llen. On the roadway
stood two Russian batteries with twelve guns and a considerable number
of ammunition wagons. The German infantry approached without firing a
shot until they were within fifty yards. Then all the horses were shot
down and the guns and ammunition seized. The men of the battery fled.
In both these towns there was street fighting in the night, lit up by
burning houses which had been fired by the Russians in their retreat.

One of the captured trains was the hospital train of the czar. This
was utilized as headquarters for the night by the staff of General von
Lauenstein.

By the 12th of February, 1915, the German troops of the left wing,
sweeping down from the north and pressing the Russians back from
village to village, were entirely on Russian soil. Wizwiny, Kalwarja,
and Mariampol were occupied on this day. The number of guns taken by
these troops had been increased by seventeen, according to German
reports. The German Headquarters Staff declared that by this time the
Russian Seventy-third and Fifty-sixth Divisions had been as good as
annihilated, and the Twenty-seventh division nearly destroyed. The
Russians lying before the Angerapp line and the defenses of Loetzen had
in the meantime also begun to retreat toward the east. German troops,
consisting chiefly of reserves of the Landwehr and Landsturm which up
to this time had been held back within the German fortified line, now
advanced to attack the yielding army, whose long marching column could
be observed by the German flyers. While General von Eichhorn's troops,
coming from the neighborhood of Tilsit and making their way through
snow and ice, were advancing upon Suwalki and Sejny, and the German
right wing was fighting its way through Grajewo, toward Augustowo, the
center of the troops of General von Buelow for several days fought the
Russians in furious battle in the vicinity of Lyck. From all sides the
Germans were closing in. To protect the withdrawal of this main army
to Suwalki and Augustowo, the Russians endeavored by all means to hold
the narrows of the lakes before Lyck, where they were favored by the
nature of the ground and aided by strong defensive works, for the most
part well provided with wire entanglements. The best of the Russian
troops, Siberian regiments, here fought with great energy under a
determined leadership, and the Russians, in fact, at some places took
the offensive. By the 12th of February, 1915, however, the Germans