The Battle of Mukden was the last major land battle of the Russo-Japanese War, occurring from 20 February to 10 March 1905 at the Chinese city of Shenyang (Mukden) in southern Manchuria. Despite suffering heavy losses to Russian machine-gun fire, the Imperial Japanese Army succeeded in storming the major city of Mukden in the largest battle in world history at that point. The rifle, machine-gun, and artillery rounds fired by the Japanese side alone matched the ammunition consumption of the Imperial German Army in the entire 191-day Franco-Prussian War.
History[]
While the siege of Port Arthur dragged on, Japanese land forces quickly overran Korea and pushed northward into Manchuria. Defeat at Fuhsien and Liaoyang in the summer of 1904 forced the Russians back to Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, where they were reinforced via the Trans-Siberian Railway. In March the following year, when Japanese reinforcements arrived after the taking of Port Arthur, the decisive battle for Mukden began. Fresh troops of the Japanese 5th Army crossed the mountains west of the city and attacked the Russian left flank. A few days later the main attack on the center of Russian lines began and the Japanese 4th Army appeared on the Russian right flank. The fighting lasted for 19 days as huge numbers of Japanese were repelled by Russian machine-gun fire. A distinctive feature in this and other battles in the Russo-Japanese War was the use of forward observers linked by telephone to gunners who would fire on targets beyond their visual range. It was no longer necessary to see the enemy in order to kill him. Unable to resist the flanking armies, the Russian defensive line was curved backward. The Russian commander, General Aleksey Kuropatkin, anxious not to be totally surrounded, ordered a general retreat to the north. Mukden was evacuated and the retreat broke the stalemate in the land war, which had now effectively been won by the Japanese.