plete her preparations.

[Illustration: Sketch 69.]

The first outpost actions with the enemy, and even the more vigorous
struggles when full contact had been established with this third army
arrived thus from the south-east, only led the Austrian commander
deeper into his mistaken calculation; for upon the Sunday, August
23rd, a local success was achieved which seems to be magnified by the
Austrians into a decisive check administered to the enemy. If this was
their view, they were soon to be undeceived. In those very days which
saw the greatest peril in the West, the last days of August, during
which the Franco-British Allies were falling back from the Sambre,
pursued by the numbers we have seen upon an earlier page, the third
and the second Russian armies effected their junction, the moment of
their first joining hands being apparently that same Monday, the 24th
of August, during which Sir John French was falling back upon
Maubeuge. By the middle of the ensuing week they had already advanced
with a very heavy numerical superiority upon the part of the Russians,
which threatened to involve the Austrian second army in disaster. If
that went, the first army was at the mercy of the victors upon the
south, and with every day that passed the chance of collapse
increased. Now, too late (so far as we can judge), the second Austrian
army disposed itself for retreat, but that retreat was not allowed to
proceed in the orderly fashion which its commander had decided, and
in the event part of it turned into a rout, all of it developed into a
definite disaster for the enemy, and as conspicuous a success for our
ally. That this success was not decisive, as this great war must count
decisions, the reader will perceive before its description is
concluded; but it set a stamp upon the whole of the war in the East,
which months of fighting have not removed but rather accentuated. It
delivered the province of Galicia into the hands of Russia, it brought
that Power to the Carpathians, it ultimately compelled Germany to
decide upon very vigorous action of her own immediately in Poland, and
it may therefore be justly said to have changed the face of the war.

To this great series of actions, which history will probably know by
the name of Lemberg, we will now turn.

When this large Russian movement against the right of von Auffenberg's
army, and the considerable Russian concentration there, was clearly
discerned, the Austrian force was i