death, caring only for the
possession of the fortress which they had been sent to win.

We should like to record some victories for the Russians, but the annals
of the war tell us of none. Outgeneralled and driven back from their
strong position on the Yalu River; decisively beaten in the great battle
of Liao-yang; checked in their offensive movement on the Shakhe River,
with immense loss; and finally utterly defeated in the desperate two
weeks' struggle around Mukden; the field warfare ended in the two great
armies facing each other at Harbin, with months of manoeuvring before
them.

Meanwhile the campaign in the peninsula had gone on with like desperate
efforts and final success of the Japanese, Port Arthur surrendering to
its irresistible besiegers on the opening day of 1905. With it fell the
Russian fleet which had been cooped up in its harbor for nearly a year;
defeated and driven back in its every attempt to escape; its flag-ship,
the "Petropavlovsk," sunk by a mine on April 13, 1904, carrying down
Admiral Makaroff and nearly all its crew; the remnant of the fleet being
finally sunk or otherwise disabled to save them from capture on the
surrender of Port Arthur to the besieging forces.

Such, in very brief epitome, were the leading features of the conflict
on land and its earlier events on the sea. We must now return to the
great naval battle spoken of above, which calls for detailed description
alike from its being the closing struggle of the contest and from its
extraordinary character as a phenomenal event in maritime war.

The loss of the naval strength of Russia in eastern waters led to a
desperate effort to retrieve the disaster, by sending from the Baltic
every war-ship that could be got ready, with the hope that a strong
fleet on the open waters of the east would enable Russia to regain its
prestige as a naval power and deal a deadly blow at its foe, by closing
the waters upon the possession of which the islanders depended for the
support of their armies in Manchuria.

This supplementary fleet, under Admiral Rojestvensky, set sail from the
port of Libau on October 16, 1904, beginning its career inauspiciously
by firing impulsively on some English fishing-boats on the 21st, with
the impression that these were Japanese scouts. This hasty act
threatened to embroil Russia with another foe, the ally of Japan, but it
passed off with no serious results.

Entering the Mediterranean and passing through the Su