It was upon the Friday, September 4th, that the Austrian evacuation of Lemberg was complete, and that the Russian administration was established in the town. Before Monday, the 7th, the Austrian right had already half converted their retirement into a rout, and the great captures of prisoners and of guns had begun. That important arm, the irregular light cavalry of the Russians, notably the great Cossack contingent, found its opportunity, and the captures began upon a scale far exceeding anything which the war had hitherto shown or was to show for at least the next six months. The matter is of more importance, to our judgment of the war, in its quality than in its scale. In the very same week at Tannenberg nearly as many Russians had been eliminated from the Russian forces as Austrians were here eliminated from the Austrian forces. But the point is that, whereas in the Battle of Tannenberg envelopment, with its consequent slaughter of men who cannot escape and its wholesale captures, left the rest of the Russian army with its _moral_ intact, the Austrian losses were the product of a partial dissolution, and affected the whole of their southern army. First and last one-third of it had fallen _as prisoners_ into Russian hands, apart from the enormous number of killed and removed wounded. It could only just be said that that army remained in being upon Monday, the 7th September, with which date this section of my work ends. The other Austrian army to the north, its flank thus uncovered, was compelled to fall back rapidly, though the forces in front of it were small; and the Austro-Hungarian service never fully recovered from this great blow. TANNENBERG. The province of East Prussia is of a character peculiar in the German Empire and in Europe. That character must be grasped if the reader is to understand what fortunes attended the war in this region; for it is a district which in its history, in its political value, and in its geographical arrangements has very powerfully affected the whole of the campaign. Historically this district is the cradle of that mixed race whose strict, narrow, highly defined, but quite uncreative policy has now piqued, now alarmed, civilized Europe for almost two hundred years. [Illustration: Sketch 72.]