VON HINDENBURG FOILED.
Meanwhile, what was happening at Warsaw? The coming of the enemy was heralded by airships and aeroplanes, which hovered over the city, dropping bombs on the railway stations, and showers of leaflets urging the Poles to take sides with the Germans. The city was full of spies, and many of the Jew inhabitants were friendly to the enemy. Spies were shot and hanged daily. The coming of the aircraft created a panic, but the terror soon passed away. Then Uhlans appeared eight miles from the centre of the city, and numbers of well-to-do residents fled into Russia. Despite these "excursions and alarms," most of the people in Warsaw went about their business or pleasure quite unmoved.
On Friday, the 16th, the fight for Warsaw began. Von Hindenburg himself directed the operations of the five army corps which were to make the grand assault. On Sunday, the 18th, the Germans were on the edge of the city, and the shells from their field howitzers were bursting in the suburbs. The windows of Warsaw shook with the roar of guns, and at night the western sky was bright with the flashes of artillery and the flames of burning homesteads. Fierce warfare was raging only a few miles away, but the citizens seemed as gay and light-hearted as ever. They thronged the pavements, the cafés, and the cinema shows in the old accustomed way, and save for the cannonading, the streams of wounded, the occasional appearance of a Taube, and the soldiers in the streets, there was nothing to indicate that a desperate battle was being fought five miles away.
Outside the forts to the west of the Vistula the Grand Duke had dug lines of trenches; but when the fight began they were but thinly held. It is said that there was a period of seven hours during which the Germans might have entered the city unopposed. Along one of the main roads leading directly to Warsaw there were no Russians capable of holding back the enemy for a single hour. For some unknown reason the Germans failed to take advantage of this gap in the line of defence.
Just at the critical moment reinforcements arrived, and the people poured into the streets to welcome them. The first corps to reach the city consisted of Siberians, who were so eager to meet the enemy that they leaped down from the cars and formed up without a moment's delay. In a very brief time they were swinging over the Vistula bridge, through the main street, and on their way to the trenches. These men had been brought by rail from Moscow. The people cheered them to the echo, flung flowers amongst them, and pressed cigarettes and other gifts on them.
German Infantry moving across the Plain towards Warsaw. Photo, The Sphere.
The big stubborn Siberians bore the brunt of the German attack, and made a most determined defence. They were assisted by their old enemies and present friends, the Japanese. Several batteries of heavy guns, served by Japanese gunners who had travelled from the Far East by the Siberian railway, now came into action. Nevertheless, the situation was still full of peril.
More reinforcements followed, and soon the Russians were so strongly entrenched as to defy all von Hindenburg's efforts. Many of the newcomers had marched from Galicia amidst terrible weather along the right bank of the Vistula, over roads deep in mud or flooded by swollen streams. We do not know exactly the strength of the relieving army, but a Russian writer tells us that in one day "four columns, each 250,000 strong, crossed the Vistula over sixteen pontoon bridges," and deployed on the left bank ready for an advance.
By the evening of Monday, the 19th, the German attack slackened and died away, and "on Tuesday there returned to the city thousands of tired-out, woe-begone Siberian Cossacks and Caucasian cavalrymen—the soldiers who had turned the scale. All Warsaw turned out in the rain to give them cakes and cigarettes, handshakes and cheers."
Why had the Germans given up their attempt on Warsaw? The Grand Duke was not content with merely holding Warsaw. While the German guns were hurling their shells at the Russian trenches, General Rennenkampf[159] was making a flank attack on the Germans from the fortress of Novo Georgievsk, lower down on the Vistula. We do not know exactly what happened in this part of the battlefield, but one thing is certain—the German left was attacked with crushing force. It was rolled back from the Vistula, but was still fighting hard; but when Ruzsky, on the 22nd, began to carry all before him south of the Pilitza, it was bound to retreat. Rennenkampf followed it up and retook Lodz, while von Hindenburg sullenly retreated towards his frontier, fighting innumerable rearguard actions by the way. Thousands of his men were sacrificed to prevent stores and guns from falling into the hands of the Russians, and the whole country over which he passed was turned into a desert. In one case the lives of 2,000 men of the rearguard were thrown away in order to save a convoy. The roads which von Hindenburg had made during his advance were blown up; railway lines, stations, bridges, and towers were destroyed, and even the rails were twisted into the shape of corkscrews.
When the Germans ran short of explosives they found other means of destruction. A water-tower, for example, was destroyed by sending a railway engine full tilt against it. Telegraph wires were cut into sections, the posts were broken or sawn through, and the insulators were smashed in pieces. It looked as though the Germans did not intend to travel that road again. But there was method in von Hindenburg's madness. He was devastating all Poland except the northern quarter. This he left intact, because he meant to make another advance through it when the time was ripe. For this reason he retreated, not through the northern quarter of Poland, but towards the south-west.
What were the Austrians in Galicia doing while disaster was thus overtaking the German armies? In the first two months of the war they had been badly led, and had suffered much. But under new leadership they proved themselves far more successful. They swept through Galicia, seized Jaroslav, relieved Przemysl, and nearly recaptured Lemberg. The starving garrison at Przemysl received food and supplies, and was thus given a new lease of life. When, however, the Germans farther north were forced to retreat, the Austrians were bound to do so too. They were, however, in no hurry to retire. They only withdrew to the south of the Upper Vistula when the Russians were beginning to envelop them.
The Grand Duke Nicholas.
Thus ended the first attempt to capture Warsaw. The nut was too hard for von Hindenburg to crack, though he had by no means given up his attempts to crush it. He had been foiled; but, as we shall learn later, he was to come on again and again with wonderful perseverance. For the moment, however, he had failed, and failed badly. While the Allies in the West were only just holding back the desperate assaults of the enemy from Arras to the sea, the Russians were rejoicing in victory, and British newspapers were painting rosy pictures of the Grand Duke leading his triumphant armies within a few short weeks into the German capital. Alas! the hope was vain; rivers of blood were to flow before that happy day was even in sight.
