[Illustration: Scene of the Fighting round Przasnysz.]
The Battle of Przasnysz was more like a struggle of the Middle Ages than a modern battle. The Russians short of arms and ammunition, and they could not supply all their trained men with rifles. In this and in other fights the Russians kept unarmed troops in the rear. When the men with rifles fell, the unarmed were sent forward to take up the weapons of the dead and wounded and then fling themselves on the foe. Men rushed into the firing line at Przasnysz with a sword bayonet in one hand and two bombs in the other. They charged through rifle and machine-gun fire until they were near enough to fling their bombs, and then fell furiously upon the enemy with cold steel, utterly reckless of wounds and death. The Germans could not stand against such an onset, and fled. Thus by sheer bodily might the Russians had flung back in rout a foe superior to them in numbers, and once more von Hindenburg found Warsaw beyond his grasp.
[Illustration: The Retreat of the Austrians across the Uzsok Pass.
This spirited drawing shows Russian cavalry driving the Austrians across the snow-bound Uzsok Pass. (See page 120.) In this attack the Russians fell upon the flank and rear of the Austrians during a violent snowstorm, and pursued them for many miles. Hundreds of Austrians surrendered.]
You will remember that while von Hindenburg was vainly attempting to pierce the river line of the Niemen and the Narev on the Russian right wing, the Austrians were in motion against the south or left wing. On page 249 of our third volume I gave you a map, which I repeat on page 119, showing the line which the Russians were holding in Galicia at the close of the year 1914. They then held the northern entrances to the Carpathian passes, and had pushed up the Dukla Pass almost to the crest. Newspaper readers in this country believed that before long the Russian legions would be pouring down on the Hungarian plain, and that when the great granary of the Central Powers was invaded the end of the war would be in sight.
During the month of January the Russians strove hard to push across the Galician passes, and their cavalry actually descended to the Hungarian plain thirty miles south of the mountains. Not only was fighting going on in Galicia, but in Bukovina[22]--that is, the country of the beech woods--which stretches southward from the Dneister, across the Pruth and the Sereth, to the eastern face of the Carpathians. Ever since September 1914 the Russians had held Northern Bukovina, and they now wished to conquer the whole of it, for several reasons. In the first place, it was Germany's main source of supply for petrol; in the second place, it lay on the frontier of Rumania, and it was thought that the presence of a Russian army in Bukovina would induce Rumania to join the Allies. Further, if Rumania should elect to do so, she would be able to join hands at once with the Russians. In the third place, there are several fairly easy passes from Bukovina into Hungary, and one of them is the main route from the north to the plains of Hungary.