ar the east front included the First Army Corps at Koenigsberg, the
Twentieth at Allenstein, the Seventeenth at Danzig, the Fifth at Posen,
and the Sixth at Breslau. These mustered a total of forty-four infantry,
twenty-one cavalry, and twenty-five artillery regiments, augmented by
four battalions of rifles (Jaeger), and twelve formations of technical
troops. The entire peace effectiveness of these formations was about
150,000 men, which at full war strength undoubtedly meant at least not
less than 500,000 men, of whom about one-half were of the first line,
the balance being made up of reserves and Landwehr troops.

The Russians drew up, in the face of the Germans, two armies: the Army
of Poland and the Army of the Niemen. The latter in peace time centered
in Vilna and consisted of five army corps; the former used Warsaw as its
base and consisted of at least as many army corps. It now held a wide
front from the Narev in the north to the valley of the Bug River. These
two armies together had an effectiveness of almost twice as many men as
the German forces, supported as they were by a series of well-garrisoned
fortresses: Grodno, Osowiec, and Bialistock in the north; Lomza, Novo
Georgievsk, and Warsaw in the center; and Ivangorod and Brest-Litovsk in
the south. In its entirety the mobilization of these forces was
completed about the third week of August, 1914, but by the end of the
first week the Army of the Niemen had completed its mobilization, and it
was from there that the first blow was struck.

This army was commanded by General Rennenkampf, one of the few Russian
generals who had succeeded in coming through the Russo-Japanese War, not
only with an untarnished, but even with an enhanced reputation. Its task
was to invade the northern part of East Prussia, striking directly at
Koenigsberg.

Small engagements, of course, took place all along the Russo-German
border between the advance guards of the two armies from the day war had
been declared.

On August 6, 1914, a Russian cavalry division crossed over into the
enemy's country south of Eydtkuhnen. The next ten days saw many isolated
advances of this nature, all of them initiated by the Russians, and most
of them accomplishing their respective objects. One small force ventured
as far north as the immediate proximity of Tilsit of Napoleonic memory.

CHAPTER LXXIV

ADVANCE OF RUSSIANS AGAINST THE GERMANS

On August 16, 1914, within seventeen days after t