hed battle--the
only way to check its advance. He therefore fell back between
Rawa-Ruska and Lemberg, yielding the former to Von Mackensen and the
latter to Boehm-Ermolli, who was able to lead his battered troops into
the town on June 22, 1915, without further resistance. Brussilov now
had to withdraw from the Dniester. As at Przemysl, the Russian
garrison departed with all stores and baggage before the victors
arrived. Lemberg had been in Russian possession for 293 days.

A German attack near Rawa-Ruska was repulsed by the Russians on June
25, 1915. For two days the "phalanx" rested to replenish its stock of
shells; when these had arrived along the Przemysl line, Von Mackensen
turned northward in the direction of Kholm on the Lublin-Brest-Litovsk
railway. On his left marched the Austro-Hungarian army of the Archduke
Joseph Ferdinand. These two armies drop out of the Galician campaign
at this stage and become part of the great German offensive against
the Polish salient. The gigantic enveloping movement had failed in the
south; it was now to be attempted against the Russian line in front
of Warsaw, conducted by Von Hindenburg and Von Gallwitz in the
northern sector, and by Von Mackensen, assisted by General Woyrsch and
Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, in the southern. These operations are
described in the pages following.

More than three-fourths of Galicia had now been reconquered, and it
was left to the Austrians and the Germans to complete the conquest.
The campaign was one of the greatest operations of the war. An English
military writer thus describes the achievement: "Only a most
magnificent army organization and a most careful preparation,
extending to infinite detail, could execute a plan of such magnitude
at the speed at which it was done by the Austrian and German armies in
May, 1915."

Not yet, however, were the Russian armies destroyed; to the German War
Staff it was not now a question of taking or retaking territory, but
of striking a final and decisive blow at the vitals of Russia. The
continuous series of reverses suffered by Boehm-Ermolli and Von
Linsingen exerted an important effect on the end of the Galician
campaign: it frustrated the plan of eliminating the Russian forces.
The battle lines in France and Flanders could wait a while till the
Russian power was annihilated.

After the fall of Lemberg, Ivanoff withdrew the main body of his
troops toward the river line of the Bug, Boehm-Ermolli following up