the strength of the garrison up to about a thousand; that is, it made them equal in strength to the attacking party, which had, therefore, of course, no chance, especially as the Cossacks were without bayonets and had no skill whatever in attacking intrenched infantry. It is a truism to say that cavalry can do nothing against an equal force of infantry calmly lying behind earthworks, with their eyes on the sights of their rifles. Our Cossacks dismounted, of course, and advanced to the attack sword in hand, but they suffered seriously from the Japanese fire, and could make no progress. The courage of the Cossacks seems to be outside of themselves (to apply to them what Tacitus said of the Sarmates), for once dismounted they are lost.
Among those killed in our brigade was Captain Koulibakine, a wealthy and fashionable officer of the Horse Guards, who had volunteered for the war.
Meanwhile the bulk of Mishchenko's force was held in reserve. I was with the Caucasian brigade on the left flank, that is, on the railway, where for some reason or other it was suspected that an attempt would be made to flank us. These suspicions were increased by the fact that a few shots were fired on this part of our line, but these shots were probably fired by isolated Japanese volunteers, or perhaps by our own scouts, who mistook one another for the enemy. Luckily, however, no harm was done, only two horses wounded, I think. But the fear of an enemy who was not there kept us close to the railway line until five o'clock, when the fight ceased.
About half-past four, a Chinese building in front of the station and another on the railway line burst simultaneously into flames, and many of us thought that the former building was the station itself, or, at least, some of the buildings in which the Japanese stores were kept. But the murderous fire of the enemy still continued, and it was easy to see that we were making no progress. Just then an imperative order from General Mishchenko reached us. It was to the effect that we must at once retreat as quickly as we could to a village seventeen versts north of Yinkow, and we lost no time in doing so. There was not the slightest panic or disorder in our retreat, and I do not think that there was the slightest panic or disorder in any of the other detachments. The general had evidently given himself an hour to do the work he had got to do at Yinkow, and had decided beforehand to leave, directly that hour was up.
It was too dangerous to remain, especially with such a composite force. If a night attack had been carried out, these different races in our brigade might very probably have come into collision, each under the impression that the other party was the enemy. With the stores at Yinkow station left uncaptured, the success of the raid was, however, incomplete. It was a pity we did not destroy these stores. A little more would have done it.
I have just said that we got orders to fall back on a village seventeen miles north of Mukden. We did so in good order, and reached our destination in two hours. It was a smart piece of work all round, for all the other regiments were there before us, all except the Verkhnyudinsky and the others that were guarding our rear. Unfortunately the village in question was too small to hold us all, so that most of us — including the present writer — had to sleep out in the open, by
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no means a pleasant experience in Manchuria at that time of the year.
We heard next morning that 20,000 Japanese had assembled at Haicheng and were going to cut us off by establishing a network of infantry posts from that city right across to the Liao River; but neither this information nor the more startling news that a Japanese infantry force was advancing towards us from the east of Yinkow caused us to hurry in the least.