But again the inactivity of the armies was to be broken before the month of January had come to an end. The second Manchurian army, the command of which had been committed to General Gripenberg, had now been brought up to strength, and almost immediately proceeded to put itself in evidence. On the 25th General Kuropatkin telegraphed to the Czar announcing briefly two facts--that the offensive had been begun against the enemy on the right (or western) flank; and that the thermometer registered 16 degrees of frost. The full significance of this message only appeared a few days later, when it was revealed that an attempt in force was being made to turn the Japanese left. The main objective of the Russian attack was the village of Sandepu, the main northwest position of the Japanese left army. It will be remembered that after the battle of Yentai or the Sha-ho, which took place in October, the Japanese were left holding a front of fifty miles or more along the south bank of the Sha-ho, a tributary to the Hun-ho, running roughly due east and west at a distance of ten or fifteen miles south of Mukden. The Russian position faced the Japanese on the other bank of the Sha-ho, and then inclined away northwest in the direction of Hsinmintun, a Chinese town on the west bank of the Liao River, from which the Russian army had for a long time been drawing large supplies, in contempt of the neutrality of China. Sandepu is over thirty miles south of Mukden, and lies in the angle made by the Hun River with the railway. It consists of some hundred houses, or farmsteads, each surrounded by high walls of sun-dried bricks, about three feet thick. Loop-holed for musketry, these walls, form an admirable defence, especially as the surrounding country is quite open and flat. But at this season of the year, the Hun-ho, which is a natural defence to the flank of an army resting on Sandepu, is frozen over to a thickness of several feet, and can be safely crossed both by men and transport. The Russians, 85,000 strong, and with no less than 350 guns, moved southwards down the right bank of the Hun-ho until they reached a point a few miles southwest of Sandepu, and there they crossed the frozen river and occupied two villages in which the Japanese had stationed outposts. On the 26th the Russians, who had at the same time crossed the Hun at Chang-tau, again advanced, encountering a steadily increasing resistance and seized after a fierce fight the village of Sha-ho-pu, a few miles northeast of Sandepu, and from that moment the action became general. The capture of Sandepu was essential to any attempt to roll up the Japanese left, and to this object the Russian forces now set themselves with fierce determination. On January 27th, after giving an account of much promiscuous fighting, General Kuropatkin announced to the Czar that "in the evening, after a desperate fight, our troops having, with the help of the sappers,