Battle of the Yalu River (1904)

Background

The Russo-Japanese War began on 9 February 1904 with a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur. The roots lay in rival ambitions in Korea and Manchuria: Russia held Port Arthur and had left troops in Manchuria after the Boxer Rebellion, and Japan had been forced to give up the Liaodong Peninsula in 1895.

Once Japan had won command of the sea off Korea, its First Army landed at Chemulpo and Chinampo and moved north through Korea. Advance units were in Pyongyang on 21 February and Anju by 18 March, and the rest of the army was ashore by 29 March. The Yalu, the frontier river, was the natural place for the Russians to meet it.

Russia's problem was distance. Its only link to European Russia was the single-track Trans-Siberian Railway, then incomplete around Lake Baikal, so reinforcements came slowly. General Kuropatkin, commanding in the Far East, wanted to trade space for time and build up for roughly six months. Viceroy Alekseyev, however, ordered him to hold the Yalu line and not impede Japan's advance through Korea. On 22 April Kuropatkin sent the Eastern Detachment under Mikhail Zasulich to defend it.

By 21 April the Japanese First Army was concentrated and hidden south of Wiju. Scouts posing as Korean fishermen had mapped the Russian trenches, and by 23 April their estimate of Russian strength was only about 1,000 men and two guns short. The Russians, by contrast, made little effort to conceal their positions.

The armies

Kuroki's First Army was built from the Guards, 2nd and 12th Divisions, about 42,000 men. It had hired some 10,000 Korean labourers at above-market wages to move its supplies, and its engineers had prepared about ten bridges, a third of them prefabricated steel pontoons, to span roughly 1,630 yards of river and islands. Among its guns were German 4.7-inch Krupp howitzers.

Zasulich's Eastern Detachment had roughly 16,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 62 guns according to the main source, strung out along a front of about 170 miles. Its units included the 11th and 12th East Siberian Rifle Regiments. The article says that Zasulich did not respect his opponent, and that his subordinate Nikolai Kashtalinsky warned that the position could be turned from the north, a warning that was brushed aside.

The numbers matter less than the intelligence gap and the command. The Japanese knew the Russian layout almost exactly; Zasulich is reported to have ignored Kuropatkin's orders to fall back by stages, a claim the article attributes to Kuropatkin's chief of staff, V. V. Sakharov. The result was a detachment that was divided across a very long front, with its main body and reserves at the wrong end of it.

The battle

Preliminaries, 25–29 April. At 21:45 on 25 April two battalions of the 2nd Division seized Kintei Island, Kyuri and Oseki Island without a fight. The Japanese built a very visible causeway towards Kintei as a decoy; two Russian batteries engaged it and gave away their positions. A gunboat feint on the lower river convinced Zasulich that the main blow would fall at Andong (Dandong), and he kept his main force and reserves there. Meanwhile the Japanese hid heavy howitzers in foliage on the islands.

Tiger Hill, 27 April. Before dawn the Guards Division stormed Tiger Hill, which overlooked the junction of the Ai and Yalu, in a surprise assault. A Russian counter-attack two days later failed to retake it. (The article's dating is the only one I read; see flags.)

The crossing, 28–30 April. The 12th Division crossed at Sukujin and advanced in three columns. By midnight on 30 April the First Army was across with little opposition, helped by fog. At about 05:00 the fog lifted and the Japanese guns opened fire.

The centre, 30 April. The 2nd Division came forward on causeways from Wiju and caught the Russians in a pincer at Kiuliencheng, on the Manchurian bank opposite. By 10:00 the Russians were falling back and the Japanese tried to block their line of escape to Fenghuangcheng. Zasulich's staff urged him to withdraw to a stronger position; he refused, and telegraphed the Tsar that victory was near.

Collapse, 30 April – 1 May. Kuroki threw the Guards and 2nd Divisions at the trenches together. The Russians were driven out with heavy losses, and a counter-attack by the 12th East Siberian Rifle Regiment was destroyed. The 11th East Siberian Rifle Regiment covered the retreat, was cut off and had to fight its way out. When the Japanese 12th Division appeared on the Russian left, that wing panicked and collapsed. At 17:30 on 1 May the remnants of the Eastern Detachment surrendered or escaped towards Fenghuangcheng, and the battle was over.

The Japanese had spent a week on preparation for a day and a half of real fighting. They had pre-sited their howitzers, bridged the main channel, and drawn the Russian guns into revealing themselves against a decoy. The Russians had a front some 170 miles long to watch, a commander who expected the blow at Andong, and one battalion with four guns on the flank where Kashtalinsky had asked for more. The outcome was therefore settled largely before 30 April, as the article tells it, and the day itself was the execution. The Russians lost 21 of their 24 field guns in the fighting, according to the article.

Aftermath

Japanese losses were about 1,000 killed and wounded; Russian losses were between roughly 2,200 and 2,700, including several hundred prisoners and nearly all of the field artillery engaged. The disparity was real, but the figures are small beside the battles that followed at Liaoyang, Shaho and Mukden.

The strategic effect was larger. The Yalu opened Manchuria to the Japanese, who were ordered to push on towards the Russian reinforcements massing at Liaoyang. The article says the defeat undermined the belief that Japan would be an easy opponent, that the war would be short and that Russia would win without difficulty.

The battle is also a case study in a divided Russian command. Kuropatkin had planned to avoid a decisive fight so far forward and to trade space for time, but the Viceroy's order to hold the Yalu and, according to the article, Zasulich's refusal to withdraw by stages put the detachment where Kuroki could destroy it. How far that blame belongs to Zasulich personally rests on one account, as the flags note.

Wargaming it

The Yalu is a good small-scale scenario for the divisional level, at around one battalion or regiment per counter or a few bases, with guns at battery level. The map is simple: a broad river with islands, a bridgehead to be established, and a Russian line on the Manchurian bank with Tiger Hill commanding the junction of the Ai and the Yalu.

The interesting part is that the Japanese win mostly before the shooting starts. A game can reflect that with hidden movement or a pre-game deployment phase: the Japanese player secretly places the decoy causeway and the real crossing points, while the Russian player must commit reserves between Andong and the line without knowing which is the main effort. Fog on the morning of 30 April can be a scenario rule that blocks Russian observation until the bridges are made.

Russian options are real, if limited. Kashtalinsky warned of a flank attack and was given one battalion; a Russian player who weights the flank has a fair chance of a better result, and a victory condition that rewards saving the detachment, as Kuropatkin intended, suits the scenario. A fair variant gives the Russians a free withdrawal after the first Japanese success and scores losses of guns heavily, since losing 21 of 24 field guns was the measure of the disaster. A good "what if" is a Russian commander who listens: what if Zasulich had fallen back to Fenghuangcheng?

Maps and pictures