into the weakly held gap between Dankl's right (Krasno- stav) and Auffenberg's left rear (group Josef Ferdinand about Lasczow), Conrad gave up the battle altogether and ordered a retreat to the line of the San and the Carpathians. The various forces along the Dniester retreated to the Carpathians, the II. Army to the region of Sambov, the III. to that of Przemysl, the IV. to Yaroslav, and the I. with Kummer and Woyrsch to the lower San (Sept. 11-15).
On this line, however, no stand could be made. Already on the i4th the Russian IV. Army, strengthened from the assem- bling IX., had been able to force a passage of the San near its mouth. The Austrians thereupon resumed their retreat south- westward (followed up in the later stages very cautiously by the Russians) and stood on Sept. 22 on the line of the Visloka, the Vislok and the Carpathians. Przemysl was left to be defended by its garrison. On the 26th the retreat came to an end on the line of the Dunajec-Tarnow-Gorlice-Usczie-Ruskie-Carpath- ians. But at that date, the German IX. Army was beginning to assemble in Upper Silesia. The eastern front had come into being.
The Vistula-San Campaign (October 1(114). I n the last stages of the Marne battle Moltke had been succeeded, in effective direction of the German operations, by von Falkenhayn. Possi- bly because he had held, and for a time continued to hold, the office of war minister, certainly from judgment and temperament, Falkenhayn took a broad view of the eastern front problem from the first. The war, after all, had become a war on two fronts instead of two successive single-front campaigns, as had been hoped, and it would have to be conducted accordingly. This involved, first, a more intimate cooperation between the Ger- man and the Austro-Hungarian forces than had existed hitherto; secondly, the necessity of keeping the Austro-Hun- garian army, in spite of its heterogeneous composition and known deficiencies, in a fighting condition similar to that of the German forces working with it; and thirdly, constant reconsid- eration of eastern plans, whether German or Austrian or joint, in the light of the situation on the western front; that these three were interdependent the first united operations clearly showed.
The immediate problem was to fulfil the second requirement without neglecting the third. This meant, in concrete form, the reestablishment of the Austro-Hungarian army without bringing over forces from the west. At that moment mid- Sept. the battles of the Aisne were developing northward into Picardy and Artois. The " race to the sea " was in progress and the chance of decisive victory in the W. had not been lost on the Marne. On the other hand, it was clear that the Austro- Hungarian army had not only lost Galicia but had suffered very heavily in casualties and material, and was shaken by its experiences. The retreat to the Dunajec had on two occasions come near to disaster in the early stages when the IV. Army's left flank was exposed and out of touch with the I. Army, and in the later stages when strong Russian efforts were made to drive the armies off their S.W. direction by enveloping the left flank of Woyrsch and Kummer. After reviewing various alter- natives offered by geography and the railways, he came to the conclusion that to press the advance of the VIII. Army on Kovno- Grodno, i.e. to pursue the victory of the Masurian lakes, would not serve, and decided to form a " South Army " in Upper Silesia as a direct support to the Austrian left. At first it was intended that this should be a small army, practically no more than a reenforcement of Woyrsch, but within a few days Luden- dorff's proposal to transfer the bulk of the VIII. Army to South Poland, with its implication of a serious counter-offensive cam- paign, was accepted. The object of Falkenhayn in agreeing to this was, by enabling the Austro-Hungarian army to reassert itself in the offensive, to gain time for achieving a decisive result in the west. The theatre in which risks were taken was, as before, E. Prussia. Hindenburg's victories had altered the situation there, and a sort of pursuit could still be maintained by a small force for some time, before the inevitable reaction set in and Rennenkampf came on again. Moreover, the barrier of the lakes and the Angerapp was now being seriously fortified, and it was to be expected that Rennenkampf could be brought
to a halt on that line if not in front of it. On the Mlava side, no repetition of Samsonov's offensive seems to have been feared. But as a precaution one of the 65 newly raised reserve corps was sent to E. Prussia, and two more cavalry divisions were extri- cated from the west. The forces of E. Prussia under von Schu- bert retained the title VIII. Army. Those in South Poland were designated the IX., under Hindenburg.
The Grand Duke Nicholas, meantime, was pursuing more and more vigorously the idea which was first evidenced in the crea- tion of the IX. Army behind Warsaw. This army had been absorbed in the fighting against Dankl, but by now the more distant active corps as well as numerous reserve divisions were detrained and ready. Reinforcements had to be provided to enable Rennenkampf's I. and X. Armies to check and drive back the probable pursuit on the middle Niemen, and to reconstitute the shattered II. Army on the Narew. But even with these demands to be satisfied, enough remained for the constitution of an offensive group between Warsaw and Ivangorod. \Yith this group he meant to transfer the centre of gravity to S.W. Poland, making Warsaw-Czenstochowa and Ivangorod-Beuthcn the principal axes of his advance. Accordingly, in the last days of Sept. and Oct. i, the Russian army in front of the Austrians began to be reduced. 1 And a formidable mass the " steam-roller " for which the world waited gathered behind the middle Vistula. Meanwhile, lighter forces, keeping level with the advance S. of the upper Vistula, had advanced beyond Kielce, Petrikov and Lodz.
The Austro-German offensive thus struck the Russians in the act of regrouping. Its plan was: the German IX. Army and part of the Austro-Hungarian I. Army, N. of the upper Vistula, to advance, driving back all forces met with, to the line of the Vistula above and below Ivangorod, and there to form the pivot of a sweep of the Austro-Hungarian IV. (Josef Ferdinand) and
III. (Boroevic) Armies which should advance to the San, relieve Przemysl, and then strike northward and north-eastward. The II. Army (Bohm Ermolli) in the Carpathians and the left of the I. Army (Dankl) on the Vistula about Zawichost were to conform to the movement as it developed. Danger of counter- attack upon the extreme left of the IX. Army from the Warsaw bridgehead was provided against partly by causing the various frontier guards of Posen, Hohensalza and Thorn to advance into Poland, partly by echeloning out a mixed force called Frommel's corps chiefly cavalry on the middle Pilica.
Moving out from the concentration area in Upper Silesia on Sept. 28, and joined on its right by the left of the Austrian I. Army from Sept. 30, the German IX. Army reached the line Klimontow (Austrian I. Army), Opatow (Woyrsch and XI.), Ostrowiec (Guard Res.), Szydlowice and Ilza (XVII.), W. of Opoczno and S. of Rawa (Frommel). At that date the Austro- Hungarian I., IV. and III. Armies had also begun their advance; and reached the Wisloka, while in the Carpathians the II. Army and Hoffmann's Corps to the E. of it began to dislodge the various bodies of the Russian VII. Army that had established themselves in and beyond the passes. Along the whole front only light troops of the enemy were met, and the advance continued during the following days. But, almost simultaneously, the Austrian
IV. and III. Armies were brought to a standstill on the San bar- rier and at the gap of Chyrow which gave access to the Dniester, and both Mackensen's XVII. Corps and Frommel's mixed force advancing north-westward, came into contact with the heavy Russian forces now debouching from Warsaw.
This growing intensity of the fighting S. and S.W. of Warsaw deflected the advance of the German IX. Army northward, causing a corresponding extension of front of the Austrian I. Army, which now passed wholly to the N. of the Vistula, its left centre facing Ivangorod. On Oct. 10, the battle was gen-
1 The III. Army (now commanded by the Bulgarian Radko Demitriev), minus several of its units, was employed in besieging Przemysl; the VII. had come up from Bessarabia and taken over the Dniester front from about Stryi eastward. Its designation was shortly afterwards altered to that of " Dniester Group," but in 1915 a new VII. Army was formed in the same regton.
