man detachments occupied some of
the towns right across the border, in many instances for a short time
only. Mlawa, Kalish, and Czestochowa were the most important places
involved.

On August 31, 1914, however, the occupation of Radom, about 130 miles
from the German frontier, was reported, and a few days later that of
Lodz, next to Warsaw the biggest city of Russian Poland and an important
manufacturing center. At about the same time all of the places along two
of the railroads running from Germany to Warsaw, Thorn to Warsaw, and
Kalish to Warsaw, as far as Lowitz, where they meet, were occupied. In
this territory the Germans immediately proceeded to repair the railroad
bridges destroyed by the retreating Russians, who, apparently, had
decided to fall back to their defenses on the Vistula. The Germans must
have felt themselves fairly secure in their possession of this
territory, for on September 15, 1914, Count Meerveldt, then governor of
the Prussian Province of Muenster, was appointed its civil governor. A
day later the commanding general (Von Morgen) published a proclamation,
addressed to the inhabitants of the two provinces of Lomza and Warsaw.
In it he announced the defeat of the Russian Narew Army and
Rennenkampf's retreat and stated that larger forces were following his
own army corps, which latter considered them as its friends and had been
ordered to treat them accordingly. He called upon them to rise against
their Russian oppressors and to assist him in driving them out of
beautiful Poland which afterward was to receive at the hands of the
German Emperor political and religious liberty.

About ten days later the "additional stronger forces," which General
von Morgen had prophesied, put in an appearance. They consisted of
four separate armies, one advancing along the Thorn-Warsaw railroad,
another along the Kalish-Warsaw line, a third along the
Breslau-Czestochowa-Kielce-Radom-Ivangorod railroad, and the fourth
from Cracow in the same direction. Just how large these four armies
were is not absolutely known. Estimates range all the way from 500,000
to 1,500,000 which makes it most likely that the real strength was
about 1,000,000. Of these all but the Fourth Army were made up of
German soldiers, whereas the Cracow Army consisted of Austrians,
forming the left wing of their main forces which about that time had
been rearranged in western Galicia.

By the time all of these armies were ready to advance, the vic