he would only need two Russian soldiers for every three Japanese soldiers. After the Russian defeat at the Battle of Mukden, Kuropatkin was relieved of command and handed over his post to Nikolai Linevich, formerly commander of the 1st Manchurian Army. However, he insisted that he stay at the front and was given permission to take over Linevich's old post. In 1906, following the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Kuropatkin served as a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia. However, in 1907 he retired to his country house, and wrote his own, yet candid, defense, which was published in a number of books in several languages. The Russian government reportedly confiscated the history he wrote. World War I At the start of World War I, Kuropatkin requested to be reinstated and to be sent to the front; however, his requests were blocked by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. Nevertheless, once Tsar Nicholas II assumed the post of Supreme Commander, he put Kuropatkin in charge of the Grenadier Corps in October, 1915. At the end of January 1916, he was appointed commander of the 5th Army, and in February 1916, he became Commander of the Northern Front, in succession to General Pavel Plehve, whose health had broken down. In early March, his forces undertook a limited offensive near Riga, but were outflanked and forced to withdraw to the Dvina River. A second and larger offensive later that month only managed to advance a couple of kilometers. Tsar Nicholas II did not accept Kuropatkin's excuses of a lack of artillery support, poor roads and bad weather. He planned a night attack which included setting up batteries of searchlights to blind the German defenders, a tactic which had worked in 1904 against Japanese troops. Unfortunately for his men in 1915, on being sent 'over the top', they were silhouetted and suffered thousands of casualties. Kuropatkin was relieved of command on July 22, 1916, and reassigned to Turkestan, where the Russian involvement in World War I, especially against the Ottoman Empire was extremely unpopular among the indigenous peoples and which had led to the Central Asian revolt of 1916. Kuropatkin served as Governor-General of the Turkestan Military District as well as ataman of the Semirechye Cossacks and led the brutal suppression of the revolt. Post Revolution In the February Revolution of 1917 Kuropatkin was in Petrograd, and quickly pledged his allegiance to the