Age 18 appointed to First Turkestan Rifle Battalion; 1868 wounded during conquest of Bokhara; 1876 participated in campaign against Kokand in Central Asia; 1877-87 served as Skoblev’s Chief of Staff in Turkish War, in which he was wounded; 1880-81 led the Turkestan Rifle Brigade in the Akkal Tekke Expedition; 1898 appointed to the post of Minister of War and negotiated with Japan prior to the Russo-Japanese War; 1904 became Commander-in-Chief of the Manchurian army; 1905 withdrew his forces from Mukden, which subsequently fell to the Japanese. Saw heavy losses of his troops; 1905 was superseded in command by General Linevich, and subsequently acted as Commander of the First Army until the end of the war; 1908 published The Russian Army and the Japanese War in four volumes; 1910 published The Tasks of the Russian Army in three volumes; 1915 appointed to command the Grenadier Corps during World War I; 1916 Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front at Pskov, following General Plehve; Late 1916 returned as Commander-in-Chief of the Turkestan Military District to suppress a rebellion; 1917 arrested during the Revolution of 1917 but then freed by the Provisional Government.