-Japanese War – A Photographic and descriptive review of the great conflict in the Far East\", P. F. Collier & Son, New York, 1904, page 120", "width": 1000 }, { "file": "File:Shuta Tachibana.jpg", "kind": "portrait", "caption": "Major Tachibana Shūta, killed leading his battalion of the 34th Regiment at Shoushanpu on 31 August 1904 and later honoured in Japan as a war god.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Shuta_Tachibana.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Shuta_Tachibana.jpg/960px-Shuta_Tachibana.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shuta_Tachibana.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "Unknown author Unknown author", "credit": "This image is available from the website of the National Diet Library", "width": 1024 }, { "file": "File:Battle of Liaoyang, woodblock print.jpg", "kind": "illustration", "caption": "Ogata Gessan's 1904 woodblock triptych of Liaoyang, showing Kuropatkin charging into the fight as his army is defeated. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Battle_of_Liaoyang%2C_woodblock_print.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Battle_of_Liaoyang%2C_woodblock_print.jpg/960px-Battle_of_Liaoyang%2C_woodblock_print.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail", "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Liaoyang,_woodblock_print.jpg", "licence": "Public domain", "licence_url": "", "artist": "Ogata Gessan", "credit": "http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_01/2000_450_l.html", "width": 1259 } ], "sources": [ { "id": "s1", "title": "Battle of Liaoyang", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liaoyang", "kind": "web" }, { "id": "s2", "title": "Ляоянское сражение (Battle of Liaoyang), Russian Wikipedia", "url": "https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ляоянское_сражение", "kind": "web" }, { "id": "s3", "title": "遼陽会戦 (Battle of Liaoyang), Japanese Wikipedia", "url": "https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/遼陽会戦", "kind": "web" }, { "id": "s4", "title": "Official History of the Russo-Japanese War, Part IV: Liao-Yang, Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence (HMSO, 1909)", "url": "https://archive.org/details/russo-japanese-war-pt4", "kind": "primary" }, { "id": "s5", "title": "Official History (Naval and Military) of the Russo-Japanese War, vol. II: Liao-Yang, the Sha Ho, Port Arthur, Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence (HMSO, 1912)", "url": "https://archive.org/details/russo-japanese-war-n-m-vol2", "kind": "primary" }, { "id": "s6", "title": "'Russo-Japanese War', Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, vol. 23 (1911), on Wikisource", "url": "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Russo-Japanese_War", "kind": "article" }, { "id": "s7", "title": "Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer's Scrap-Book during the Russo-Japanese War, vol. II (Edward Arnold, 1907)", "url": "https://archive.org/details/staffofficersscr02hami", "kind": "primary" } ], "cdb90": [ 244 ], "order": 118, "url": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/liaoyang/", "oob": [], "oob_lwtv": [], "scenarios": [], "orbat": null, "orbat_lwtv": null, "reading": { "prose": [ { "work_id": "ia:cu31924023037181", "title": "With the Russians in Manchuria", "in": null, "author": "Maurice Baring", "life": "1874–1945", "year": 1906, "kind": "memoir", "library": "Internet Archive", "url": "https://archive.org/details/cu31924023037181", "language": "en", "contemporary": true, "subject": false, "references": 12, "page": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/reading/with-the-russians-in-manchuria-88d61a/" } ], "history": [], "fiction": [], "poetry": [] }, "reading_lwtv": { "prose": [], "poetry": [] }, "photos": [], "photos_kind": "photographs", "newspapers": null }