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After heavy losses the Russian attack died away without appreciable gain of ground, and north of the Pripet at least the enemy line was secure. Nor, even south of it, was Brussilov able to do much more than straighten his own, bringing it forward to the point reached by his salient in front of Lutsk. This, however, involved some danger to Lemberg and effected the fall of Stanislau farther south.
The fall of Lemberg had given the German right a position far to the east of their left, and Mackensen advancing from Lublin and Cholm had driven the Russians across the Bug at Wlodawa before Brest-Litovsk was taken. The marshes of Pripet were at their driest in August, and Mackensen encountered few obstacles as he pressed on from Brest to Kobrin and thence to Pinsk along the rail to Moscow.
This change took place, as we have already seen, as far as the front from the Vilia River down to the southern limits of the Pripet Marshes was concerned, as early as the end of September, 1915.
From Kolki northwards the Pripet swamps made progress difficult, and Bothmer offered a stubborn resistance on the Strypa. But in the Volhynian triangle and the Bukovina the attack achieved a surprising success. The infantry advance began on the 4th and by noon the Austrian front was completely broken.
To the north again the ground falls abruptly to the level of Lake Langaza, thence turns eastward to the height of Dautbaba, after which the lines could be stretched to the borders of the swampy region at the mouth of the Vardar, ground which is as impassable as the Pripet Marshes on the Russian front and which were formerly occupied by the Bulgarian comatjis, in spite of all the efforts of the Turks to eject or capture them.
The captures of Erzerum and Trebizond were a warning that deserved, but did not earn, attention in Berlin and the British failure and surrender at Kut-el-Amara served to obscure the Eastern situation. But about June 1, 1916, Russia suddenly stepped out and assailed the whole Austro-German line with fire and steel. The weight of the blow fell between the Pripet Marshes and the Rumanian frontier.
Considering that this city is, in a direct line, more than 220 miles east of Warsaw, this accomplishment was little short of marvelous, especially in view of the fact that the territory surrounding Pinsk the Pripet Marshes offered immense difficulties.
In the Pripet Marshes, too, artillery operations had by now become possible again and the Russian positions west of the village of Pleshichitsa, southeast of Pinsk, were subjected to a violent bombardment. Throughout the balance of May not a day passed during which guns of all calibers did not maintain a violent bombardment at many points along the entire front.
Far to the south below the Pripet marshes which divided the Russian front into two, the Germans and the Russians under Brussilov engaged in thrust and counter-thrust along the Styr which caused Czartorysk to change hands again and again, and earned for these operations the nickname of "the Poliesian quadrille"; and the fluctuations on the Strypa were equally indecisive.
During the next two weeks considerable fighting of this nature occurred at many points along the front from the Pripet Marshes down to the Dniester. At no time, however, were the forces engaged on either side very numerous, nor did the results change the front materially.
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