ves which had
been quickly brought up, and captured more than 5,000 prisoners. Von
Woyrsch's cavalry had now reached the railway line from Radom to the
great fortress of Ivangorod, the objective point of this army, and
Radom itself had been seized.

CHAPTER LIX

BEGINNING OF THE END

So uncertain had grown the positions of Lublin on the southern railway
line leading to Warsaw that the Russian commander in chief had issued
an order that in case of a retreat the male population of the town was
to attach itself to the retiring troops.

On July 21, 1915, the Russians throughout the empire were reported to
be joining in prayer. "Yesterday evening," telegraphed the London
"Daily Mail's" Petrograd correspondent on the 21st, "the bells in all
the churches throughout Russia clanged a call to prayer for a
twenty-four hours' continual service of intercession for victory.

"To-day, in spite of the heat, the churches were packed. Hour after
hour the people stand wedged together while the priests and choirs
chant interminable litanies. Outside the Kamian Cathedral here an
open-air Mass is being celebrated in the presence of an enormous
crowd."

The chronicle of the closing days of July, 1915, is an unbroken
narrative of forward movements of German armies on all parts of the
great semicircle. The movement now, however, was slow. The Russians
were fighting desperately, and the Germans had to win their way inch
by inch. By the 21st the Russians were withdrawing in Courland to the
east of the line Popeljany-Kurtschany, and the last Russian trenches
westward of Shavly had been taken by assault. To the north of Novgorod
the capture of Russian positions had yielded 2,000 prisoners and two
machine guns to the Germans on the 20th.

Farther south on the Narew a strong work of the fortress Rozan
defending an important crossing was stormed by the Germans, and
desperate fighting was going on at Pultusk and near Georgievsk.
Already the Russians were beginning to yield their positions to the
west of Grojec, which meant that the Teuton armies were about to push
into the opening between Warsaw and Ivangorod and divide the Russian
forces. The armies of Von Woyrsch on July 20, 1915, seized a
projecting bridgehead to the south of Ivangorod, and captured the
lines that had been held by the Russians near Wladislavow.

In the positions defending the railway between Cholm and Lublin,
Russian resistance was once more marked, and was checki