only to regain it again the next morning. A
Russian attack against this position undertaken later on that day,
October 27, 1915, broke down under German artillery fire, before it
had fully developed.

In a similar way the most furious kind of fighting took place
throughout this period on the Riga salient. There, too, the Russians,
successfully held the Germans at a safe distance. In the second half
of October, 1915, when Von Hindenburg apparently had become convinced
that he would not succeed in taking Dvinsk before the coming of
winter, if at all, the German general began to shift the center of his
operations toward the north and massed large forces against Riga.
According to some reports as many as six army corps were concentrated
at that point. The country there, though different from that in the
vicinity of Dvinsk, was hardly less difficult for the Germans and
offered almost as many opportunities for natural defenses to the
Russians.

We have already described at the beginning of this chapter the exact
location of the salient that ran around Riga from Dubbeln on the Gulf
of Riga by way of Mitau to Uexkuell on the Dvina. The first sector of
it--Dubbeln-Mitau--was approximately twenty-five miles long, and the
second--Mitau-Uexkuell--about thirty miles. On its western and
northwestern side it was bounded to a great extent by the River Aa and
by the eastern half of Lake Babit. The latter is about ten miles long,
but only a little more than one mile in width and runs almost parallel
to part of the south shore of the Gulf of Riga, at a distance of about
three miles.

On its southern and southeastern sides the salient followed, for some
ten miles, first the post road and then the railroad from Mitau to
Kreutzburg on the Dvina--about fifty miles northwest of Dvinsk--and
then turned to the northeast for another twenty miles or so. On this
latter stretch it crossed two tributaries of the River Aa, the Eckau
and the Misse. Through the entire depth of the salient, in a
southwesterly direction from Riga, runs a section about twenty-five
miles long of the Riga-Mitau-Libau railroad, cutting it practically
into two equal parts. Another railroad connects Riga with Dubbeln and
still another with Uexkuell, so that the Russians had good railroad
communications to every point of the salient. The inside of the
latter, besides the rivers mentioned, contained some half dozen other
smaller waterways, tributaries of the Aa and Dvina, an