[Sidenote: The Battle at the Center] It is necessary, in recording the story of the battle, to leave Kuroki, still fighting in vain to take Fushun and open the road to the Russian rear, and to record events on other parts of the field. The battle line, when both armies had actually been joined, extended for a distance between eighty and one hundred miles. Every event at every position dovetailed into the whole strategy of the battle, yet a vast difficulty is imposed in collating all of the scattered events into a continuous story. No one observer, possibly not the Generals-in-chief themselves, could follow all of the swift moving events, and the best and at that a most difficult achievement was to follow the main trend of events interpreting separate achievements, advances, retrogressions, as they bore on the grand object of each army. The battle of Mukden was, in fact, four battles in one. One of those battles was fought between Kuroki and Linevitch on the east. The second battle within the battle of Mukden was fought between the centre armies and focussed in the beginning of the conflict at Lone Tree, or Putiloff Hill, just east of the railroad, forty-five miles south of Mukden. Here General Nodzu commanded the Japanese and General Kuropatkin in person and General Zassulitch, divisional commander, directed the Russian defence. The battle here began on February 24, the date on which General Kuroki delivered the attack on Tsinkhetchen. General Nodzu's immediate task was to keep the Russian centre too well occupied and in fear of a general assault, thus preventing the sending of reinforcements to the flank, where Kuroki was at his important work. The artillery duel which waged around the centre positions has never been equalled in the history of war. The Russians had at this point alone 530 guns, fifty of them siege guns on permanent emplacements firing eight-inch shells. Putiloff and Novgorod Hill bristled with field and machine guns, and these commanding hills were flanked east and west by fortifications upon which five months' work had been expended and which are perhaps the finest defensive works ever erected on a battlefield.