Battle of Mukden

Battle of Mukden
Part of the Russo-Japanese War
Russian field gun firing during the battle of Mukden
Date 20 February – 10 March 1905 (2 weeks and 4 days) Location South of Mukden (modern Shenyang), Manchuria Result Japanese victory[1] Territorial changes Japanese occupy all of southern Manchuria Russian forces retreat to northern Manchuria
Belligerents
Empire of Japan	Russian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Ōyama Iwao Tatsumi Naofumi	Aleksey Kuropatkin
Strength
270,250 troops 262,900 infantry 7,350 cavalry 992 guns 200 machine guns[2]	292,000 troops[3]
Casualties and losses
77,504 total: 15,892 killed 59,612 wounded 2,000 captured[4][5]	88,352 total: 8,705 killed 51,438 wounded 28,209 MIA; of those, 22,000 fell into captivity[6]

The Battle of Mukden (奉天会戦, Hōten kaisen), one of the largest land battles to be fought before World War I and the last and the most decisive major land battle of the Russo-Japanese War,^[7] was fought from 20 February to 10 March 1905 between Japan and Russia near Mukden in Manchuria. The city is now called Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province in China.

Involving 610,000 combat participants and 164,000 combatant casualties, it was the largest modern-era battle fought prior to World War I, and possibly the largest battle in world history at that point.^[8] The scale of the battle, particularly in the amount of ordnance being expended, was unprecedented in world history. The Japanese side alone fired 20.11 million rifle and machine gun rounds and 279,394 artillery shells in just over ten days of fighting (yet the Russians still fired more), matching the ammunition consumption of the German army in the entire 191-day Franco-Prussian War.^[9] The battle was a decisive strategic victory for the Japanese and, coupled with their victory at the Battle of Tsushima four months later, proved critical in ending the war in their favor.