One month had passed since General Kuropatkin retreated from Liao-yang and, fearing pursuit, withdrew his defeated and demoralised troops to the North. Finding that the Japanese were not pressing close upon his heels, the Russian leader took measures for defence. Tieh-ling, forty-five miles North of Mukden, was chosen as a base, and the hills on both sides of the road were fortified. Wushun, thirty miles East, on the upper reaches of the river Hun, was garrisoned by a large force to guard against a flanking movement and connected with Tieh-ling by a new road. The mountain pass that had served as the means of communication with Wushun was strengthened with earthworks. Near Tahaitun, seven miles South of Tieh-ling, the range of hills that cross the road from East to West were entrenched; the right bank of the river at Ilu, twenty-two miles South, was fortified; defences were made in front of Mukden, and trenches were dug on the North bank of the river Hun. At the end of September General Kuropatkin had completed his preparations, and in the first days of October the army began to move South. Small parties of Cossacks and infantry appeared on our front, which extended from Pintaitsu, North of Ponchiho, to the railway at Yentai--a distance of about thirty miles from East to West. Their mission was to ascertain our strength and disposition. On October the 4th Japanese patrols on the Mukden and Wushun roads were attacked, and two days later the brigade on our right wing was ordered to fall back on the river Tai-tsu at Ponchiho. The enemy on that day established themselves along a line stretching from Pintaitsu through Sankwaisu to the North of Yentai. The advance of the Russian army had begun in earnest, and we were to witness a struggle that has few parallels in the annals of war. For one long week half a million of men held one another in close and deadly grip, and night and day before our eyes were performed deeds of heroism that have never been surpassed. Attack and counter-attack followed with bewildering rapidity; position after position was stormed and stormed again; now a brigade and now a company pressed forward with the bayonet, and on the hill tops, clear against the sky, men faced each other within a dozen paces or rushed together in one bloody scrimmage. The Russians fought with the courage and fatalism of their race. Never have they displayed such reckless bravery and resolution. But they have lost their aptitude for war. Within twenty-four hours they had ceased to be the assailants and were fighting for their lives against the irresistible tide that swept toward Mukden and covered mountain and plain for thirty miles with dead and dying.