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Template:Battlebox The Siege of Port Arthur (now modern day Lu-Shun), the Russian port and naval base at the tip of the Liaotung Peninsula in Manchuria was perhaps one of the longest and most vicious battles during the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese were determined to capture the Russian port and deny the Russians their naval base in the Far East. 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. 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.

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.

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

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.

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. 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 with most of the Russian warships there were sunk at their moorings. But for 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.

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 became casualties including those killed wounded and captured. The Japanese casualties were later listed as 57,780 killed, wounded or missing.

But with the capture of Port Arthur, and the Japanese naval victory at Tsushima five months later, convinced the war-weary Russian government to sue for peace. 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.

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