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The enemy opposed the most desperate resistance to the offensive of our troops. They had brought up every available man on the front from the direction of Bartfeld as far as the Uzsok Pass, including even German troops and numerous cavalrymen fighting on foot. The effectives on this front exceeded 300 battalions. Moreover, our troops had to overcome great natural difficulties at every step.

In the western sector, facing Dmitrieff, the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand held the roads leading from Novy-Sacz and Grybow to Tarnow, covering Cracow; and from south of the range the two roads diverging from Zboro to Gorlice and Jaslo were in Russian possession, though the Austrians held their junction at Zboro, eight miles north of Bartfeld.

Great masses of Germanic reserves were concentrating in northern Hungary, into which the Russians had driven a thin wedge south of Dukla, where they held an isolated outpost near Bartfeld. To leave this position undeveloped meant compulsory withdrawal or disaster.

The Laborza district was held by the Archduke Joseph with the Seventh Army Corps; on his left stood a German corps under Von Marwitz, and on his right the Tenth Army Corps, north of Bartfeld, with some additional forces in between. Around the Lupkow and Uzsok passes the Second Austro-Hungarian Army under Boehm-Ermolli was stationed where it had been since February, 1915.