Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

STRUGGLE FOR DVINSK AND RIGA. g5

railway. No progress was made, and Russian counter-attacks south of Lake Drysviaty so alarmed the enemy for the safety of his flanks that he cut short some sporadic efforts he was making against Ewarts’s right wing, and stood himself on the defensive.

In these operations the German losses were immense. By the middle of October the army which had hoped to take Dvinsk in three days had lost at least 50,000 men, and was no nearer its goal. The prisoners taken were bewildered, and complained that while they had been told that Kovno and Brest and Grodno would entail a heavy toll nothing had been said of Dvinsk, though Dvinsk had cost them more than all the others. The truth seems to have been that Russia had learned the lesson of Verdun, and held Dvinsk with a field army flung far out from the city. Moreover, it was a well-munitioned army. Though still short of rifles, it had ample stores of shells for the defence, and could check an attack otherwise than by the breasts of its soldiers. At Dvinsk was seen a portent of infinite encouragement for the Russian people, a thing not seen before in her campaign—German bombardments silenced by Russian guns, and infantry rushes checked and broken by fire alone.

By the third week of October the resistance in the Dvinsk section had convinced von Hindenburg that here was no chance of that speedy success he desired. So, according to his custom, he shifted his main attack to another section, and struck hard at Riga. The Russian defence, as we have seen, followed roughly the half-circle of the rivers Aa and Eckau, the right resting on the sea in the vicinity of Kemmern, and the left on the Dvina.