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When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper Pripet in Volhynia.
In defending the former the Austro-German armies had made a determined stand on the banks of the Stokhod River. This bit of water has its origin some ten miles west of Lutsk, from which point it winds its tortuous course for about one hundred miles in a northerly direction toward the Pripet River, of which it is a tributary. Its northern part flows through the Pripet Marshes.
It was not, however, until September 1, 1915, that these troops were able to fight their way out of the forest. At the same time Von Mackensen's troops were following the retreating Russians into the Pripet Marshes.
The sides of this triangle measure thirty, twenty-five, and forty miles respectively. The longest of these is the line between Lutsk and Rovno, with its back toward the Pripet Marshes.
Having learnt that one army was near Vilna, and the other in front of the marshes of the Pripet, he sought to hold them apart by a rapid irruption into the intervening space, and thereafter to destroy them piecemeal. Never was a visionary theory threatened by a more terrible realism.
Up to just south of the Pinsk salient, where the line crossed the Pripet River, it was held, for the Central Powers, almost exclusively by German troops. Below that point its defense was almost entirely in the hands of Austro-Hungarian regiments.
From Lake Narotch down to the Pripet Marshes the Russians maintained a lively cannonade at many points without, however, making any attacks in force. During March 23, 1916, a determined Russian attack against the bridgehead at Jacobstadt broke down under the heavy German gunfire.
While Von Mackensen's army was pushing its advance toward Pinsk, the principal city in the Pripet Marsh region, along both sides of the only railroad leading to it the Brest-Litovsk-Kobryn-Pinsk-Gowel railroad line heavy fighting continued in Volhynia and East Galicia. West of Kovno the Russians were thrown back of the Stubiel River on September 9, 1915, by the Austrians.
Generals von Scholz, von Eichhorn, von Fabeck, and von Woyrsch, were in command of these difficult units, with Field Marshal von Hindenburg in supreme command. The sector south of the Oginski Canal and up to the Pripet River was held by another army group under the command of Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria.
Other parts of this group which had advanced east from Brest-Litovsk along the Minsk railroad reached the Jasiolda River, a tributary of the Pripet, at a point near Bereza, while Austro-Hungarian troops forming part of Von Mackensen's army advanced to east and south of Boloto and Dubowoje.
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