The Theatre of War.

The country over which the war was fought was rugged and mountainous although the plains and valleys were cultivated, the main crop consisting of millet could grow to the height of fifteen feet before harvesting. The roads were no more than dirt tracks, which became rutted and potholed in the stifling summers, and if not frozen solid, then covered in deep snow during the bitter cold winters. The whole countryside virtually disappeared under a sea of mud in the rainy season from July to September, and as the Russian Captain Soloviev wrote: “The mud reaches the breasts of the horses, covers the spokes of the wheels of heavy wagons sinking in the soil…Only Chinese arbas (high carts with huge wheels) survive the swamps and holes of the impassable Manchurian roads.”

For the Russians these problems were also compounded by the fact that the campaign was fought over 5,000 miles from Moscow. Their Trans-Siberian Railway was single track with hardly any facilities for off-loading or sidings on its entire route. It was not complete at two points, one at Lake Baikal where the loop line around the lake was still under construction, the other at The Great Kingan Mountains, where tunnelling was still not completed. These breaks on the line meant that to transport a regiment of troops from Moscow to Harbin would take from four to six weeks. When one adds to this the fact that Russian logistics in the form of feeding and supplying their armies had always been haphazard, it is small wonder that many of their soldiers arrived at their destination in very poor condition.

The determining factor for both sides was control of the sea. For the Japanese, naval supremacy was crucial, and as the main Russian Pacific Fleet was anchored in Port Arthur, it became imperative that this threat to any successful landing of their troops in Korea should be eliminated, while at the same time: “whether strategy demanded it or not, the conquest of Port Arthur was for Japan the spiritual pivot of the conflict.”