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When a group started for the front, it left Nagybiesce in its own car, which, except when the itinerary included some large city Lemberg, for instance served as a little hotel until they came back again. The car was a clean, second-class coach, of the usual European compartment kind, two men to a compartment, and at night they bunked on the long transverse seats comfortably enough.
For matters of importance there were courts of appeal established in Ostrog and Lemberg, the former having jurisdiction over Volhynia and the Ukraine, the latter over the rest of Jewish Russo-Poland. In cases affecting Jews and Gentiles, a decision was given by the judex Judaeorum, who held his office by official appointment of the grand duke.
But the movements of an automobile being confined to the road, we had no difficulty in avoiding its fire, and as for the Cossacks with their eternal feigned attacks, we had reached the point where we almost ignored them. We were in the first days of September, and upon reaching the swamps near Grodeck, south of Lemberg, a determined stand was decided upon by our commanding general.
Lemberg fell about September 1, 1914, and meantime a Serbian victory at the Jedar had destroyed still another Austrian army and emphasized the weakness of Hapsburg military power. At about the time the German blow at France was failing along the Marne, the Russian victories were mounting, Russian armies were sweeping through Galicia and approaching the San.
On June 18th, when the victorious German armies were approaching the gates of Lemberg, the Russian losses were estimated at 400,000 dead and wounded, and 300,000 prisoners, besides 100,000 lost before Marshal von Hindenburg's forces in Poland and Courland. On June 23d Lemberg fell.
I recollect how once, at the cost of the consideration due to an Emperor, I was compelled to extract a direct statement from him. I was with the Emperor Charles on the Eastern front, but left him at Lemberg and, joining the Emperor William in his train, travelled with him for a couple of hours. I had certain things to submit to him, none of which was of an unpleasant nature.
But that had suffered under the old regime, and the failure to capture Lemberg in the summer of 1916, distracted as the Central Empires were by the Somme and Italian campaigns, followed by the more discreditable failure to protect Rumania in the autumn, raised serious doubts of the competence of the imperial bureaucracy. Its honesty also fell under grave suspicion.
At other times artillery duels would take place, varying in duration and intensity, and having likewise no result of real importance. Accompanying the renewed Russian efforts against Lemberg and Kovel in the beginning of September, 1916, fighting broke out again with greater vigor in the Carpathians.
But, perhaps attracted by the splendor of the water excursion, he struck across the country in a north-east direction, by the way of Lemberg, some six hundred miles, to intercept the flotilla and join the party on the river. But the water of the river suddenly fell, and some hundred miles above Kherson, the flotilla ran upon a sand bar and could not be forced over.
The men were called to the colors and the crops were allowed to rot in the fields. Numerous towns were sacked. The advance to Lemberg by the Russians was swift. In the panic that followed this great city of 200,000 had scarcely 70,000 left when the invaders took possession. Families were broken up; none of the refugees had time to take supplies or clothes.
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