The Campaign in Russian Poland. Percy Cross Standing
towns between the marsh country and Galicia. It was the effective “screen” of this system of strong places that enabled the mobilisation of the Tsar’s vast armies to be carried out so successfully.
With regard to the natural configuration of the wild and mostly desolate country constituting the wide area of the battle-ground, a few words of explanation will be useful. There is little high ground until one comes to the southern border of the great Polish plain, where the Carpathian range forms a natural rampart. To the north the ground falls away rapidly to the plain. There are numerous rivers and streams, and great tracts of forest-clad land. Eastward of the Upper Vistula a low rise of ground runs first northerly and then trends to the north-east, forming “the water-parting” between the rivers that flow to the Baltic and the Black Sea. Still eastward of this we come to the Marshes of Pripet, or Pinsk, to which I have already referred. Imagine to yourself some thirty thousand square miles of stream, pool, and swamp, by its very character utterly unsuited to the marching or fighting operations of a great army. In the northern region of the plain we find, between the Vistula, the Narev, and the Baltic Sea more wide-extended tracts of swamp-covered forest land, pools, lakes, and little rivers. Altogether, it is one of the worst countries, physically speaking, for the transport, much less the manœuvring, of masses of men, horses, and heavy artillery.
This historic battle-ground was once the old kingdom of Poland, the scene of some of the greatest political and military crimes and blunders of past ages. “Across the plain,” writes the military critic whom I have already quoted, “winds the broad, sluggish stream of the Vistula. The great river is to this eastern land what the Rhine is to Western Europe. … On its banks, in the midst of the plain, stands Warsaw, the old capital of Poland and now the political, military, and business centre of the Russian province. There is only one other large town in Russian Poland—Lodz, not long ago a country village, now a busy industrial centre. This paucity of large towns is characteristic, not only of Russian Poland but of the whole Empire. The last census shows that in European Russia there are only twenty-four places that claim a population of over a hundred thousand. Russia is a country of agricultural villages. There are more than 150,000 of them between the Vistula and the Ural! The plain of the Vistula is not an absolute dead level, but there is nothing that can be called a hill. There are wide stretches of woodland, the refuge of the insurgent bands in the Polish risings of 1830 and 1863. Between the woods are open lands with many villages, rich lands with a deep soil somewhat primitively tilled.” So much for the appointed battle-ground and the “lie of the land.”
The victors of Lemberg did not long rest on their laurels. An order of the Day, promulgated by the Grand-duke Nicholas and phrased with all that regard for the cherished Slav ideals and traditions which has helped to make this war so popular in Russia, complimented General Russky and the gallant army under his orders. Another Order, addressed by the Grand-duke to the Sokols,[1] the Polish bands of partisans organised in Galicia, sternly admonished them for the use in warfare of dum-dum bullets, and informed them that in future they would be liable to be treated rather as malefactors than as bona fide combatants according to the usages of war.
The Tsar and Tsaritsa set a fine example by spending much of their time in visiting the hospitals and devising helpful schemes for the amelioration of the sufferings of the thousands of sick and wounded. Of the conduct of the military operations as a whole, the correspondent of a New York journal wrote home that “the Russians evidently have their heart in their work. They have profited greatly by the lessons of their operations in Manchuria, both as regards strategy and tactics. Every day in the field increases their efficiency, and will perfect the co-ordination between their invading bodies.”
By a coincidence as dramatic as it must have been intensely interesting, the announcement in Petrograd of the brilliant victory of Lemberg synchronised with the Feast Day of Saint Alexander Nevsky, Russia’s wonderful hero of the thirteenth century, who was also the first to beat back a Teutonic invasion of his country. Only on the previous evening, in fact, the people kneeling before the shrines in the churches had prayed to this saint: “O Alexander the Blessed, come to the aid of your kindred and give us victory over our enemies.” And when, on the following day, the victory was celebrated with that impressive ritual which the Greek Church knows so well how to employ, doubtless many among the Slavs saw an immediate answer to their prayers.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Sokol is a Slav word for “a hawk,” or “a falcon.”
CHAPTER II
THE AUSTRIAN DEBACLE: FROM LEMBERG TO JAROSLAV
We shall now proceed to follow the fortunes of the Russo-Austrian campaign immediately after the capture of Lemberg in the early days of September. Such a substantial success naturally put the Russians in good heart. Rewards were judiciously distributed on the recommendation of the Grand-duke Nicholas, Generals Russky and Brussiloff each receiving that most coveted of decorations, the Cross of St. George. It was likewise officially notified that between August 17 and September 3, a period of rather more than a fortnight, the Tsar’s forces operating against the Austrian host of General von Auffenburg had advanced no less a distance than 220 versts, or roughly 150 miles. During the same period there had been practically no lull in the fighting, which for sheer sustained fury would appear to have been little less sanguinary than that between the German and Franco-British armies in the West.
It was about this time that the Daily Telegraph, in an editorial setting forth the general situation of affairs after some five weeks of war, called attention to the influence being slowly but none the less surely exercised by the Russian field-armies. After pointing out that the crisis of a great war had worked wonders in the way of a more perfect understanding between the Russian and British peoples, the writer went on to say:
“The extraordinary prowess of the Russian Army has already begun to draw the ordinary Briton out of his absorption in the military situation in France, and to keep him in mind of the fact that the arena of this war is not any one country, but the Continent of Europe. He realises more fully than before that every blow struck at the Central European Powers on their eastern frontier is, in the long run, as telling as any reverse inflicted upon them in the western theatre of war. But he ought to realise it more fully yet. The position is that the long series of Russian successes, culminating in the Austrian overthrow at Lemberg and Halicz, has cast the whole Austro-German war-plan into confusion, which may at this moment be affecting the German operations in France in the most serious degree. The main Austrian Army in Southern Poland is now being attacked with unsparing energy. Its situation is rendered desperate by the destruction of the Second Army at Lemberg, which lays open its right wing to assault by the victorious troops of General Russky. Should the great battle now raging end in another such defeat as has already been inflicted there will be nothing remaining in the field that can stay the Russian march to Berlin. The rapidity of the Russian mobilisation and of the movement of the Russian forces to the attack is one of the several absolutely vital things with which Germany did not reckon. The brilliancy of their performance in the field has surprised the enemy no less. Deeply involved as Germany is in the French campaign, dares she provide the heavy and immediate reinforcements for which her Ally is clamouring? Dares she, on the other hand, refuse them? That is, put simply, the fatal dilemma on the horns of which the monstrous ambition of German militarism is like to perish.”
If this last pertinent question was not destined to be immediately answered, the military situation now began to be one of increasing menace for the Austro-German Allies. In war one is bound to get a vast amount of “claim and counterclaim” on the part of the contending nations. On September 6 the Tsar’s Government took the step of publicly characterising as “wilful falsehoods” certain Austrian and