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The army of General von Gallwitz had now taken up positions along the whole Narew line from southwest of Ostrolenka to Novo Georgievsk. The Russians, however, as already indicated, were still holding fortified places and bridgeheads on the right bank of the river. In this sector the number of prisoners taken by the Germans had risen to 101 officers and 28,760 men.

General von Hindenburg again resorted to the customary German flanking movement, and since the German right, protected by the forest and marshes, seemed too strong, he adopted the daring strategy of sending the flanking force to the lake region to the south, the same character of movement by which the Russian Narew army had been defeated on August 28, in the vicinity of Ortelsburg, and which in case of failure might have been equally as disastrous for the Germans.

The Russian retreat toward the Narew River in particular was regarded by the military critics as threatening momentarily to crumble up the right flank of the positions of the Russians before the capital of Poland. Cholm and Lublin on the southern line of communication of the Russian armies were now in imminent danger.

By July 25, 1915, the Narew had been crossed by the Germans along its whole front, southward from Ostrolenka to Pultusk, and by the 26th they had gained the farther side of the Narew above Ostrolenka likewise.

His business was to cover the line of the Narew for the purpose of assuring freedom of action to the main French army, and with that end in view to attack the Russian corps under Essen, which was menacing it.

Even if he got to Kovno it would need far greater forces than he possessed to cover and control the illimitable land beyond; and between him and success lay swamps more extensive then the Masurian Lakes and the heavily fortified line of the Narew.

He disliked a "dry frontier": he must have a riverine boundary: in fact, he claimed the banks of the Lower Niemen, and, further south, the course of the rivers Wavre, Narew and Bug. To this claim he had perhaps been encouraged by some alluring words of Napoleon that thenceforth the Vistula must be the boundary of their empires.

Opposed to them lay considerable Russian forces whose task it was, supported by the fortresses of the Narew and the Niemen, especially Grodno, to protect the flank and rear of the Russians standing in Warsaw and southward in the bend of the Vistula, with the Warsaw-Vilna Railway behind them, while great decisions were fought for in the Carpathians and Galicia.

The points of some of the German columns on this day, in fact, came within the range of the artillery of the fortress of Novo-Georgievsk and the army of General von Scholtz reached the line of the Bobr and the Narew between Osowice and Ostrolenka. The action at Przasnysz had been decisive.

Next to these on the south, aiming at the Bobr River and the Upper Narew, were the forces of General von Scholtz, and on their right the army of Von Gallwitz, based on Mlawa with Przasnysz in front of it.