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The unexpectedly rapid fall of Kovno and Grodno had enabled the Germans to threaten the envelopment of Ewarts' army both on the south and the north, on the Niemen towards Mosty and Lida and farther north towards Vilna. The struggle for Vilna was decided at Meiszagola, a village about fifteen miles north-west of the old Lithuanian capital.
For the withdrawal of the Russians from Grodno there were available two railroads, one running north to Vilna and another running at first southeast to Mosty, and there dividing into two branches by both of which finally in a roundabout way either Minsk or Kieff could be reached. The Germans, of course, were eager to cut off these lines of retreat.
They were thus also close to Molodetchno on the railway along which Ewarts was falling back from Skidel, Mosty, and Lida; and control of that junction would have put two Russian armies at their mercy. Just in time Ruszky was restored to the command of the northern group of Russian armies, and the victor of Rawa Ruska and Prasnysz was not doomed now to break his uniform record of success.
Another of the small southern tributaries of the Niemen which offered excellent opportunities for resistance of which the Russians promptly availed themselves, was the Zelvianka River, which joins the Niemen just west of Mosty.
This line stretched south from the Niemen near Mosty to Volkovysk, then southeast to Rushana, thence east of the Pushany Marshes across the Jasiolda River near Chenisk to Drohichyn, on the Brest-Litovsk-Pinsk railroad. On the German and Austrian side these engagements were fought by the armies of Prince Leopold of Bavaria and Field Marshal von Mackensen.
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