The Battle of Sandepu (also known as the Battle of Heikoutai) ( (Kokkōdai no kaisen), ) was a major land battle of the Russo-Japanese War. It was fought within a group of villages about southwest of Mukden, Manchuria. Background After the Battle of Shaho, the Russian and Japanese forces faced each other south of Mukden until the frozen Manchurian winter began. The Russians were entrenched in the city of Mukden, while the Japanese occupied a 160-kilometer front with the Japanese 1st Army, 2nd Army, 4th Army and the Akiyama Independent Cavalry Regiment. The Japanese field commanders thought no major battle was possible and assumed that the Russians had the same view regarding the difficulty of winter combat. The Russian commander, General Aleksey Kuropatkin was receiving reinforcements via the Trans-Siberian Railway but was concerned about the impending arrival of the battle-hardened Japanese Third Army under General Nogi Maresuke to the front after the fall of Port Arthur on 2 January 1905. General Nikolai Linevich had joined Kuropatkin’s staff at Mukden from Vladivostok to command the 1st Manchurian Army and Kuropatkin’s left flank. The center was held by General Alexander Kaulbars’s 3rd Manchurian Army. The right flank was commanded by General Oskar Gripenberg, the inexperienced newly arrived commanding general of the 2nd Manchurian Army. The 2nd Manchurian Army consisted of the 8th European Army Corps, a division of the 10th, the 61st Reserve Division, the 5th Rifle Brigade, and the 1st Siberian Army Corps under General Baron Georgii Stackelberg, besides a large body of cavalry, or approximately, 285,000 men and 350 guns. Gripenberg was initially pessimistic towards Kuropatkin's plans for an offensive against the Japanese left wing, which was in an exposed northern position close to Russian territory near the small village of Heikoutai. He agreed to the plan on the condition that all three Russian armies coordinate their attack. Details of the plan were leaked by St Petersburg to a war correspondent from L'Écho de Paris, who credited the plan to Gripenberg. This news article, as well as Gripenberg’s major redeployments of his forces in 14 and 16 January, signaled the Russian intentions to the Japanese. The Mishchenko Raid Kuropatkin’s first move was to send General Pavel Mishchenko south with 6000 cavalry and six batteries of light artillery with the aim of destroying Newchang Station on the South Manchurian Railroad. The station was known to have a large stockpile of food