Japan had leaped from feudalism to modern industrial and military power. Military instructors from France and naval instructors from England had helped create an efficient army with skilled, imaginative commanders. In the two years since Ito returned, humiliated, from St. Petersburg, Japan’s generals and admirals had perfected their plans for war against Russia. The moment further negotiations seemed futile, they struck.
From the beginning, the match was unequal. Although the Japanese army consisted of 600,000 men and the Russian army numbered almost three million, Japan threw 150,000 men into battle at once on the Asian mainland. There they faced only 80,000 regular Russian soldiers, along with 23,000 garrison troops and 30,000 railway guards. Japanese supply lines stretched back to the homeland over only a few hundred miles of water, and losses could be quickly replaced. The Russians had to haul guns, munitions, food and reinforcements four thousand miles over the single track of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Even the railroad was not complete; around the mountainous southern end of Lake Baikal, a gap of a hundred miles yawned in the track. In summer, the gap was bridged by lake ferries; in the winter, every soldier and shell had to be moved across the ice in horse-drawn sledges.
The Russian Far Eastern Fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy were more equal in size; the Russians actually had more battleships and cruisers, the Japanese more destroyers and torpedo boats. But with their first surprise attack, the Japanese seized the initiative and gained command of the sea. Russian ships which survived the war’s first blow were hemmed in by Japanese minefields and harassed at their moorings by further torpedo attacks. When Russia’s most distinguished admiral, Makarov, sortied from the harbor of Port Arthur on April 13, his flagship, the battleship
With the sea secured, Japanese expeditionary forces were free to land where they chose along the mainland coast. One army came ashore in Korea, overwhelmed five Siberian regiments, crossed the Yalu River and marched north into Manchuria. Another Japanese force landed at the head of the Yellow Sea and laid siege to Port Arthur with monster eleven-inch siege cannons. Through the summer and fall of 1904, the Japanese infantry stormed one fortified height around Port Arthur after another; by January 1905, when Port Arthur finally surrendered, it had cost Japan 57,780 men and Russia 28,200.
From St. Petersburg, Nicholas watched with dismay. His first instinct had been to go to the front and place himself at the head of his beleaguered troops. Once again, his uncles overruled his inclination. To his mother the Tsar wrote: “My conscience is often very troubled by my staying here instead of sharing the dangers and privations of the army. I asked Uncle Alexis yesterday what he thought about it: he thinks my presence with the army in this war is not necessary—still, to stay behind in times like these is very upsetting to me.”
Instead, Nicholas toured military encampments, reviewing troops and passing out images of St. Seraphim to soldiers about to entrain for the Far East. The Empress canceled all social activities and turned the huge ballrooms of the Winter Palace into workrooms where hundreds of women of all classes sat at tables, making clothing and bandages. Every day Alexandra visited these rooms and often sat down herself to sew a dressing or a hospital shirt.
As the grim prospect of a Russian defeat seemed ever more likely, Nicholas, urged on by William, ordered the Russian Baltic Fleet to travel around the world to restore Russian naval supremacy in the Pacific. Admiral Rozhdestvensky, the fleet commander, viewed the project without much hope, but once the Tsar had commanded, he placed himself on his bridge and ordered his ships made ready for sea. In October 1904, Nicholas took the final salute from the deck of the
Unfortunately, long before he got anywhere near Japan, Admiral Rozhdestvensky almost involved Russia in a war with England. The Admiral had been much impressed by Japan’s surprise torpedo attack on the fleet at Port Arthur. Assuming that such wily tactics would have a sequel, he suspected that Japanese ships flying false colors might slip through neutral European waters to deliver another frightful blow to the Russian navy. No man to be tricked, the Admiral ordered extra lookouts posted from the moment his ships left home port. Steaming at night through the North Sea in this trigger-happy state, Russian captains suddenly found themselves surrounded by a flotilla of small boats. Without asking questions, Russian guns sent shells crashing into the frail hulls of British fishing boats in the waters of Dogger Bank. After the first salvos, the Russians realized their mistake. Such was the Admiral’s fear, however, that, rather than stopping to pick up survivors, he steamed off into the night.
Only one boat had been sunk and two men killed, but Britain was outraged. Nicholas, already irritated by Britain’s diplomatic support of Japan, was in no mood to apologize. “The English are very angry and near the boiling point,” he wrote to Marie. “They are even said to be getting their fleet ready for action. Yesterday I sent a telegram to Uncle Bertie, expressing my regret, but I did not apologize.… I do not think the English will have the cheek to go further than to indulge in threats.”
The Russian Ambassador in London, Count Benckendorff, more accurately assessed the extent of Britain’s anger and quickly recommended that both parties submit the matter to the International Court at The Hague. Nicholas reluctantly agreed, and eventually Russia paid ?65,000 in damages.
Leaving this nasty crisis in his wake, Admiral Rozhdestvensky steamed into the Atlantic, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. He stopped and lay at anchor for three months at the French island of Madagascar while Russian diplomatic agents scoured the world’s shipyards seeking to buy extra battleships to reinforce the fleet. The Kaiser ordered German merchant vessels to fuel the Russian squadron. At secluded anchorages in Madagascar and Camranh Bay, Indochina, German seamen transferred hundreds of tons of coal into the bunkers of Admiral Rozhdestvensky’s weatherbeaten ships.
At two o’clock in the afternoon on May 27, 1905, the Russian fleet, led by eight battleships steaming in columns, appeared in the Strait of Tsushima between Japan and Korea. Admiral Togo, the Japanese commander, ranged his ships seven thousand yards across the head of the Russian columns, bringing his guns to bear first on one Russian ship, then another. As this blizzard of Japanese shells ripped though them, Russian warships exploded, capsized or simply stopped and began to drift. Within forty-five minutes it was over. Togo flashed his torpedo boats to attack and finish the cripples. All eight Russian battleships were lost, along with seven of Rozhdestvensky’s twelve cruisers and six of his nine destroyers.
Tsushima, the greatest sea battle since Trafalgar, had a powerful impact on naval thinking everywhere. It confronted Britain, whose whole existence depended on the Royal Navy, with the appalling prospect of losing a war in one afternoon in a general fleet engagement. The Kaiser, who cherished his High Seas Fleet, became equally frightened. As a result, during the four years of the First World War the huge British and German navies collided only once, at Jutland. In the United States, Tsushima convinced President Theodore Roosevelt that no nation could afford to divide its battle fleet as the Russians had done. Roosevelt immediately began pressing ahead with his plan to build a canal through Panama to link the two oceans that washed American shores.
The Tsar was traveling aboard the Imperial train when the news of the disaster reached him. He sent for the Minister of War, General Sakharov, who remained alone with him for a lengthy discussion. Returning to the lounge car where the staff was waiting to learn Nicholas’s reaction, Sakharov declared, “His Majesty showed that he thoroughly recognized the problems ahead of us and he sketched a very sensible plan of action. His composure is admirable.” In his diary that night, Nicholas wrote, “Definite confirmation of the terrible news concerning the almost complete destruction of our squadron.”
Recognizing that Russia no longer had a chance of winning the war, Nicholas sent for Sergius Witte and dispatched him to America to make the best of a peace conference which Roosevelt had offered to mediate. Although the war was ending as he had predicted, Witte accepted the assignment grudgingly. “When a sewer has to be cleaned, they send for Witte,” he grumbled. “But as soon as work of a cleaner and nicer kind appears, plenty of other candidates spring up.”
Crossing the Atlantic on the German liner
