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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.
Soult was to have repeated the turning manoeuver as carried out before Jena, but the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he could not accomplish anything like the necessary distance. The morning after this indecisive battle the entire Russian army was far away. For strategic reasons and for lack of provisions it had withdrawn to Ostrolenka. There was no pursuit.
Two railways terminating at Ostrolenka permitted the rapid unloading of large masses of troops at this point, and the line Warsaw-Mlawa-Soldau led straight into the territory aimed at by such an invasion. It seemed easily credible that the Russian commander in chief did, as reported, give orders that Mlawa should be taken be the cost what it might.
Whose heart has never yet throbbed with admiration for the sons of that land who to this day protest with their blood, poured in streams, against that greatest of all crimes recorded in history, the partition of their country, and that blasphemous lie written upon one of its bloodiest pages: Finis Poloniæ? who, abandoned by the world, betrayed by their neighbors, trampled upon as no nation ever was before, again and again rise, and in 1794, under the lead of Kosciuszko, eclipse the deeds of those who, in 1768, flocked to the banners of Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections?
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.
In those days I felt terribly indignant at the insulting remarks which I brought upon myself when I deplored the battle of Ostrolenka. To my honour be it said, that these and similar impressions helped to make me give up my low associates.
This prince was not at all complaisant towards the enemy; he believed him not upon his bare word; at every position he was about to yield, he would actually satisfy himself with his own eyes, that he only yielded it to a superior force, ready to combat him. In this manner he arrived upon the Bug and the Narew, from Nur to Ostrolenka, where the war terminated.
During the preceding night the Polish army had retreated across the river Narew, but, by some unexplained error, had left Lubienski's corps behind. On this gallant corps, drawn up in front of the town of Ostrolenka, the host of Russians fell.
To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka; Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members of the coalition, were finally about to take an active share in the fighting.
The victories which the Poles obtained for a short period during May, 1831, aroused my enthusiastic admiration: it seemed to me as though the world had, by some miracle, been created anew. As a contrast to this, the news of the battle of Ostrolenka made it appear as if the end of the world had come.
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