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The armies of Field Marshal von Mackensen, breaking through Russian positions to the west of the Wieprz, captured thousands of prisoners and many guns, and once more thrust back the Russian front between the Vistula and the Bug.
By the 1st of July, having swept out of Galicia, their right, under Mackensen, entered the upper valley of the Wieprz, a marshy country which presented considerable difficulty to the advance of troops where a tributary of the Wieprz, the Por, afforded the Russians a natural line of defense.
Not long after the first Austro-German guns began hurling their shells across the Danube, against the Serbian position at Semendria, the Serbians learned of the disposition and the resources of the enemy. The troops under Mackensen were divided into two armies, each in close contact with the other.
Craiova was bad enough, but almost worse was to follow; for on 23 November Mackensen succeeded in forcing the passage of the Danube beween Samovit and Sistovo, and by the 27th he effected a junction with Falkenhayn's armies which had swung east and were now across the Aluta advancing on Bukarest.
The chief danger to the Russians at this stage still threatened from the south, where the archduke and Mackensen had pushed forward irresistibly in their advance to the east of the Vistula toward the railway running from Warsaw through Ivangorod, Lublin, Cholm, and Kovell to Kiev and Moscow.
There was a fresh advance towards the Masurian lakes in East Prussia, and far to the south Alexeiev captured a Carpathian pass at Kirlibaba. Mackensen took advantage of this dispersion to organize a strenuous attack on the Russian lines near the confluence of the Bzura and the Rawka.
Silistria farther down the river was thereupon evacuated, and on the 16th Mackensen stood on the line Rasova-Kobadinu-Tuzla, a dozen miles from the important railway running from Bukarest across the Tchernavoda bridge to Constanza; Tchernavoda was the only bridge across the Danube in the Balkans, and Constanza was Rumania's only Black Sea port.
On the afternoon of July 30, 1915, Lublin at last was occupied by the army of the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, and on the 31st the Germans of Von Mackensen passed through Cholm. Thus the Teutonic armies were now across the important railway from Warsaw and Ivangorod to Kiev, on a broad front, running all the way down to the Vistula at Novo Alexandria.
Particularly fierce encounters took place near Odrzykon and Korczina, ten to fourteen miles southeast of Frysztak. A little farther westward Van Mackensen delivered his main attack against the railway crossing at Jaslo, which fell on the same day, May 7. The Russians retreated in confusion with Von Mackensen close upon their heels.
After a vigorous artillery preparation, which destroyed the Russo-Rumanian trenches in several places, Mackensen began a series of assaults which presently compelled the Russo-Rumanian forces to retire in the center and on the right wing.
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