from their lines in the Caucasus, more than seventy-five miles from Erzerum. The snow lay thick on the ground and the temperature was below zero, so that the Turks were resting in false security in the mountains, expecting to be reinforced in the spring by forces made available by the Allied withdrawal from Gallipoli. The Russian forces completely routed the Turks in the mountain passes, and had little difficulty in gaining some fifty miles in the first week. The Turks were outnumbered and outgeneraled, and fled wildly after defeat in the few stands they attempted; and by January 20 the Russians were on the ridge which commands Erzerum. Russia held control of the Black Sea and reinforcements from European Turkey could not reach the fortress in time to save it. On January 25 the city was invested, and the Russians patiently camped around it until their heavy guns should have been brought up through the mountains. On February 12, the bombardment of the fortifications began and two days later one of the important works fell into Russian hands. Within the next three days the other fortifications fell, and Erzerum was completely occupied on February 16. A few weeks later, Trebizond, the great Turkish port on the Black Sea north of Erzerum, also fell.

THE RUSSIAN DRIVE IN MID-SUMMER

When the Germans opened their great drive upon Verdun in February, Russia was frantically appealed to by the Entente for a diversion on the east. The armies of the Tsar responded, although the effects of the defeat in 1915 were still felt. The location chosen was the northern section of the battle-line, some fifty miles south of Dvinsk. On March 18, after a heavy bombardment, the Russian infantry rushed forward; but the Russian bombardment had no more levelled the German lines than the later British bombardment on the Somme was to level the German lines there. The German guns poured a devastating fire into the Russian ranks as they came forward, until the losses were so great by the time the Russians reached the enemy trenches that the German infantry was able to complete the work which the German guns had begun. Throughout the latter part of the month, the Russians made other attempts along this sector to drive.

back the forces of von Hindenburg, but again in vain and again with heavy losses. Throughout the first two weeks in April the Russians continued their attempt, but never with sufficient success to affect the fighting on the western front. They then rested on their arms, but at the end of April the Germans counter-attacked and drove back the Russians along the whole northern front and more than atoned for the slight losses which the German forces had suffered. Both in their own and in the German attack the Russian losses were extremely heavy.

The Russians then determined not to anticipate again the reorganization of their armies and waited until the summer for another attempt of significance at the position of the Central Powers in the east. In the north and in the centre of the battle-line in the east, the German positions were too strong to warrant hopes for success, and the Russians, moreover, had learned that they had more chance of success against Austrian troops and Austrian commanders than against German. Furthermore, the situation in the Balkans was still unsettled and success in the southeast would serve the purpose of strengthening the Allied program in the Near East as well as in France and Belgium. Finally, as will be described below, Austria had inflicted a sharp defeat upon the Italians and an attack on Austria by Russia would relieve the pressure on the Italian front as an attack on the German lines would not.

The stage on which was played the last great Russian advance in the Great War was therefore once more Bukowina, the farthest east of the provinces of Austria, the home of many thousands of "unredeemed" Roumanians, and the extreme southern tip of the battle-line in the east, just across the Roumanian frontier. At the same time, however, the Russians were to become active along the entire lower third of the battle-front, the three hundred miles from Bukowina to the Pripet Marshes, in order to prevent the dispatch of reinforcements to Bukowina from the sectors which adjoined the province to the north of the Carpathians. Again the direct conduct of the manoeuvre was entrusted to General Brusiloff, with Alexieff as commander-in-chief of all the Russian armies. Once more the Rus

sian preparations had been extensive; once more Russia was determined to cripple Austria-Hungary as Russia herself had been crippled in the previous summer; once more the Russians outnumbered the Austrians by almost three to one.

The Russian advance was heralded on June 3 by sharp artillery fire along the entire three hundred miles of the front south of the Pripet Marshes. On June 4, the Russian infantry advanced along the whole line. At the extreme northern end of the advance, little headway was made, largely on account of the marshy nature of the ground. But in the sector half-way between the Pripet Marshes and Bukowina, the Russians broke through at once. These were the lines in Volhynia, just north of the Austro-Russian frontier. Within several hours the Austrian lines had been all taken, and the Austrians were in full retreat, leaving many dead, wounded and prisoners behind. By June 6, the Russians had advanced on this sector fifteen miles to the important town of Lutsk, which fell on the evening of the same day. The next several days were spent in enlarging the salient north and south of Lutsk in preparation for an attack on Kovel. Kovel was one of the vital centres of the Austro-German lines of . communication, and if it should fall, the forces of Germany and Austria along the battle-line in the east would be all but severed. Within two weeks, the Russians advanced almost to a line parallel to the Austro-Russian frontier, captured close to 75,000 men, and on a front of nearly one hundred miles had cut through to a depth of forty-five miles. But by this time, both Austria and Germany were dispatching reinforcements to bolster up the lines before Kovel. The German General Staff took over the command of the Austrian army which had been routed, von Hindenburg rushed down German forces from the north, Austria rushed up forces from the Balkans and from the Italian front, and Ludendorff arrived on the scene to take general command. During the latter two weeks of June the Austrian lines held and the Russians in this Volhynian sector were occupied entirely in maintaining their gains against counter-attacks. (See Map, p. 599.)

This was the first gain in the Russian advance of June. The second was on the lower third of the battle-front, in Bukowina, and was the

main object of attack. There the Russians had concentrated many guns, and the Austrian lines were wiped out by the unexpectedly heavy bombardment. Driven thus into the open, the Austrians were no match for the more numerous Russian forces, and the Austrian army in Bukowina fled wildly. The Russians seized one important pass after another, and the entire Austrian formation was broken up. On June 17, the Russians entered Czernowitz. By June 23 most of Bukowina had been captured, the Russians had broken through to a depth of seventy-five miles, and the way was opened to Stanislau and Lemberg, the centers of the Austrian lines of communication in Galicia. The gains on the two sectors were extensive. It looked as though Russia might be about to repeat her great victory of 1914.

But in one vital respect the Russian position at the beginning of July, after one month of fighting, was weak. The two sectors on which gains had been made were separated by a considerable portion of the line. With German generals, German guns and German troops being rushed up, a successful German drive north of Bukowina would drive a wedge between the two sections of territory gained and spell disaster. The Russians had failed to advance in the south centre of their attack in June, so that, after all, their success was not so decisive as it seemed at the first impression. Brusiloff therefore had to halt his further onslaught in order to gain enough ground between his two salients to consolidate them and also to strengthen his Bukowina salient against the anticipated Austro-German counter-attack.

On the northern salient, the ground gained by the Russians was to the south of their objective, Kovel. Early in July, therefore, the Russian commander, Lesch, launched severe attacks to push out his salient on the northwest; and he won a signal success. The Austrians again were routed, their losses were heavy, and by July 10 the Russians were only some twenty miles from Kovel on both the east and the southeast.

In the second week of July, the necessary Russian advance in the region connecting their two great salients was begun and it made progress all through the month. By the end of the month, a considerable amount of ground had been gained and the salient to the

north had also been slightly widened and deepened. But it was obvious that at this rate the Russians would not attain their final objectives and hence would not have struck a decisive blow by the end

of the summer; and in the meantime their meagre resources were being exhausted.

In the Bukowina salient the Russian advance was temporarily halted by a sharp Austrian counter-attack some twenty miles east of the Dniester. The Austrians were helped by the heavy rains which swelled the rivers and flooded the country; and for the entire month of