THE CONQUEST OF GRODNO AND VILNA

With the fall of Olita, Bialystok, and Brest-Litovsk, which took place on August 25-26, 1915, and is described in more detail in another chapter, the northern group under Von Hindenburg immediately increased its activities. In Courland, south of Mitau, near Bausk, heavy fighting took place, and the Russian lines, which had held their own throughout the entire retreat of the Russian armies in Poland, began to give way. At one other point the Russians had fought back inevitable retreat with special stubbornness, and that was due west of Grodno, in the neighborhood of Augustovo, which had seen such desperate fighting during and following the Russian invasion of East Prussia. But there, too, now the Germans began to make headway and were advancing against the Niemen and the last Russian stronghold on it, Grodno.

At about the same time that considerable activity developed at the utmost southern end of the line in eastern Galicia, operations of equal extent and of great importance took place at the extreme northern end, in the vicinity of Riga. On August 30, 1915, parts of Von Hindenburg's northern group, under General von Beseler, reached positions south of Friedrichstadt on the Dvina. Other troops under General von Eichhorn advanced to the northeast of Olita in the direction of Vilna, while still other forces farther south stormed the city of Lipsk, less than twenty miles west of Grodno, after having forced a crossing over the Vidra River, a tributary of the Sukelka. The fighting around Friedrichstadt continued throughout the last days of August, 1915. To the south of the Niemen the advance against the Grodno-Vilna railway continued without cessation. Whatever troops were not engaged in pursuing the retreating Russian forces were now being concentrated on the approaching attack against the last Russian fortress in Poland—Grodno. To the south of it, by August 31, 1915, they had reached Kuznitsa, on the Bialystok-Grodno railway. The investment of Grodno may be said to have begun with that day. It was then that the first reports came that heavy artillery had been brought up by the Germans and was throwing its devastating shells into the fortress from the western front. Little hope was left to the Russians for a successful resistance. For whenever these heavy guns had been brought into play before, they had blasted their way to the desired goal, no matter how strong or modern had been the defenses of steel and cement.

For the withdrawal of the Russians from Grodno there were available two railroads, one running north to Vilna and another running at first southeast to Mosty, and there dividing into two branches by both of which finally in a roundabout way either Minsk or Kieff could be reached. The Germans, of course, were eager to cut off these lines of retreat. The latter road was threatened by the forces approaching Grodno from the south. Before they reached it, however, troops from Von Hindenburg's group on September 1, 1915, cut the Grodno-Vilna railroad at Czarnoko. On the same day some of the western outer forts of Grodno fell, Fort No. 4 being stormed by North German Landwehr regiments and Fort No. 4a by other troops from Baden. In both cases the Russians resisted valiantly, with numerically so inferior garrisons that the Germans could report the capture of only 650 Russians. After the fall of these two fortified works the balance of the advanced western forts of Grodno were evacuated by the Russians. This, indeed, was the beginning of the end for the last great Russian fortress. On September 2, 1915, Grodno was taken by Von Hindenburg's army after a crossing over the Niemen had been forced. The Russians, however, again had managed to escape with their armies. The entire lack in the official German announcement of any reference to the Russian garrison of Grodno suggests that there was no garrison left by the time the Germans took the fortress. In spite of this fact, however, the Germans of course continued to capture Russians in fairly large quantities for, naturally, numerous detachments lost contact with the main body during the retreat.

With the fall of Grodno the next objective of the German troops became Vilna. Indeed, on the very day of Grodno's occupation, German cavalry reached the northwest and western region immediately adjoining Vilna, in spite of the most determined Russian resistance. These, of course, were troops that had not participated in the drive against Grodno, but during that time had been fighting the Russians farther to the north, and now that Grodno was no longer to be feared, started a drive of their own against Vilna. Vilna is second in importance among Polish cities only to Warsaw itself. By September 8, 1915, detachments of General von Eichhorn's army had reached Troki, hardly more than ten miles west of Vilna.

The Russian front had now been pushed back everywhere over a wide extent, which varied from about twenty miles in the extreme southeast and about fifty miles in the regions east of Grodno and Kovno, and to the north of this territory to almost 200 miles in the center east of Warsaw and Brest-Litovsk. Of the great Russian fortresses of the first and second line, built as a protection against German and Austro-Hungarian advances, none remained in the hands of the Russians. It was true that the main body of the Russian armies had succeeded in extricating itself from this disaster and withdrawing to the east to form there a new line. But it was also true that this retreat of the Russian army had cost dearly in men, material, and, last but not least, temporarily, the morale of the troops themselves. For a considerable period of time during the retreat rumors were heard of changes in the leadership of the Russian armies. These rumors gained strength when it was announced that General Soukhomlinoff had resigned as minister of war and that some of the commanding generals of the different individual army groups had been replaced by others. In view of these changes it did not come as a surprise when on September 7, 1915, it was announced that the czar himself had taken over the supreme command of all his armies, which up to that time had been from the beginning of the war in the hands of his uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas.

The announcement reached the outside world first in the form of the following telegram from the czar to President Poincaré of France:

"In placing myself to-day at the head of my valiant armies I have in my heart, M. President, the most sincere wishes for the greatness of France and the victory of her glorious army.

"Nicholas."

This was followed on September 8, 1915, by the publication of the official communication by which the czar relieved the grand duke from his command and appointed him viceroy of the Caucasus and commander in chief of the Russian army in the Caucasus. It read as follows: