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Within five days of Samsonov's victory, Hindenburg, taking advantage of the magnificent system of German strategic railways, had collected some 150,000 men from the fortresses on the Vistula and concentrated them on a strong position stretching from near Allenstein south-west towards Soldau, his left resting on the railway from Eylau to Insterburg and his right on that from Eylau to Warsaw.
Two new corps have been voted for the German army, to be numbered 24 and 25; one is for the Russian frontier, with head-quarters at Allenstein, and the other for the French frontier, with head-quarters at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse. A German army corps on a war footing comprises about 52,000 men, with 150 guns and 16,000 horses.
As one goes eastwards on that road from Niedenberg to Passenheim, in the triangle Niedenberg-Passenheim-Ortelsberg, the country gets worse and worse, and is a perfect labyrinth of marsh, wood, and swamp. The development of the action in such a ground was as follows: The Russian commander, Samsonoff, with his army running from Allenstein southwards, was facing towards the west.
Half of it fled westward, abandoning many guns and munitions; the other half fled north-eastward towards Königsberg, and the force as a whole disappeared from the field. The Russians pushed their cavalry westward; Allenstein was taken, and by the 25th of August the most advanced patrols of the Russians had almost reached the Vistula.
Their plan is to join the Austrians in an advance from Cracow. Here they hope to hold the lakes with a few troops. They expect our army to advance. They will give up Johannisberg and Ortelsburg. They will make no stand at all until we come to Allenstein. The whole movement here is a trick.
Memel, Tilsit, Insterburg, Königsberg, and Allenstein to name only a few of the more important cities of East Prussia were either threatened with occupation by the Russian forces or had actually been occupied by them. The entire Mazurian Lake district in the southeast of the Prusso-Russian border region was overrun with Russian troops.
From Eylau, through Osterode, the main international line runs through Allenstein, and so on eastward, while a branch from this goes through Passenheim to the junction at Ortelsberg. Here, then, you have a quadrilateral of railways about fifty miles in length.
Aug. 25 Japan and Austria break off diplomatic relations. Aug. 28 English win naval battle over German fleet near Helgoland, Aug. 29 Germans defeat Russians at Allenstein; occupy Amiens; advance to La Fere, sixty-five miles from Paris. September 1 Germans cross Marne; bombs dropped on Paris; Turkish army mobilized; Zeppelins drop bombs on Antwerp.
Napoleon, marching from the Narew by Allenstein upon Eylau, had behind his left Thorn, and farther from the front of the army the tête de pont of Praga and Warsaw; so that his communications were safe, while Benningsen, forced to face him and to make his line parallel to the Baltic, might be cut off from his base, and be thrown back upon the mouths of the Vistula.
Within that quadrilateral is extremely bad country lakes, marshes, and swamps and the only good roads within it are those marked in single lines upon my sketch the road from Allenstein through Hohenstein to Niedenberg, and the road from Niedenberg to Passenheim.
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