In order to be in a position to check the combined advance of the two Japanese groups, I thought it advisable to strengthen our southern force, and therefore so rearranged our dispositions that 87 out of 110 battalions were massed on the southern front, in the area Kai-ping—Hai-cheng, against Oku and Nogi. Fortunately for us, the critical position of our eastern front during the operations at Te-li-ssu was not appreciated by Kuroki, which fact favoured Count Keller’s demonstration towards Feng-huang-cheng in the middle of June. Otherwise Kuroki might have seized Liao-yang. On the 25th the enemy’s advance against our eastern force was commenced. On the 27th Keller withdrew some of his troops from the Fen-shui Ling (Passes) without opposition, and by July 1 the main body was concentrated seven miles east of Lang-tzu-shan and twenty-seven from Liao-yang. On June 27, without any serious engagement, but under pressure from the enemy, we abandoned the Fen-shui Ling (Passes), which they at once occupied. A few days previously—on June 23—about a division of the enemy had been located by Rennenkampf to the east of Sai-ma-chi. Believing that Hai-cheng constituted our greatest danger, as the enemy might, if they gained a success there, cut off Shtakelberg’s force close by, on the 29th I concentrated forty-one battalions and eighteen _sotnias_ under Zasulitch at Hsi-mu-cheng, intending with them to hurl back the enemy on to their Hai-cheng line of advance. However, on the same day we discovered that those of the enemy who had moved at first from the Ta Ling (Pass) along the Hsi-mu-cheng road had again retired to it.