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Updated: June 22, 2025
From there it followed more or less closely the left bank of the Dvina, passed Friedrichstadt and Jacobstadt to a point just west of Kalkuhnen, a little town on the bend of the Dvina, opposite Dvinsk. There it continued, generally speaking, in a southerly direction, at some points with a slight twist to the east, at others with a similarly slight turn to the west.
Farther south, between Friedrichstadt and Jacobstadt, on the south bank of the Dvina River the Russians captured a Village and wood east of Augustinhof. At many other points, along the entire eastern front from Lake Narotch south attacks developed. In most of these the Russians assumed the initiative.
From there an Austrian army corps with only a very slight admixture of German troops completed the front of the Central Empires down to the Bessarabian border. From the Gulf of Riga down to the Oginski Canal five distinct German army corps were facing the Russians. The most northern of these covered the Gulf section and the Dvina front down to a point near Friedrichstadt.
The Friedrichstadt with its straight streets interested us very much; I had a fancy that the houses were marshaled in battalions, as if by an officer on parade, and that when he gave the word 'March, they would suddenly walk away in step, like the soldiers on the parade ground.
At nightfall I found it impossible to make up my mind to go home and leave my interesting place of refuge, so I persuaded the warder to send a subordinate to Friedrichstadt with a few lines to my wife, and with instructions to ask her to let me have some necessary provisions.
The advance began in the last days of August, and on 1 September Von Hutier forced the passage of the Dvina at Uexküll, eighteen miles above Riga, which the Russians abandoned on the following day. Friedrichstadt fell next, and the Russians retired from Jacobstadt on the 21st.
German aeroplanes successfully attacked the railway station at Zamirie on the Minsk-Baranovitchy railway line, dropping as many as sixty bombs. An attempt to cross the Dvina made by weak Russian forces west of Friedrichstadt on July 11, 1916, and attacks south of Narotch Lake were frustrated.
He made his troops lay a bed of straw and boards over it, in that manner crossed the Düna at two points between Friedrichstadt and Lindau, and re-entered Riga, at the very moment his comrades had begun to despair of his preservation. The day after this engagement, Macdonald was informed of the retreat of Napoleon on Smolensk, but not of the disorganization of the army.
At any rate, the aid lent to the Archduke came more promptly than had seemed possible. I certainly thought, though I did not say so in so many words, that the capture of the bridgehead at Friedrichstadt would involve an immediate and successful advance by the enemy upon Riga, and in this opinion, I believe, no single authority, enemy or ally, differed.
Toward the end of August, 1916, the Russians again attempted at various times to cross the Dvina. In no case, however, were they successful. Even when they succeeded in launching their boats, as they did on August 26, 1916, near Lenewaden east of Friedrichstadt, they were driven back by the German fire.
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