That army was made up of the conquerors of Port Arthur. The fall of that fortress released a host of 80,000 seasoned fighters, flushed with a victory that filled the world with awe and admiration. Just so soon as the details of the surrender had been completed this force was under way northward to reinforce Marshal Oyama. At its head was the savagely brave Nogi, who had just won for himself undying place in the history of Japan by successfully reducing the Gibraltar of the Orient. Swift from the scene of one great triumph he was speeding to another. It was in the disposition of this force that all of the genius of Oyama was expended. When he sent Nogi westward in a wide circuit to swing completely around the Russian right army, to plunge northward by forced marches as far as Simintin and then bend eastward to burst upon the Russian rear, sweeping within five miles of their lines before an adequate defence could be provided, he settled the fate of Russia's great army of nearly a half million men. He struck a blow that made an awful rout possible, and the blow that made possible the final disaster, the forced abandonment of Tie Pass, that left the Russian Army a demoralized horde of panicked troops facing northward into the bleak stretches of Northern Manchuria. By this blow he added the final humiliation to Russia's greatest soldier, Kuropatkin, and lost that erstwhile leader with half of a century of popular adulation behind him, the command of Russia's Armies in Manchuria. He ended every hope of an offensive campaign in Manchuria, achieving at a stroke every result that for which a year's campaign had been allotted. [Sidenote: "Out of the Way for Us"]