eve which it was first essential to dislodge
Brussilov or to pierce his line. Again, in the hour of her extremity,
Austria's powerful ally came to the rescue.

[Illustration: The Carpathian Passes and Russian Battle Line.]

Under the command of the Archduke Eugene the Austrian troops--all that
were available--were formed into three separate armies. For
convenience sake we will designate them A, B, and C. Army A, under
General Boehm-Ermolli, was ordered to the section from the Dukla Pass
to the Uzsog. It was charged with the task of cutting a way through to
relieve Przemysl. Army B, under the German General von Linsingen, who
also had some German troops with him, was to assail the next section
eastward, from the Uzsog to the Wyszkow Pass; and Army C, under the
Austrian General von Pflanzer-Baltin, likewise supplied with a good
"stiffening" of German soldiers, was accredited to the far-eastern
section--the Pruth Valley and the Bukowina. These three armies
represented the fighting machine with which Austria hoped to retrieve
the misfortunes of war and recover at the same time her military
prestige and her invaded territories. We have no reliable information
to enable us to estimate the exact strength of these armies, but there
is every reason to believe that it was considerable, having regard to
the urgency of the situation and the bitter experience of the recent
past. Hence the figure of 400,000 men is probably approximately
correct. Somewhere about January 23, 1914, after a period of thaw and
mud the weather settled down to snow and hard frost. Then the machine
began to move. A snow-clad mountain rampart lay spread before; over
200 miles of its length embraced the area of the projected operations.
Here we may leave this army for a while in order to review some of the
political and strategic considerations underlying the campaign, which
is the scope of this chapter.

The Russian occupation of the Bukowina, which was undertaken and
accomplished by a force far too small to oppose any serious
resistance, appears to have been carried out with the definite
political object of favorably impressing Rumania, and to guide her
into the arms of the Allies. From her geographical position Rumania
commands nearly the whole western frontier of the Dual Monarchy. Her
fertile soil supplied the Central Powers with grain, dairy produce,
and oil. Furthermore, Rumania's foreign policy leaned to the side of
Italy, and the general European i