including only the cruiser "Almez" and a few torpedo-boats that came
limping into the harbor of Vladivostok with the news of the disaster,
and the cruisers "Oleg," "Aurora," and "Jemchug," under Rear-admiral
Enquist, that straggled in a damaged condition into Manila harbor a week
after the great fight. Aside from these the Russian fleet was
annihilated, its ships destroyed or captured; the total loss, according
to Admiral Togo's report, being eight battle-ships, three armored
cruisers, three coast-defense ships, and an unenumerated multitude of
smaller vessels, while the loss in men was four thousand prisoners and
probably twice that number slain or drowned.

The most astonishing part of the report was that the total losses of the
Japanese were three torpedo-boats, no other ships being seriously
damaged, while the loss in killed and wounded was not over eight hundred
men. It was a fight that paralleled, in all respects except that of
dimensions of the battling fleets, the naval fights at Manila and
Santiago in the Spanish-American war.

What followed this stupendous victory needs not many words to tell. On
land and sea the Russians had been fought to a finish. To protract the
war would have been but to add to their disasters. Peace was imperative
and it came in the following September, the chief result being that the
Russian career of conquest in Eastern Asia was stayed and Japan became
the master spirit in that region of the globe.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Historical Tales: France.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15), by Charles Morris

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