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A further consideration may have been the absolute certainty that Germany would dispatch more reenforcements to the aid of her ally. Selivanoff's siege army was distributed between Dmitrieff, Brussilov, and Ivanoff, but they could not be employed to full advantage owing to the restricted area presented by the Germanic front.
Russia, however, was a different power from the Teutonic Order, and Austrian generals were not Hindenburgs; Ruszky and Brussilov, too, were better leaders than Samsonov, and though Rennenkampf had to evacuate East Prussia before Hindenburg's advance, the Austrians were driven like chaff before their enemies in Galicia.
By that time the thoughts of the Austrians and most of their troops were elsewhere; and just as the German campaign at Verdun was ruined by the Entente offensive on the Somme, the Austrian advance from the Trentino was stopped by the Russian attack in the East. In the first week of June Brussilov had gone through the Austrian lines like brown paper at Lutsk and Dubno.
Russian generals were among the most skilful of strategists, and men like Ruszky, Alexeiev, Brussilov, and others would have been invincible had Russia's man-power been competently equipped.
On May 3, 1915, Dmitrieff's troops were falling back farther every hour, continuously fighting rear-guard actions and compelling the pursuers to conquer every foot of ground. There was a powerful reason for this stubborn retirement: it was to gain time for Brussilov to get his men out of their perilous positions and to join the main line again with Dmitrieff's receding ranks.
In the public speeches which he then made he spoke very encouragingly of the situation on the firing lines, but two days later it was announced that General Alexiev's resignation as commander in chief had been accepted and that Brussilov had been appointed in his place.
Ewarts was beginning an attack on the important junction of Baranovitchi north of the Pripet marshes, and presently the line of battle spread down the Shchara and along the Oginski canal. If he succeeded like Brussilov, Brest-Litovsk might be caught between two fires with dire results to the whole German front in Russia and future in the Balkans.
Opposed to them were the Russian Generals Brussilov, Ivanoff, and Alexieff, respectively. Correspondents with the Teutonic troops in these weeks wrote in wonderment of the scenes of the slowly forward toiling advance into the mountains which they had seen. On every road leading into Galicia there was the same picture of a flood rolling steadily on.
Just south of him, barely fifteen miles away, General von Emmich and General Martiny, with the "Bayonet Bavarians" and the Tenth Austro-Hungarian Army Corps, went pounding and slashing a passage along the Bednarka-Zmigrod road and the auxiliary road from Malastow to Krempna. They were striving hard to reach the western passes before Brussilov had time to withdraw.
In the early part of the month the Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' became more and more radical in its demands, both as to the share it was to have in the control of the army and as to the disciplinary measures under which soldiers were to live. So serious became the crisis that Minister of War General Gutchkov, as well as Generals Kornilov, Brussilov, and Gurko resigned their commands.
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