Everything was going well, and many people in this country fully believed that the Russians would be in Cracow before long. But wiser folks wondered what new move von Hindenburg was about to make. It was not likely that the Germans would sit still under the terribly rough handling which they had recently received. They had lost very heavily, and they had been beaten back to their frontier, but they were still full of fight. On 13th November it was evident that they were going to make a very powerful counter-attack.
Let me remind you of two facts which it is important that you should remember. The first is, that along the Polish frontier the Germans possess a network of railways which enable them to move troops from north to south very rapidly; the second is, that though the Germans had devastated much of Poland they had kept the roads and railways intact in the northern quarter of the country. As soon as von Hindenburg had withdrawn his left and centre behind his own frontier, he put his troops into trains, and hurried them northward to the neighbourhood of Thorn, where he had large reserves. Some of these reserves came from Germany, and some were brought from the Western front. Altogether he gathered in an astonishingly brief time a striking force of about 800,000 men, and behind them he had many thousands more. He now began to push eastward on a forty-mile front between the Warta and the Lower Vistula towards Warsaw once more.
As the roads and railways in this region were good, he hoped to make a rapid advance, and fall on Warsaw before the Russians could bring up reinforcements along the broken railways and ruined roads farther south. Even if his centre were heavily attacked he had the means of retiring rapidly. It was a very ingenious plan which he was now about to carry out. General von Mackensen was to command the armies in the field.
The Russians, you will observe, were very badly placed to meet the sudden thrust that was now about to begin. They were strung out upon a huge curve of a thousand miles in length, and their communications were bad. As the railways had been destroyed, reinforcements from the south would take a long time to come up, and before they could appear von Mackensen hoped to be in Warsaw. The Army A which he had to meet was only about 200,000 strong. Of course it might be strengthened by new forces brought up from behind Warsaw, but in this case, too, there would be much delay. Everything promised a speedy victory for the Germans.
In the next chapter we will see how they fared. In this chapter we will follow the fortunes of the two armies that were advancing on Cracow. I have already told you that the cavalry of Army D under General Dmitrieff, a Bulgarian, who fought bravely in the Balkan War and afterwards offered his sword to Russia, was twenty miles north of Cracow on 12th November. At that time the main body was about sixty miles behind. For three weeks it pushed on slowly but steadily, and meanwhile Brussilov had recaptured Jaroslav, had again besieged Przemysl, and, leaving a force to mask that fortress, was pushing into the passes of the Carpathians, which, as you know, form a great natural barrier between Galicia and the Hungarian plain. As the Carpathians figure largely in this and in future fighting, I will give you a brief description of them now.
The Tatra Range of the Carpathians. Photo, Exclusive News Agency.
The Carpathians curve for 1,000 miles like a huge sickle round the Hungarian plain from the deep trench of the Danube, known as the Iron Gates, to what is called the Moravian Gate, beyond which lie the Bohemian mountains. The southern portion of this range, which barricades Hungary against Rumania, consists of high and bold ridges and lofty rocky tablelands; it forms a stronghold so well fortified by nature that it has been called the "Eastern citadel of Central Europe." That portion of the range which overlooks Galicia may be called the "waist" of the Carpathians, for here it is at its lowest, and is crossed by a number of passes, over which roads and railways have been made. Still farther west, fronting Silesia on the north is the loftiest and boldest part of the range—the High Tatra. Here we find a great mountain wall of granite, with steep, rocky ramparts and jagged crests, varied by beautiful lakes, which lie in the cup-shaped hollows. The High Tatra is as grand in its way as the Alps of Switzerland. Nowhere, however, do the Carpathians reach the snow-line, so the range contains no glaciers such as you find in the Alps. The lower slopes are generally covered with forests of beech, oak, and fir; but higher up, amidst the rocks, even the hardy pine can find no foothold. In the forests of the High Tatra the bear, wolf, and lynx are still to be found.