y. It was mentioned a little farther back that the Austrians had
pierced the Dunajec line at Otfinow, north of Tarnow, by which was cut
in two the hitherto unbroken Russian battle front, from the Baltic to
the Rumanian frontier (900 miles); the "scissors" at Gorlice had made
it three; if Boehm-Ermolli's drive from the Uzsok upward along the
"triangle line" to Jaroslav succeeds, there will be four separate
pieces of Russian front. But from Tarnow southward to Tuchow, a small
twenty-mile salient on the Biala, the Russians are still in possession
on May 4, 1915, defying the Fourth Austro-Hungarian Army.

CHAPTER XLI

RUSSIAN RETREAT

It is a matter for speculation whether the numerous successes achieved
by the Russians against the Austrians and Germans in Galicia and the
Carpathians during the first seven months of the war had begotten a
spirit of overconfidence among the Russian commanders, or whether it
was not in their power to have made more effective preparations than
they had done. We have seen that Dmitrieff had not provided himself
with those necessary safety exits which were now so badly needed. As
no artificially prepared defenses were at hand, natural ones had to be
found. The first defense was irretrievably lost; the second line was a
vague, undefined terrain extending across the hills between Biala in
the west and the River Wisloka in the east. Between Tuchow and Olpiny,
the Mountain Dobrotyn formed one of the chief defensive positions,
being 1,800 feet high and thickly covered with woods.

Southward, the Lipie Mountain, about 1,400 feet, formed another strong
point. Just below Biecz, close to the road and railroad leading to
Gorlice, a mountain of 1,225 feet, called Wilczak, is the strategical
key to the valley of the lower Ropa. Between Biecz and Bednarka, the
line of defense followed the heights of the Kobylanka, Tatarovka, Lysa
Gora, and of the Rekaw; hence to the east, as the last defense of the
Jaslo-Zmigrod road, lay the intrenched positions on the Ostra Gora,
well within Brussilov's sector. Southward of the Gorlice-Zmigrod line
lay the mountain group of the Valkova, nearly 2,800 feet high, the
last defense of the line of retreat for the Russian forces from Zboro.

The Wisloka was the third line of defense, only a river, and without
intrenchments. From Dembica to Zmigrod it runs roughly parallel with
the Dunajec-Biala line; its winding course separates it in places from
fifteen to thirty-fi