Chapter 85
Chapter 85
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: Burning Korean Peninsula (1)
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"......If anyone has any ideas, speak up. Just how are we supposed to break through Kuropatkin's defensive line?"
"......"
Field Marshal Oyama Iwao, the supreme commander of the Japanese army, posed the question with a grim expression, but no one answered.
They had no countermeasures left.
While Hans was fighting the Herero in Africa, the Japanese army had decided to deploy a massive number of artillery pieces to bombard the Russian trench lines and break through their defenses.
The Japanese, still in their right minds at the time, had adopted a firepower-centric doctrine influenced by their role model, the German army. In their view, this was the only way to breach the defensive line.
In that vein, they even brought coastal defense 280mm guns from the home islands and succeeded in pushing back the Russians in the first wave.
But if trench warfare could be breached that easily, the First World War wouldn't have earned its infamous reputation.
The Russians had layered their defenses in multiple lines. When the Japanese bombardment began, they simply abandoned the first line and leisurely fell back to the second.
Thus, the Japanese offensive, brimming with expectations of finally escaping the Yalu River, ground to a halt after just a few kilometers.
The Japanese headquarters tried another massive bombardment, but this time Japan's limited industrial capacity and national strength held them back.
Artillery was the only way to assault the Russian lines, yet they couldn't carry it out on schedule due to a shortage of shells.
It wasn't for nothing that Japan abandoned firepower-centric doctrine after the Russo-Japanese War and shifted to a spirit-and-bayonet focus influenced by Elan Vital.
"What about the Second Army? Still no good news from Oku?"
"I'm afraid the Second Army's situation is the same as the First Army's, Your Excellency."
Chief of Staff Kodama Gentarō couldn't even lift his head as he replied to the desperate tone of Field Marshal Oyama.
Originally, the plan was for the First Army to successfully cross the Yalu River, after which General Oku Yasukata would land the Second Army on the Liaodong Peninsula and seize Dalian.
But when the First Army got bogged down by Kuropatkin's defenses right after crossing and began suffering massive casualties, the Japanese revised their entire operational plan and decided to launch the landing immediately.
And so, in late May 1904, the Second Army landed boldly near Nanshan and Jinzhou, full of expectations that they would achieve something in place of the First Army, which was only producing corpses in real time by the Yalu.
But what greeted them were Russian trenches, machine guns, and barbed wire entanglements blanketing the Nanshan-Jinzhou sector, just like at the Yalu.
BOOM! Bang! Rat-tat-tat-tat───!!!
"Aaaagh!!"
"Mother!"
Before long, the Second Army too began getting shredded by German-made machine guns, just as the First Army had at the Yalu.
The Japanese soldiers died calling for their mothers like dogs, and General Oku, the Second Army commander who had been eager for glory, clutched his head in despair, just like Major General Kuroda.
"Haha, look at that! The Japanese are trash! Hahahaha!!!"
"Ungern, for God's sake, shut your mouth."
Unlike original history, where he dropped out of school to enlist only for the war to end before he reached the front, Roman von Ungern-Sternberg had arrived in the Far East on time, been assigned to the Jinzhou-Nanshan line, and was now cackling wildly while spraying his submachine gun at the Japanese.
Of course, Major General Roman Isidorovich Kondratenko—who had volunteered from idle duty at Lushun Fortress to Nanshan—and his Russian troops could only watch with rotten glares.
"How did a lunatic like that end up under my command......"
"Major General, the mines are ready."
"Roll 'em."
At Major General Kondratenko's order, the soldiers began rolling down the mines he had obtained from the navy.
The Japanese infantry, advancing with iron shields to block machine-gun fire, froze in place when they saw the massive bombs tumbling toward them.
KA-BOOM───!!
A massive explosion left a huge crater where the Japanese had been.
And the Japanese soldiers...... were in a very unfortunate state.
But Major General Roman Kondratenko's creative defenses didn't end there.
True to his legendary exploits in the original Lushun siege, he used cannons as mortars and wired batteries to barbed wire to create electrified barriers.
It was only natural that the Japanese, already suffering against the Russian defenses, were driven to madness.
"Uwaaaah! You cowards! Come out of those trenches! Fight us fair!"
"Commander, you mustn't!"
"Fetch General Oku at once!"
In the end, with the Second Army's offensive stagnating like the First's, Field Marshal Oyama and the Japanese headquarters clutched their heads and wailed.
"Has God truly forsaken Japan?!"
Not only the First Army, but now the Second was blocked by Russian defenses, unable to advance.
Both cards the Japanese army had prepared to break through to Fengtian were sealed.
Moreover, less than half a year into the war, they had already suffered 100,000 dead at the Yalu and Nanshan.
Considering that in original history the Japanese army mobilized up to 500,000 troops, that meant a fifth of their total force was gone.
Prime Minister Katsura Tarō fainted upon hearing the unbelievable figures, and the Japanese home islands plunged into grief.
Even Emperor Meiji couldn't hide his fury toward the incompetent military and generals at the imperial conference.
The Japanese army had gone from heroes to traitors ruining the war in an instant.
But what tormented the army generals even more was that, unlike the army, the navy was achieving some success.
Admiral Togo Heihachiro's combined fleet was still playing cat-and-mouse with Admiral Makarov, but they had accomplished their goal of bottling the Russian fleet in Lushun and dominating the Yellow Sea.
Given the deep-rooted army-navy rivalry stemming from the Satsuma-Choshu conflicts, the army headquarters felt like they were going insane.
'We have to achieve something, somehow!'
That was the common thought among everyone in the room.
But there was no way.
No matter how many troops they threw in, the Russian defenses showed no sign of cracking.
"At this rate, why not form a separate force to strike Lushun directly?"
"Hah. We can't even take Nanshan, and you want to attack Lushun? Are you in your right mind? Lushun is a fortress city to begin with. Its defenses are bound to be the thickest anywhere!"
"Urgh......"
Chief of Staff Kodama snapped at the idiotic suggestion from one of his staff officers, and heavy silence descended on headquarters once more.
If they had at least taken Nanshan, it might have been feasible, but in this situation, aiming for Lushun was impossible for the Japanese.
"At least the Russians are only hunkering down in defense without counterattacking. Small mercies."
As Supreme Commander Oyama said, just as the Japanese couldn't pierce the Russian lines, the Russians couldn't break through the Japanese defenses either.
Having successfully repelled the Japanese offensive, Kuropatkin—arrogant as he had been toward Japan in original history—ignored the objections of the German military observers and launched a counterattack.
BOOM! Bang!
"Time for payback, you Rosuke bastards!"
"How's it feel to be on the receiving end, huh?"
The Russians pretended to rout spectacularly before fleeing back to their trenches.
Because the Japanese had copied the Russian trench warfare with machine guns and barbed wire to the letter.
If the Russians tormented them with German MG99s, the Japanese gave it back with British-supplied Maxim machine guns.
Britain, shocked that it was worse than they thought despite believing Japan couldn't beat Russia, had rushed large quantities of Maxims to Japan.
Kuropatkin tried to assault Japanese trenches with the submachine guns that had served him well so far, but he lacked the numbers.
Germany had supplied only about 2,000 submachine guns to the Russians.
Moreover, being prototypes, they had poor durability and broke easily, so the actual number was even lower.
Thus, Kuropatkin discreetly proposed buying more from the German officers, but they flatly refused, citing depleted stocks from the Herero War.
Of course, it was a half-lie mixed with some truth.
Originally, the German observers had provided the submachine guns just to test their real-world viability.
A few officers who hadn't expected much had sloppily instructed Russian troops out of contempt, but the plan proceeded without major issues.
However, once the war began and the submachine guns proved devastatingly effective, the German officers panicked.
They couldn't let the Russians achieve more success, so Germany halted sales. Combined with the Russians' chronic supply issues, Kuropatkin had no choice but to hunker down in his trenches again.
The Russo-Japanese War had reached a complete stalemate.
Japan, with so much riding on this war, couldn't abandon it yet and continued futile offensives.
But even that was about to end.
"S-Sir! Big trouble!"
"What is it? Did the Russians finally break our lines?!"
The headquarters buzzed at Supreme Commander Oyama's words.
If that had happened, they were done for.
But the words from the officer who rushed in weren't about the Russians breaching Japanese defenses.
"A-An uprising has broken out in Korea!"
"What?! An uprising?!"
In a way, it could be even more serious.
Late July, Gapjin Year—or the 8th year of Gwangmu.
Myeonam Choi Ik-hyeon slowly opened his eyes toward the scholars, students, and hundreds of commoners who had resolved to fight Japan alongside him.
Their gazes burned with resolute determination, proven by the weapons in their hands.
Of course, aside from a few dozen hard-won Russian Berdan rifles and Japanese Murata rifles, they lacked proper arms.
Most were outdated matchlocks from the Imjin and Byungja eras, bows, swords, and other cold weapons. Those without even those clutched crude spears, Korean sickles, and farming tools.
Weapons like these stood no chance against Japanese machine guns and artillery.
But everyone gathered here already knew this was a desperate fight with slim odds of victory from the start.
Yet they still chose to fight the Japanese.
No one had forced them. Any Korean would fight the Japanese—but Choi Ik-hyeon had even told those afraid of death or worried about family to go home.
Yet no one left.
All here had chosen of their own will to stay and take up arms.
No reasons needed.
What reason does one need to protect one's country and family?
Even if it was a loathsome nation that only took without giving, this was Korea. Our Korea.
We could curse and topple it ourselves, but we wouldn't let the Japs have their way.
If the country falls, it falls—but we couldn't just watch it happen.
"Let's go fight."
"Waaaaah───!!"
With Choi Ik-hyeon's short, weighty words, a thunderous roar echoed across the hills.
The first uprising. The first righteous army.
Starting with Choi Ik-hyeon's rebellion, Koreans rose up across the eight provinces.
Yangban who received his calls to arms rebelled in their locales like him, and commoner leaders like Sin Dol-seok, inspired by them, took up arms against the Japanese without orders.
The Gapjin Righteous Army.
The massive righteous rebellion after the Eulmi Righteous Army of 1896—the dying gasp of the Korean Empire, vowing to fall together if we must.
And news of the uprising in Korea soon crossed the sea to Japan.