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Template:Battlebox The Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904-2 January 1905), the Russian deepwater port and naval base at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula (See Map below the Battlebox) in Manchuria was one of the longest and most vicious battles during the Russo-Japanese War. 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. 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-plauged 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 Anatoli 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 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 howitzers 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.
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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.

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 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.

Russian 500 pound shell bursting near the Japanese siege guns, near Port Arthur
More detailed description of photo

Diversionary attacks around the Port Arthur perimeter prevented the Russians of 203 Meter Hill from being relived 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 fell by mid-afternoon.

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 hara-kiri. 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.

References

• Morris, Edmund. (Edmund Morris) Theodore Rex. The Modern Library, 2002 (div. of Random House,2001 ISBN: 0-8129-6600-7

• Battles of the Russo-Japanese War
• Sieges
• 1904
• 1905