The Decisive Battle Toward a Brief Finale (3)
Once the small talk surrounding my personal visit to the front at the head of the volunteer troops had run its course, the staff officers who had been laying out a tactical map in one corner of headquarters began sliding pieces this way and that and took charge of the operations briefing.
Through intelligence and reconnaissance, the movements and dispositions of the Qing army — scattered across the whole of Liaodong and stretching back behind Shenyang into Liaoxi — stood out clearly before my eyes.
"We will now begin the operations briefing."
The first man to take up the pointer was Seo Jae-pil, Vice Minister of War and commander of the 2nd Regiment.
"As you can see from the map, the defensive terrain the Qing have chosen to hold Shenyang is the last stretch of hills to the northwest. The bulk of their force has secured camps and strongpoints there, and they are waiting for us while still retaining their grip on Shenyang Fortress."
"The country north of Shenyang has been open plain since ancient times. With the only commanding height in their hands, the enemy will obviously force us into an unfavorable artillery duel and bleed us dry."
"Is there no way to counter that?"
"There is, if we can take their high ground in a frontal firepower engagement. Failing that, we request the French artillery and have our own troops attempt small-scale slugging matches all along the line, drawing their fire first so we can suppress their batteries."
"That's just saying we should start by offering our own soldiers as a sacrifice, isn't it?"
"There's no need to hand that many of our assets over to Qing artillery that isn't even worth a damn, is there?"
Each man analyzed the movements and temper of the enemy posted at Shenyang according to his own experience, or according to what he had been taught. Following their explanations as I studied the fortress from above and below, I put the question back to them.
"So the enemy has given up the entire southern side of the city?"
"Yes, that is correct, Your Excellency."
"It isn't a trap?"
"If it were a trap, the enemy would have had to deploy troops to the east to encircle our regiments and replacement divisions, or at least station a reserve of comparable size first and dig in. No such movement has been reported."
"There has also been the view that, after their string of defeats, the Qing simply lack the troops to hold Shenyang."
"So for now they are watching rather than intercepting."
"That is the assessment of our general staff, Your Excellency."
Following the staff's explanations, I studied the tactical map and found myself quietly impressed. The chart, compiled from every scrap of geography that search parties and scouts had gathered while encircling Shenyang across the Liaodong theater, might have differed in the finer numerals here and there — but it rivaled a modern satellite map, down to the most trivial scales and contour lines.
Northwest of Shenyang, the ground had from ancient times run as a broad, unbroken open plain straight through to Shanhaiguan. By contrast, the line of advance we had taken from the Yalu River to Shenyang had been, for the most part, brutal mountain country. And that was not all. Unlike the twenty-first century, the natural face of Liaodong in this age was still largely unopened wilderness: dense jungle and forest almost everywhere, and what little better ground there was had been broken, here and there, by marshes that made any advance a grinding ordeal.
Reckoning that the supply lines from Yingkou and Lushun (Port Arthur) would have no small difficulty reaching as far as Shenyang, I thought of Han Gyu-seol, who had already pushed forward, and opened my mouth.
"Our army of fifty thousand has already advanced to the very gates of Shenyang, I take it?"
"The two replacement divisions and three independent regiments under General Han Gyu-seol will have moved to secure footholds for the assault on Shenyang. Wired communications for the supply lines have been established at intervals, and there appears to have been no trouble so far."
"Hmm."
Two divisions meant a host of forty thousand — two regular regiments and six replacement regiments — while the three independent regiments were a reserve division that had not yet formed its subordinate units. The Chief of Staff added that they had set out for Shenyang in advance because, though shortages of training and of officers across the national army made it hard to expect proper operational performance from a force of that paper strength, French and American arms had at least equipped every man in the divisions with muzzle-loading rifles instead of matchlocks. If they secured camps and fortified positions first, they could hold their ground.
I gathered that, unlike the other divisions which included regular regiments drawn from the old capital garrisons, the replacement divisions under Han Seong-geun were composed largely of pure Conscript Militia, and so could not endure forced marches of any real intensity; their objectives had to be set with that margin in mind.
Thanks to the support of the French expeditionary force, our army could also make intermittent use, in the Liaodong theater, of field telegraph wagons — what passed in this age for the most advanced technology there was. The roads were wretched and the problem of feeding the wires with power was real enough, but the effort and will of the French signals units, who had kept communications open with the Far East Squadron in the far harsher country of the Indochina Peninsula, were things one had to respect. Moving with them was a French expeditionary artillery train as well. The corps General Han Gyu-seol now led might have been a ragtag militia of nearly forty thousand replacement troops — but the quality of the supporting arms wrapped around it, and the influence of French officers who amounted to a full complement of Foreign Military Advisors, were nothing to be dismissed.
And because officers were so desperately short, Lieutenant Colonel Ninsted, Colonel Cummins, and Brigadier General William M. Dye, all dispatched by the United States, were at Han Gyu-seol's side performing the work of a genuine general staff.
It might actually be better to leave the replacement divisions — militia in all but name — entirely in the hands of the foreign advisors.
Sensing the direction of my gaze, Han Seong-geun added a further word.
"In any case, unless the reinforcements dispatched from Beijing and the Beiyang Army arrive, the Qing in Shenyang Fortress will not have the courage to intercept General Han Gyu-seol's force first. Do not worry overly, Your Excellency."
"I know that well enough. I only prayed that the blood of the people who rose to save the Republic would not be spilled in vain."
"Your words are most just, Your Excellency."
Seo Jae-pil then reassured me more than once that, from the small engagements and raids fought thus far, the enemy's intent was nothing more than a delaying action; there was no sign of any preliminary work toward a great encirclement and annihilation. Han Seong-geun, the man who had done more than anyone to take Fenghuangcheng, stepped in to support him.
"The Qing army as it stands has neither the will, the effort, nor the ability to execute a military operation of that sophistication."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. Including the volunteer division that has now landed at Yingkou, the Republic has committed some one hundred and thirty thousand men to Liaodong — a great army. To cut that army at the waist, the Qing would have to throw at least sixty thousand into the very middle of the theater: a force large enough to be defeated in detail, or even encircled itself by our own movements. Yet the troops confirmed by eye around Shenyang number barely fifty thousand. Unless the mounted bandits who have already maneuvered farther into Manchuria amount to tens of thousands more, encirclement and annihilation is a dream as far as the Qing are concerned."
"And taking the counsel of the French military advisors, who warned us of just such a contingency, our headquarters has already committed the Hobunwi — our only cavalry asset — to watch the bandits who fell back into Manchuria."
As the generals explained, the vast territory along the Manchurian axis laid out on the tactical map was, for technical reasons, more than ample country in which to strike at the gaps in a Republic army that had secured its supply lines and its axis of advance in a single thin thread. But purely as a matter of bulk, no great trouble or warning sign had yet appeared. Han Gyu-seol, who held the van, and the security-minded Han Seong-geun were building and holding a string of checkpoints and redoubts in real time to keep the supply roads to Yingkou and Lushun running steadily, and through those roads the replacement divisions and reservists drawn from the peninsula continued to pour toward Liaodong in a stable stream.
And the most important fact of all was this: the great clash about to be fought at Shenyang was everything we had as well. Our last mobilization had fallen on the thirtieth of September. With a hundred and seventy thousand men committed to Liaodong, the coming of harvest season made any further prosecution of the war all but impossible. However great a victory one won, victory did not put rice in anyone's mouth.
Which is why the Qing, knowing a defense of Shenyang is nearly impossible given the disparity in firepower, may choose not to sit behind walls at all — and may instead try to draw us into a field battle.
Once one took the point that Shenyang had never been built as a fortress city in the first place, it made sense that the Qing had so readily handed us the southern approaches to one of the imperial house's sacred places. If a field battle opened on the open plain, both sides would put the commitment of infantry second to the work of widening their own artillery's reach — and the result would be a theater that simply stalled.
A delaying action that isn't quite a delaying action.
Unlike the Liaodong Qing, who had been beaten without pause until now, the enemy was at last trying to move with cunning. And that was a fact every staff officer in the room, and every dispatched military advisor, already knew perfectly well.
"The enemy will demand that we bleed while we sit half astride Shenyang. In that interval they will wait for reinforcements coming overland from Beijing and Zhili — and they may even attempt a surprise landing at Yingkou or Lushun with the Beiyang Fleet."
As Seo Jae-pil moved the pieces, Yun Ung-ryeol came in beside him to help. The Liaodong defense army bunched north of Shenyang, and the remnant Qing still bottled up at Shanhaiguan and Ningyuan, were holding a thin line and blocking our advance in a lateral front. The red pieces of the Republic army, abandoning every lesser strongpoint and city garrison and pouring almost entirely toward Shenyang, made a spectacle of their own.
"But they will only show 'intent' — and shamelessly drag out the time."
"And why is that?"
"It is because time favors the Qing, Your Excellency. France, our ally, will rapidly tire of a war now approaching five years, and the United States has not even formed its expeditionary force yet."
"If this battle is the last and the war is simply allowed to drag, every fight that follows will fall entirely on our Republic alone."
From the old generals who had lived through both Western incursions in the days of the Daewongun, down to the staff officers who had been cadets of the Gaehwadang, every man in the room was of one mind. The Qing meant to starve us out with the slack and the resources that came of their sheer bulk, and our allies were tiring fast under the burden and the cost of crossing an ocean — and that, for the Republic, was a weakness.
But as ever, the men of the Republic's government, in whom ability and ambition were properly joined, had found their answer.
"Then the Republic needs one decisive measure to smash this obvious Qing design."
"And what is that?"
When I asked, Han Seong-geun reached out a hand and answered.
"We need a surprise blocking operation of our own. A force moving through Yingkou would temporarily cut the long axis connecting Ningyuan and Shenyang."
"It would put psychological pressure on the Liaodong army facing us at Shenyang, and at the same time force a strategic misjudgment on Zhili, whose communications with Liaodong would be cut."
"And there is one thing more."
Seo Jae-pil explained that this was the operation Admiral Amédée Courbet, commander of the French expedition, had urged on his earlier visit to Hanseong: the Far East Squadron would drive a large landing force out of nearby Yingkou and thrust it into Liaoxi, and at the same time destroy the Beiyang Fleet when it sortied to intercept — a plan the staff had judged, he said, to be somewhat flush with confidence.
"In the end, whether this war concludes will be decided by whether the Qing Beiyang Fleet avoids a decisive battle or stands to fight."
"Hmm. If the Beiyang Army is defeated by us or withdraws from the theater, the fleet is all the Beiyang forces will have left..."
I studied the map for a long while after his words, then spoke slowly.
"How many troops would be appropriate?"
The strategy itself was sound enough. It was a good deal better than letting ourselves be pinned in a tedious game of tag at Shenyang, exactly as the enemy intended, until the whole campaign seized up. The staff muttered among themselves for a moment, then answered.
"A minimum of fifty thousand would have to be committed. We must drive through a movement that looks, to the enemy, as if we mean to take Ningyuan and cut the link between Shenyang and Beijing completely — and if they remain passive, we must actually storm Ningyuan and draw the first lines of a picture in which the entire Liaodong defense army can be encircled and destroyed."
"The French artillery is tied down south of Shenyang. Can Ningyuan be taken without artillery support?"
"Your Excellency, the Joseon army of old could never have stormed a fortress as fine as Ningyuan without artillery — but things are different now. Admiral Courbet has said he may, depending on circumstances, undertake a naval bombardment. It is not an impossible operation."
At his explanation I fell silent for a moment, thinking it through. Whatever the enemy intended, the Republic needed to gather itself and, in a single great field battle, break the Qing court's will to go on with the war — and it needed a clear achievement toward the mastery of Liaodong. That achievement was the complete occupation of Shenyang; and the taking of Ningyuan, as a means of bringing pressure onto Shanhaiguan, had to be weighed as a matter of course.
If we give the Far East Squadron the room to press Tianjin directly, the Beiyang Fleet lying in Zhili will have no choice but to come out — or to surrender as it stands and try to preserve its strength.
In my calculations there was no case in which the Qing imperial house planned another flight from the capital. Imagine it honestly: a country they had, until only recently, regarded as a tributary, driving all the way to the imperial city, and the Son of Heaven himself abandoning the capital and running. The internal rupture that would follow would shake the foundations of the Qing harder than losing the war.
My calculations finished, I spoke with a face full of conviction.
"Understood, Your Excellency!"
And so the great decisive battle for a brief finale had only just begun.