The battle was actually begun on the initiative of the Japanese. By February 19, Marshal Oyama believed he was ready to begin the struggle for Mukden. He prefaced the battle by the prophecy that Mukden would be occupied by his army on March 10, a prophecy which caused only merriment in Russia, but which was literally fulfilled. To General Kuroki was given the honor of firing the first guns of the renewal of the campaign. General Kuroki, after the battle of the Sha-ho River, had wintered on the southern bank of the Taitze River, the centre of his army resting in the neighborhood of Bensihu, thirty-five miles east of Yentai. The Russian line was ten miles north, and the first place to be taken was Tsinkhetchen, at a point where the level river country began to rise to the Tie range of mountains, running in a generally northwest-southeast direction across all of Manchuria, into Mongolia northward, and into Korea southward, passing along the eastern side of the Russian triangle. The task assigned to Kuroki was to drive the Russians from Tsinkhetchen into the foothills to the passes of the mountains, then to take these and to debouch his army on the plains of the Hun River, twenty miles east of Mukden, and eastward of Fushun, then to strike northwestward toward the railroad and line of retreat of the Russian Army northward from Mukden, joining at the railroad the forces under Oku and Nogi, which were to attack from the west. Kuroki's army got under way February 19, crossing the first of the rivers, the Taitse, without opposition. Then the advance was made northward to the Sha-ho, and here the Russian lines were encountered. A surprise night attack cleared away the Russians guarding the Sha-ho at Vanupudza, ten miles east of the railroad. Kuroki then bent northeastward toward the outermost position of the Russian left, avoiding the forces commanding the hills north of the Sha-ho. [Sidenote: The Struggle on the East Front]