y faced, as
will be seen, directly towards the Russian frontier. It was the
operative wing; upon its immediate action and on the rapidity of the
blow it was to deliver depended the success of this first chapter in
the Eastern war.

[Illustration: Sketch 68.]

The southern, or second, army, which stretched all along the Galician
plain at the foot of the Carpathians to the town of Halicz, had for
its mission the protection of the first army from the south. It was
known, or expected, that the first army would advance right into
Russian Poland, with but inferior forces in front of it. It was
feared, however, that the main Russian concentration to the south-east
of it might turn its right flank. The business of the second army was
to prevent this. The first army (I), being the operative body, was
more homogeneous in race, more picked in material than the second
(II), the latter containing many elements from the southern parts of
the empire, including perhaps not a few disaffected contingents, such
as certain regiments of Italian origin from the Adriatic border.

So far as we can judge, perhaps--and it is a very rough estimate--we
may put the whole body which Austria-Hungary was thus moving in the
first phase of the war beyond the Carpathians at more than 750,000,
but less than 1,000,000 men. Call the mass 800,000, and one would not
be far wrong. Of this mass quite a quarter lay in reserve near the
mountains behind the first army. The remaining three-quarters, or
600,000 men, were fairly evenly divided between the two groups of the
first and of the second army--the first, or northern, one being under
the command of Dankl, the second under that of von Auffenberg. Each
of these forces was based upon one group of depots of particular
importance, the northern operative army (I) relying upon Przemysl, and
the southern one (II) upon Lemberg.

It was less than a week after the first German advance bodies had
taken the outer forts of Liege when Dankl crossed the frontier,
heading, with his centre, towards Krosnik and farther towards Lublin.
His troops were in Russian territory upon the Monday evening or the
Tuesday, 10th-11th August.

The second army meanwhile stood fulfilling its role of awaiting and
containing any Russians that might strike in upon the south. It had
advanced no more than watching bodies towards the frontier, such as
the 35th Regiment of the Austrian Landwehr, which occupied Sokal, and
smaller units cordonned