After weakening Topornin by sixteen battalions, Kaulbars, on reaching his force, countermanded the advance on Sha-ling-pu, which had been begun on the morning of the 3rd, and suddenly withdrew thirty-two battalions to Mukden without fighting. This made our position distinctly worse. He took no steps to establish and maintain touch with Birger’s brigade on the Hsin-min-tun road, and never informed the latter of the order to retire he had given to Topornin on the 3rd. In telling Launits on the morning of March 3 of his decision (to withdraw Topornin’s force to Mukden), he stated that “Grekoff’s column and Birger’s brigade are probably cut off from Mukden,” but he made no attempt to help Birger. And yet up to 2 p.m. on the 3rd Birger’s brigade was not even engaged. Our attempt to retake Ssu-hu-chia-pu on March 4 was stopped by Launits, owing to the receipt of orders from Kaulbars not to attack if it was likely to be a costly operation. Kaulbars did nothing that day, although he had under his command 119 battalions[99] on the right bank of the Hun, and although I had ordered him to assume the offensive. Moreover, he did not even know the whereabouts of the troops under him. Although he had 113 battalions under his command on the right bank on March 5, he again did nothing. He did not carry out my orders to attack the enemy’s left energetically, and permitted these troops, which were at Khou-kha—next to Gerngross’s force—to deploy very slowly, and stopped their advance before they had got in touch with the enemy. Moreover, yielding to the preconceived idea of the main danger lying in the west, he moved sixteen splendid battalions of the 10th Corps from Gerngross’s force, operating towards Hsin-min-tun, on to the left flank of the army. Yet again on the 6th, although he had 116 battalions on the right bank, he effected scarcely anything, for our active operations towards Hsin-min-tun were conducted with an insufficient force, and therefore failed. The result of his dispositions from March 2 to 5 was that on the 6th we did not have a single battalion of the 2nd Army operating against Nogi, whereas we should have had forty.[100] All ninety-six battalions of the 2nd Army were on that day distributed on the defensive against Oku. This distribution of troops, which in no way met either the general requirements or the definite task given to Kaulbars—to stop Nogi’s army—constituted one of the main reasons of the failure of our operations at Mukden. On the 2nd and 3rd the following troops were given to Kaulbars from my reserve for his operations against Nogi: Battalions. 16th Corps 24 1st Siberians 18 De Witte’s column (3rd Army) 15 Zapolski’s column 4 ―― Total 61