THE TAKING OF KAI-PING. 603 squadrons of cavalry, and twelve guns. The march over the snowy roads, in cold that at nio-ht brought thethermometer nearly down to the zeroofFahrenheit, was tediousand difficult. On the 9th he was before Kai-ping. On the Drevious day he had been joined by a party of scouts from the First Army.

Kai-ping is a walled town of about 30,000 inhabitants, and an important centre of trade. South of the city runs a river, seventy or eighty they were running forward, presenting a good target on the snow,the Chinese fare beganagain. Evidently the men wholinedthe north bank of the river had learned something from European instructors. But all the same theJapanese came on, thoughsuffering considerableloss. The last rush across the broken ice of the river proved very difficult, but once they reached the bank the Chinese gave way, and the Japanese flag soon wavedfrom theold wallof Kai-ping. The fight hadlasted just three hours. The Japanese had lost 53 killed and 296 wounded. Four guns were captured in the entrenchments. The Chinese, covered by a rear-guard, made good their retreat to Ying-tzu, at the mouth of the Liao, and General Nogi was able to open communication with General Katsura at Haicheng.

yards wide. In summer this wouldhave been a formidable barrier, but it was frozen over with thick ice. The Chinese, however, had done something to make the crossing of the river difficult. They had cut up the ice in slabs, and, though theycouldnot prevent the waterfreezing hard again, they had tilted the masses of ice over each other at various angles, so that the new ice was broken up with slippery oblique surfaces and masses of hummocks. Instead of defendingthe old walls of the town,thegarrison, about 500 strong, had entrenched themselves along the river-bank,and the Japanese noticed that for the first time the defenders of these workshad abstained from the absurd traditional Chinese practice of marking their lines of trenches and breastworks with hundreds of banners, a practice that hadhitherto made their entrenchments easy targets for the artillery of the attack.

Katsura's division was twice attacked in a half-hearted, irresolute fashion, in the middle of January,by a force coming from the direction of Mukden. Some thousands of Chinese, on January, 17th, opened a long-range rifle and artillery fire on the townof Hai-cheng from the northward. At first the Japanese kept inside the fortifications, hoping to tempt the enemy into a closer attack. Finding they didnot come on,Katsuramoved out of the town, at one p.m. unlimbered his field guns, and formed his infantry for attack,on which the Chineseretreated. One killed and 49 wounded was the entire Japanese loss. Five days later the Chinese reappeared, and Katsura again moved out and attacked them, driving them off with a loss of more than 200 killed and wounded, while his loss was onlyonekilledand 26 wounded.

Nogi opened fire with his two batteries at dawn on January 10th. After a preliminary bombardment of the enemy's works,his infantry advanced to the attack. And now theJapanese noticed another improvement in the tactics of the defence. Hitherto the Chinese had opened fire at long ranges with their rifles, and had kept up the fusillade all through the advance. But at Kai-ping not a shot was fired till the hostile infantry was within 600 yards of the entrenchments, and then while the Japanese, advancingbyshort alternate rushes, were lying down to fire, the Chinese rifles were silent,but the moment they rose to advance, and while Having thus followed the Manchurian campaign up to the middle of January, 1895, and seen how Tachimi, Katsura, and Nogi had established themselves wellforward on the roads to Mukden and Niu-chang, we must see what had been happening in the meanwhile in the more interesting theatre of operations round Wei-hai-wei.