This diagram illustrates the suicidal nature of a massed infantry attack against classic fortifications. The Japanese repeatedly launched such attacks against the Port Arthur defenses. The progress of the attack: (1) A massive infantry attack sets out and reaches the glacis (2) where it is exposed to withering fire. If the attackers reach the top of the glacis they come under fire from the parapet and from the lines of caponiers in the ditch (3). If they get farther and into the ditch they are exposed to cross and enfilading fire from the caponiers and from the counterscarp gallery (4). All during the attack these guns (5) have a high clear shot over the advancing enemy on the glacis which is designed to be difficult to climb and to offer no protective cover. The fire from these guns sweeps the whole ground and overlaps.

Fishing vessels sailed from the warm-water harbor of Lushun, a tiny village at the south-west end of the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria, before 1900. But in four years Lushun acquired another trade and another name. Warships of the Russian Tsar filled the harbor and thousands of his Imperial troops drilled within the colossal defenses of a classic fortress destined for world-wide notoriety—Port Arthur. Here, in 1904, the armed forces of the Tsar of Russia and those of the Emperor of Japan clashed in a series of long and bloody battles in an encounter that was at once a relic of the past and a portent for the future.

The port falls—for the first time

Conflict around the ice-free port of Lushun was not new. In 1894, the new and vigorously militaristic power of Japan moved into Korea, a country the Japanese had long considered theirs. The war with the decaying empire of China was little trouble to them and among their spoils was Lushun, an ideal naval base from which to control the China Sea.

The Chinese holding Lushun in 1894 were no match for an efficient army; their defenses, an ancient wall around the town, were more token than deterrent. The Japanese Army, modelled on Prussian lines after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, was a highly trained and well-motivated force. An army under the command of Field-Marshal Oyama disembarked at Pitzuwo on 24 October 1894. It rapidly advanced and carried the intervening villages, arriving outside Lushun on 20 November. During that night the troops moved forward, and at dawn launched an attack, supported by the guns of the Japanese fleet in position outside the harbor. The outer defenses, a scattering of improvized fieldworks, were overrun in the initial assault, the ancient wall was soon overcome, and by mid-afternoon the battle was over. Lushun was in Japanese hands. The result of the attack was in no doubt from the outset, but even the Japanese were astonished at its rapid success. As a result of this, and other disasters, the Chinese government sued for peace.

But the Japanese were not allowed to keep their prize. The terms of the peace treaty gave them Formosa and the Liaotung Peninsula but then the western powers stepped in. They were alarmed at the sudden expansion of Japanese power for it appeared to threaten their trade interests. A joint Note from Russia, Germany and France protested at the occupation of the peninsula. The Japanese realized that they could not defy the objections of the great powers so they gave way, and returned the Liaotung Peninsula to the Chinese.

In 1897 a number of anti-western risings in North China led the western nations to demand security for their property and trade interests. They insisted on port and other facilities from the Chinese, and in the general scramble to gain a foothold, Russia saw a golden opportunity to extend her influence. The Trans-Siberian Railway had recently been completed to Vladivostok, 600 miles away across the Korean Peninsula. But to capitalize on this cross-country link the railway, and Russia, needed access to an ice-free port.

In December 1897, Russian warships visited Lushun and in 1898 a lease was signed by which Russia gained the use of the port and permission to fortify it. This secured, the Chinese were persuaded to allow construction of a railway line to the newly named Port Arthur, linking it with the Trans-Siberian line. Russian pressure soon paid off for when the Boxer Rebellion broke out in 1900 troops were poured down this route until Manchuria was virtually occupied by the Tsar’s army.

The lease signed, the fortification of Port Arthur began The plans of the fortification were probably drawn up by students of General Todleben, the great engineer and Crimean War veteran. They were based on the classic mid-nineteenth century principles of fortification and Port Arthur was one of the last great fortresses ever to be built.

There is an interesting comparison between fortifications built at Port Arthur and the works built at the same time by the Germans at Tsingtao, in China. Tsingtao was heavily fortified, and the designs were based on the latest available technical advances: retracting gun turrets, armored cupolas, subterranean strongpoints and reinforced concrete. But Port Arthur exhibited a system which was at least 50 years older: masonry forts, open gun batteries, deep ditches, caponiers, lunettes, hornworks and all the other architectural oddities that fortification engineers of the eighteenth century indulged in. Nevertheless, the Russian works were massively built, and had the plans been completed they would have secured the port against any contingency. But they never were. Immense drive, dedication, and vast amounts of money are needed to complete a fortification system in peacetime, when no threat is apparent—and the Tsarist Army was lamentably short of all three.

Geographically, Port Arthur was a natural stronghold. It was surrounded by hills which protected every possible line of attack. To the east of the Old Town the Chinese wall still stood, and beyond this the Eastern Heights were crowned with four major forts—Laoti, Chikuan, Erhlung and Sungssu —interspersed with a number of minor works. On the western side, a range of hills overlooking the New Town carried another four major forts, and two more forts were planned for the small hills running round the end of the harbor to the White Wolf Peninsula.

If all the planned work had been done, and had all the forts been intelligently linked by small works so as to cover all the intervening ground, Port Arthur would have been an impossibly tough stronghold to capture. But the engineers had been more concerned with ensuring that the interior angles of the lunette parapets were text-book precise rather than assessing whether a soldier behind the parapet could command his theoretical field of fire. The Russian Navy had their say also—they objected to expenditure on anything other than coast defense batteries because (so they claimed), their naval might could easily prevent any Japanese landing in Korea or Manchuria.

Half-hearted fortification

The construction of the fortress was dogged by an intermittent flow of necessary materials, a shortage of labor and finances and a lack of urgency. As a result the line of works was not completed, some works were left unfinished, and linking outposts and revetments, though marked out, were never begun. The greatest error, common in fortress construction, was that the line of defense was too close to the town. The reason for this was that the farther out the line was, the longer it would have to be—and the greater the amount of work and expense involved.

A defense line farther from the town was necessary to provide the desired degree of protection. The planners and engineers faced a common dilemma between cost and effectiveness and they compromised. Port Arthur was to witness a new and deadly consequence of this compromise —it was to be faced with modern rifled artillery with sufficient range to sit outside the defense line and drop shells anywhere within.

When the Japanese fleet appeared off Port Arthur at night, on 8 February 1904, the port was not prepared for war. Japan and Russia were in the throes of negotiation. Japan had demanded the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Manchuria but the Russians procrastinated. The Japanese, realizing that Russia had no intention of loosening her grip on the area, decided on a lightning attack to immobilize the Russian fleet which was based on Port Arthur. Under cover of darkness the Japanese fleet opened fire on the Russian ships and the port installations, intending to draw the defending fleet into open waters to do battle. The parallel between this assault and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 is unavoidable for the intention in each case was identical—to deliver a surprise attack against a sitting target while diplomatic negotiations lulled the enemy.

When hostilities started, the Russians looked to their defenses—and paradoxically sowed the seeds of their own defeat. General Khvostov, the fortress commander, was responsible for the defenses and, on the outbreak of war Lieutenant-General Smirnoff was posted from Warsaw to take command of the port. Until his arrival, General Stossel, the senior officer and military commander of the Liaotung

Peninsula assumed command. Gen. Stossel, a strict disciplinarian, was an overrated soldier with a pronounced inability to delegate responsibility. Instead of extending the defensive line and completing the fortifications on 203 Metre Hill and 174 Metre Hill, in the North-western Hills, Stossel ordered the building of what soon came to be called ‘Stossel’s Folly’—a rampart and ditch around the Old Town reinforcing the Chinese wall.

Two objectives had to be achieved for the Japanese to take Port Arthur. First, the Russian Fleet had to be immobilized to prevent interference with Japanese troop transports; and secondly, the peninsula had to be cut off from the rest of the mainland to prevent the Russian army in Manchuria going to the relief of the besieged garrison. The first objective was never fully realized—but a series of attacks sapped the morale of the Russian sailors. The opening of the assault on Port Arthur, a night bombardment, severely damaged three warships. The following day more damage was wrought on the Russian fleet and, in late February, a night attack by destroyers and blockships caused further losses. After these attacks the Japanese played a waiting game—their blockade of Port Arthur and their readiness to strike any ship that ventured out of the harbor ended any effective role of the Tsar’s fleet.

The second necessary objective, to isolate the peninsula and tie up Russian forces in Manchuria, was to be achieved by landing troops in Korea, mainly at Inchon. From there the Japanese planned to move north, against the Russians.

The Russian plan of campaign, formulated by the officer commanding the army in the field, General Kuropatkin, was to leave Port Arthur to fend for itself, trusting that the fortress would hold. The army in Manchuria would be slowly withdrawn before the advancing Japanese until reinforcements could be sent along the Trans-Siberian railway. When the build-up was complete the Russians would advance against the Japanese and sweep them from the mainland. This sound strategy was overruled however Kuropatkin was subordinate to the Viceroy Alexieff, the Commander-in-Chief, who insisted that the Russians split their forces by sending a relief column to Port Arthur.

The Japanese moves against the Russians in Manchuria went according to plan. Japanese forces crossed the Yalu River into Manchuria on 1 May, 1904. The Russians suffered a severe defeat at the Yalu—the first result of the duality of command within the Russian forces. General Sassulitch, commander of the Russian troops on the Yalu, was ordered by Kuropatkin to delay the enemy as much as possible but to avoid a pitched battle and retreat if pressed by superior numbers. But Viceroy Alexieff ordered Sassulitch to hold his positions—the result was defeat.

Three days later the Japanese Second Army landed at Pitzuwo, and shortly afterwards another force landed at Port Arthur, on the other side of the peninsula. By 6 May the railway line linking Port Arthur with the rest of the world was severed and the peninsula was blocked off by the Japanese. On 26 May they began their move down towards Port Arthur. The principal obstacle to their advance was Nan Shan Hill, a 400ft rise at the narrowest point of the peninsula; here less than two miles separated the Bay of Korea from Society Bay, and with any sort of organized defense Nan Shan could be virtually impassable. The hill was strongly defended—about 20,000 men were supposedly available, and excellent fortifications had been prepared.

The Japanese assault on Nan Shan was ferocious, and against such an attack half-hearted measures were fatal. Less than half the available Russian troops were actually committed to battle, the Japanese artillery outclassed the Russian, and a combination of flank attacks through the low tide with a massive frontal attack carried Nan Shan in a matter of hours. The golden opportunity had been lost to the Russians, and with Nan Shan in Japanese hands and the commercial port of Dalny also taken with little endeavor, there was no obstacle to the Japanese advance.

Gen. Nogi moved slowly; his army was not yet up to strength, and the retreating Russians had the advantage of falling back on prepared positions. He was in no great haste though for he could afford to shepherd the Russians into their fortifications. He had a formidable card up his sleeves. Three transports with reinforcements and, more important, three siege batteries of 28cm howitzers were en route from

Japan. The howitzers were actually coast defense guns that had been removed from their emplacements and fitted with siege platforms and mountings so that they could be used as field weapons. These were the largest guns ever seen on any battlefield to that date and with 18 of them flinging 700lb shells to pulverize and demoralize the defenders, Nogi’s augmented army would then go into the attack.

That was the intention. But it was frustrated. By one of the few strokes of luck the Russians enjoyed, the Vladivostok squadron of the Russian Navy, on a rare offensive foray, met the transports and sank the two carrying the howitzers. This unexpected loss upset Nogi’s plans and although orders were immediately given for the conversion of another 12 howitzers Nogi, in the meantime, was going to have to rely on his field artillery and infantry.

The Russians had by now fallen back to the Green Hills Line, a position some 12 miles from Port Arthur. Towards the end of June Nogi’s troops were arrayed facing this line. On 25 June, the Japanese artillery opened an intense bombardment on everything they could see—careless Russian concealment meant they could see quite a lot. While the infantry attack went forward, concentrating first on the Russian center and then, as weaknesses showed up, on the right flank, the Japanese Navy added an unusual feature by positioning ships on both sides of the peninsula to shell the Russian flanks.

Although the Russians had decided to fight on this line the number of troops they deployed was far from adequate—one hill, a key position, was held by no more than a single company, and in spite of its obvious importance neither Stossel nor Fock, commanding the division, were willing to relinquish any of the reserve troops in their control to reinforce the front. Before the day was out, the shredded company was driven from its position, the hill was in Japanese hands, and the defensive line had been pierced in several places.

The strength of the Russian line tested, Nogi now sat tight and waited for almost a month before resuming the attack. The time was spent in tidying up the port of Dalny, disembarking more troops and ammunition, bringing them into position and generally getting organized for a major attack. The Russians made no attempt to counter-attack in force during this lull. Then, on 26 July, Nogi attacked the Russian left, aiming to take the Ho-Shan feature and then expand to pinch-out Taku-Shan, thereby driving a wedge between the Russians and the sea. By outflanking the Russians, the whole line would collapse.

The attack was a nightmare. The hill was so steep that it was as much as a man could do to climb it let alone fight while he was climbing. And to add to the difficulty torrential rain hammered down on both attackers and defenders. The first attack petered out in this rainstorm, to be resumed the following day. After bitter hand-to-hand fighting the wedge was successfully driven and the Ho-Shan feature was in Japanese hands.

A 12-hour bombardment on 7 August signalled a renewed Japanese assault, this time against Taku-Shan. The infantry assault was to begin at 1900, but then the rain came again and lashed down with such intensity that although the Japanese troops moved on time, they could do no more than make a token advance before being halted by the weather. Next day the Russian Navy appeared, and shelled the Japanese on the slopes of the hill, but they were driven off by field artillery fire. Then, again at 1900, the assault began afresh; it was another hard and bloody hand-to-hand affair with bayonet and grenade, but within an hour the position was won. Without waiting to consolidate, the assault rolled on and by dawn the next day Siagu-Shan, the next feature in the line, had also fallen. The Green Hills Line was broken, and the rest of the defenders, as Nogi had predicted, abandoned their positions and fell back in disorder to Port Arthur’s main defensive line.

The Russians were also faring badly in the north. The relief force under General Shtakelberg, dispatched on Viceroy Alexieff’s orders against Kuropatkin’s better judgment, had come to an untimely end in mid-June at the battle of Telissu. The defenders of Port Arthur now had no hope of relief and the Japanese no fear of interruption. The only two exterior factors entering into the equation were imponderables—when Russian reinforcements would arrive to swell the strength of the Manchurian Army, and when the Russian fleet would reach eastern waters from the Baltic to upset the balance of naval forces.

On 7 August the Japanese batteries began pitching shells into the town, firing ‘off the map’ with no more specific intention than to make life miserable for the defenders. They were quite successful in this. Then, on 14 August, a night attack against the North-western Hills was launched, and here the Japanese came up against a novelty which was making its first large-scale appearance in warfare—barbed wire entanglements. This obstacle held up the advance and positioned the attackers at effective machine-gun range, and the Russians made the most of the opportunity. Dawn found the entanglements covered in piles of bodies and, the lesson having been learned, the attacks stopped to allow artillery to bombard the defenses.

General Nogi halted activities on 16 August in order to send in the customary request for surrender. Stossel, enraged by this insolence, peremptorily rejected such overtures. So, after a two-day respite the attack began in earnest with a three-day bombardment from Nogi’s 380 assorted guns and howitzers. (The 12 28cm howitzers had by now been prepared and were being made ready for shipment, along with a number of 15cm guns, but Nogi was hopeful that he could do the job without waiting for these.) Late in the afternoon of 21 August he launched a massive attack, one division making a feint towards 203 Metre Hill while two divisions made the main thrust at the north-eastern corner of the defenses, The forts of Erhlung and Chikuan were their objectives.

Slaughter at Erhlung and Chikuan

It was a mistake. The two forts were well built and well sited, less than 1,200 yards apart, were mutually supporting and covered every inch of the ground about them with fire. As a result the main attack was thrown back and the attackers were mown down in their hundreds. The feint attack, directed against fieldworks was successful in that 174 Metre Hill, an outlying defense, was taken. Nogi persisted in his action, feeling, as many commanders have felt before and since, that one more effort might well carry the day. By the morning of 26 August though, it was clear that such an attack would not succeed and the Japanese dug into what little they had gained and rested. The furious engagement had cost Nogi over 15,000 casualties—a sorry price to pay for the few lines of trench captured, and showed that martial order was not enough against a properly designed fort, even if uncompleted or ineptly commanded. Nogi now realized that he could not take Port Arthur by main force and that he would now have to rely on the classic method for taking classic fortifications.

How to take a classic fortress

The classic method for attacking a fortress was conceived by Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, the great French engineer of the seventeenth century. The ‘sap and parallel’ method he perfected enabled any fortress to be taken. The process is simple though long and arduous—once a basic line, at a safe distance from the fortress, is established, ‘saps’, or trenches, are dug forward towards the fortress for a safe distance. Then another trench, a ‘parallel’ (it is literally parallel to the face of the fortress) is dug to connect the ends of the saps, or ‘sap heads’. Bays for artillery and infantry are made in the parallel to provide covering fire while a new set of saps and a new parallel are made reaching closer to the fortress. The process continues until the last saps breach the glacis (the bank sloping downwards from a fort where attackers are exposed to fire) and the ditch of the fort. The rampart is then breached, either by firing a mine underneath or by artillery fire, and troops pour from the saps to storm the breach.

The defenders, of course, are not idle while this is in progress. Defending guns batter the saps and parallels, and trenches are dug to intercept the mine tunnels of the besiegers, or mines are placed beneath the approaching saps. Assault parties leave the fortress to bomb the saps. This method of attack involves furious warfare—it was this type of conflict that now raged around Port Arthur.

The Japanese spent much of September assembling the stores needed for the siege, bringing in reinforcements, laying telephone lines and building a narrow-gauge railway to speed the flow of ammunition and supplies. The long-awaited 28cm howitzers arrived too and were dragged into place by teams of coolies. But despite all this Nogi still believed that if he could drive a wedge into the defenses the whole line would collapse as the Green Hills Line had done.

With this objective, Nogi launched a further attack on the North-western Hills, with 203 Metre Hill as the prime target, on 19 September. At 0700 a heavy bombardment began, directed at the hills in front of Erhlung, known as Temple Hill and Waterworks Hill, on the outer line of the defenses. Some of the barbed wire there had been cut by a night patrol and by a stroke of fortune they had also discovered and cut the wires leading to a number of defensive mines. At 1600 the bombardment intensified and three hours later the Japanese attack was launched. It was repulsed by concentrated small-arms fire. Another assault, at night, gained some ground but after hand-to-hand fighting the Japanese were thrown back. Dawn saw a fresh assault which finally dislodged the defenders and by midday on 20 September the area was in Japanese hands. It contained Port Arthur’s water supply—which the Japanese cut.

This sector secure, Nogi returned to the assault of 203 Metre Hill. After a day’s bombardment by all the Japanese artillery the infantry attack was launched. But to reach the defenders the Japanese had to cross a 300-yard stretch of open ground and they were subjected to a murderous hail of small-arm fire and shrapnel when they attempted this. Despite the carnage, the attackers pressed on, using the bodies of their fallen comrades as cover. The battle raged all night and when dawn lightened the skies the defenders were still in place while the attackers had done no more than scratch a trench at the bottom of the hill. Here the attackers had to tolerate a further trial—the Russians rolled canisters of explosive down the hill fused to detonate when they reached the trench.

The attack had gained little—merely a foothold on Long Hill, north of 203 Metre Hill, of little advantage. But with over 4,000 casualties, Nogi was again shown the futility of headlong assault, and he now decided to wait for results from his sappers and miners, who had begun to drive tunnels and saps towards most of the permanent works. Meanwhile, on 1 October, the 28cm howitzers opened fire, searching the length of the north-eastern front. Shells landed in the Erhlung and Chikuan Forts doing immense damage.

By 26 October the parallels were close under Erhlung Fort and Chikuan Fort, and Nogi made a final attempt at a direct assault. After a four-day bombardment a mine was fired beneath Erhlung at dawn on 30 October. This signalled an intensification of the bombardment—so heavy was it that by midmorning the hill and fort had virtually vanished under a cloud of smoke and dust. In the afternoon, when the slopes around the fort were a pockmarked and reeking moonscape, the Japanese assaults began. But once again, they merely demonstrated the proofs of the fortress engineers’ theories. A massed attack up the glacis of Chikuan was cut to ribbons by rifle, machine-gun and shrapnel fire—the exposed slope of the glacis became the very killing-ground it was designed to be.

A thousand men and a huge amount of ammunition later Nogi was finally convinced of the futility of direct assault against scientifically designed works. His attempt to attack two specific forts was doomed to failure for he made no effort to neutralize the flanking works, which left them free to enfilade his every move. But although Nogi was now content to wait until his saps and parallels were closed up the Japanese Navy were not. Though they had performed well against the Russian Navy they did not intend to make the mistake of under-rating the enemy, and the Russian Second Pacific Squadron, now en route from the Baltic, was an unknown quantity. It, together with the warships in Port Arthur and the Vladivostok Squadron, could prove a formidable force, so the Navy pressed the Army to get their heavy guns into a position that would allow their heavy guns to fire on the fleet in Port Arthur harbor and remove them from the reckoning.

Nogi knew the cost only too well but he agreed to make the effort, and gave orders for another attack on Erhlung and Chikuan Forts. This time, however, he broadened his attack to deal with the flanking works, Sungssu Fort and Kuropatkin Lunette. On 17 November a mine at Sungssu was fired, blowing in the counterscarp gallery and giving the Japanese possession of the ditch, while on 20 November a mine at Erhlung was blown, also filling the ditch with debris.

The savagery of Middle Ages warfare

On 17 November the Japanese moved forces against Chikuan, but the attack was repulsed after a night of hand-to-hand fighting in which trenches changed hands three and four times. Days of artillery bombardment followed and the attack was resumed on 26 November. It was a savage encounter sometimes akin to Middle Age warfare—grenades, explosive charges, burning oil and firebrands were hurled at the attackers. In places the Japanese entered the works, but the interiors had been traversed with sandbag walls to form a species of lethal maze in which the attackers were channelled like sheep to be mown down by machine-guns and case shot. The battle raged all night but eventually the Japanese, with 12,000 casualties, fell back with nothing gained.

Nogi now turned to his alternative plan, and with little delay an attack on 203 Metre Hill was prepared. An intense bombardment not only prepared the ground but alerted the defenders and allowed them time to assemble ample reserves. The assault began at last light on 27 November, but the Russian reserves proved decisive, and the Japanese were beaten off. Thereafter the battle resolved itself into an eight-day affair of bombardment interspersed with assaults, resulting, on 5 December, in a Japanese victory. So nightmarish had been the battle that on one hill only three defenders survived.

On the following day an observation post was set up, and on the morning of 7 December the 28cm howitzers opened up on the Russian fleet. The aim of the Japanese gunners was dreadful-280 shells were fired but only 36 hit their targets. But the object was achieved; five battleships were sunk, one scuttled and one tried to make a run for it and was torpedoed outside the harbor. The fleet dealt with to the satisfaction of Admiral Togo, the howitzers turned on the town. By this time the tunnellers were ready to spring more mines under the Erhlung and Chikuan Forts. Tunnels had been driven beneath the ditches and long mine galleries excavated beneath the ramparts, and on 18 December the Chikuan mines were fired. Due to faulty work they were less effective than they might have been, but a large section of rampart was blown into the ditch and the assaulting parties poured from their saps. After eight hours of hand-to-hand fighting, the fort, or what was left of it, was in Japanese hands at last.

The mine at Erhlung was fired on 28 December, this time with maximum effectiveness. Not only was the breach made, but by sheer chance many of the defending force were being paraded above the mine galleries when the detonation took place. The majority were killed instantly by the blast, and the remainder so shaken as to be unable to offer any resistance to the assault which followed. The breach only gave access to the lower levels of the fort, however, and the defenders of the upper level were in a commanding position—what followed was a highly lethal game of hide and seek as the Japanese attempted to winkle the Russians out of their positions while the Russians, on familiar ground, made the most of the tortuous passages of the fort to ambush and trap the attackers. Seventeen hours passed before the fort was in Japanese hands.

The final work on the North-eastern Line to be dealt with was Sungssu, which was also mined beneath the ramparts. Again fortune played into the Japanese hands, since the detonation of the mine spread to the fort magazine, so that instead of the rampart being breached the entire work was reduced to a heap of rubble with the defenders underneath. What began as an attack finished as a rescue operation as the Japanese dug out the defenders and led them away to captivity. Sungssu was virtually a bloodless victory.

A curious Council of War now took place inside Port Arthur. The artillery commander reported ample stocks of ammunition ; the Chief of Staff reported reasonable stocks of food ; the Naval commanders joined with them in advocating a continued defense. This the meeting agreed on and the Council broke up. What the members did not know was that Stossel had already telegraphed to Moscow that the fortress could not hold out for more than a few days. Three days later, on New Year’s Day 1905, Stossel, without consulting any of his staff, sent an offer of surrender to General Nogi. An hour or two later the news was communicated to the remainder of the staff, with the intimation that they had about a day in which to do whatever they thought necessary in the circumstances. The Naval staff immediately began scuttling what ships remained, while the Army set to work to spike as many guns as possible and destroy as much of their ammunition and stores as they could.

The cost of victory—and defeat

At 2054 on 2 January the surrender was signed and the siege was at an end. The fortress cost the Japanese 57,780, the Russian defenders had lost 31,306 killed and wounded out of a strength of about 42,000.

The Siege of Port Arthur was a relic—and a portent. It was a relic because it was the last great siege conducted on the lines hallowed by time—sap, parallel and mine—against features equally archaic—ditches, caponiers, counterscarps, redoubts. It was a portent because it introduced much of the material which was to become commonplace 10 years later—barbed wire, hand grenades, machine-guns, drab uniforms, and the use of super-heavy artillery. But the one great lesson which stands out of the confused and bloody story is the one which Gen. Nogi, an otherwise astute man, took so long to learn—that field maneuvers are not the way to capture a fortress.