quickly as possible. The Russian government blundered
when, instead of supplementing Makharoff ’s forces, it
recalled a squadron of battleships commanded by Admi-
ral A. A. Virenius. On 9 February 1904, Makharoff was
named as commander of the Pacific Squadron, replac-
ing Admiral Oskar V. Stark, and he traveled eastward
across Asia by rail. Historian Patrick Rollins writes:
“There had been no strategic or tactical planning for a
war with Japan, but that was a relatively unimportant
oversight since the dispirited officers and crews were
untrained and unable to navigate, maneuver, or shoot
as a unit. Makharoff had only days to overcome years
of neglect, and he had no possibility of overcoming the
numerical and qualitative superiority of the Japanese
navy. Nevertheless, he aggressively addressed the ele-
ments he could affect—training and morale—with vis-
ible success.”
Unfortunately, Makharoff ’s time was short. Two
months after being named as Pacific commander, his
flagship, the battleship Petropavlosk, hit a mine, newly
laid by Japanese forces, on 13 April (or 31 March
[O.S.]) and sank in less than two minutes. Approxi-
mately 800 sailors went down to their deaths, including
Makharoff; only his overcoat was recovered. Mourned
in his homeland, his death was quickly forgotten in the
horrific military disaster that soon befell the Russians in
the Russo-Japanese War. In 1913, a statue of Makharoff
was raised at Kronshtadt. Although he only served in
the czarist navy, ships were named in his honor in both
the czarist and Soviet navies. In 1948, a school for the
navigation of the Arctic was founded in Leningrad and
named in his honor.
References: Rollins, Patrick J., “Makarov, Stepan Osipo-
vich,” in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet
History, 55 vols., edited by Joseph L. Wieczynski (Gulf
Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1976–93),
21:11–14; Ford, Alexander Hume, “The Russification
of Manchuria,” The Era Magazine 12, no. 3 (September
1903): 205; Maxwell, William, From the Yalu to Port Ar-
thur: A Personal Record (London: Hutchinson & Com-
pany, 1906); Cowen, Thomas, The Russo-Japanese War
from the Outbreak of Hostilities to the Battle of Liaoyang
(London: E. Arnold, 1904).
Manchester, second earl of See montagu,
edWard, second earl of manchester.
Marion, Francis (1732–1795) American military
leader
Francis Marion was born in Winyaw, near Georgetown,
South Carolina, in 1732. A descendant of Huguenots
who had been driven out of France and arrived in South
Carolina in 1690, he was the youngest of six children of
Gabriel and Esther Cordes Marion. A short biography
by the 19th-century historian Benson J. Lossing states:
“There is scarcely a plantation within thirty miles of the
banks of the Congaree and Santee, from Columbia to
the sea, that has not some local tradition of the presence
of Marion, the great partisan leader in South Carolina
during the Revolution.” Frail and puny in his child-
hood, Marion grew strong and hardy during adolescence
and developed a passion for the sea. At 16, he embarked
on a small vessel sailing to the West Indies, saw the ship
wrecked, and spent a week in an open boat before being
rescued. He spent the next 11 years assisting his father
on the family’s small plantation, but upon Gabriel Mar-
ion’s death in 1759, Francis moved to a plantation at
Pond Bluff, near Eutaw, South Carolina.
While some sources state Marion took part in Col-
onel Montgomery’s expedition to the Indian country in
1760, it now seems more likely that he first saw mili-
tary service the following year when he served as a lieu-
tenant under Colonel Thomas Middleton in his 1761
campaign against the Cherokee. Marion distinguished
himself by leading the assault on the main Indian posi-
tion at Etchoee in mid-June, which was followed by the
destruction of 14 Indian villages.
In 1775, Marion was a delegate to the Provincial
Congress of South Carolina, which agreed to raise two
regiments for the Revolutionary cause. He was commis-
sioned as a captain in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment
on 21 June 1775 and took part in the capture of Fort
Johnson in Charleston harbor on 14 September. Early
in 1776, Marion was promoted to major and played an
important part in the training and organization of his
regiment. On 28 June 1776, he saw action in the suc-
cessful defense of Charleston against a British sea-borne
attack, and three months later he was promoted to lieu-
tenant colonel and given command of Fort Moultrie on
Sullivan’s Island.
In September 1779, Marion took part in the di-
sastrous campaign to take Savannah under the com-
mand of General Benjamin lincoln, who launched an
attack in conjunction with the French admiral Comte
d’Estaing. The Americans were repulsed with heavymARion, FRAnciS