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The gigantic enveloping movement had failed in the south; it was now to be attempted against the Russian line in front of Warsaw, conducted by Von Hindenburg and Von Gallwitz in the northern sector, and by Von Mackensen, assisted by General Woyrsch and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, in the southern. These operations are described in the pages following.
Already the Russians were beginning to yield their positions to the west of Grojec, which meant that the Teuton armies were about to push into the opening between Warsaw and Ivangorod and divide the Russian forces. The armies of Von Woyrsch on July 20, 1915, seized a projecting bridgehead to the south of Ivangorod, and captured the lines that had been held by the Russians near Wladislavow.
In their summing up of results since the 14th of July the Teutons recounted further on this day, the 24th, that some 50,000 prisoners had been taken by the armies of General von Woyrsch and Field Marshal von Mackensen during the period. The army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand had been making rapid progress.
There was little change in this particular sector during the fighting which was crowned for the Austro-Germans by the capture of Lemberg on June 22, 1915. Further to the east, however, to the south of the Pilica and west of the Vistula, Von Woyrsch was exerting pressure, and on the 20th of June Berlin announced the capture of several Russian advance posts by these troops.
Difficulty in moving heavy artillery on roads had also interfered with their progress, but on the morning of July 28, 1915, Von Woyrsch crossed to the eastern shore of the Vistula between the mouth of the Pilica and Kozienice at several places, and was threatening the Warsaw-Ivangorod railway. Novo Georgievsk was steadily being inclosed.
Thus, on the forenoon of July 17, 1915, the army of General von Woyrsch, whose objective was the mighty fortress Ivangorod, operating just to the west of the upper Vistula, broke through the Russian wire entanglements and stormed the enemy's trenches on a stretch of 2,000 meters. The breach was widened in desperate hand-to-hand combat.
By noon of July 21, 1915, the Silesian troops of Von Woyrsch had stormed the bridgehead on the Vistula between Lagow and Lugawa-Wola, with the result that Ivangorod was now inclosed from the south, while to northwest of the fortress Austro-Hungarian troops were fighting on the west bank of the Vistula.
By the 24th the Slavs had begun to retreat before Von Woyrsch in the forest region south of the Ilza on the left bank of the Vistula; thus rear guards had been thrown across the Kamienna, and Sandomir was occupied by the Austro-Hungarians. On the 25th the fighting developed on the line Zarvichost-Sienno-Ilza, to which the Russians had fallen back.
For the rest of the month Mackensen's huge machine of destruction was moving forward to the second stage of its journey on the San. Its progress was delayed by Russian counter-attacks on the Austrians under Von Woyrsch in Poland and on Mackensen's other wing which was advancing from the Carpathians on to the Dniester.
The central group was under the command of Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria and was reenforced by another army under General von Woyrsch, which previous to the fall of Warsaw had been fighting more independently somewhat to the south and, a day before the fall of Warsaw, had forced the strong fortress of Ivangorod on August 4, 1915.
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