The second phase of the eastern campaign was therefore opened from a new base--Thorn, where the main army had been gathered ever since Oct. 27, when the Russian danger had become alarming, and the offensive in the west had been abandoned. It was suddenly launched with irresistible force on Nov. 12, and rolled back numerically inferior Russian armies, whose task it had been to protect the right flank of the Russian advance on Silesia. Recognizing the danger to their operations in South Poland and Galicia, where they had meanwhile approached the line of the Warta, Cracow, and Neu Sandec, the Russians threw troops into North Poland from all sides and succeeded in temporarily detaining the German advance there, while they were continuing their supreme efforts to break the Austro-German line south of Cracow. But the line held. At the same time the German drive in North Poland was making steady headway. On Dec. 6 the Germans took Lodz, and further north advanced on Lowitz, and the Russian offensive in the Cracow district was given up. While all troops that could be spared were sent northeast to support the prepared lines of the Bzura and Rawka Rivers, the Russians in the south fell back behind the Nida and Dunajec, joining with their right wing their northern army in the region of Tomaschew, and extending their left through the region of Gorlitz and Torka toward the Pruth. In this line the Teutonic advance was checked. A new German drive on the road from Soldau to Warsaw could likewise make no headway beyond Mlawa, while on the other hand in East Prussia the Russian offensive had been brought to a standstill. A siege warfare, like that in France, seemed imminent, except in the Bukowina, where Russian forces during January were driving Austrian troops before them. The Russian invasion of that province, however, so distant from all strategically important points, was but a political manoeuvre. The first movement of any consequence to occur was a desperate attempt of the Austrians early in February to push forward with their right wing in the direction of Stanislau, chiefly to bring relief to the garrison of Przemysl. Simultaneously they began sweeping the Russians out of Bukovina. The latter undertaking was successful, but the advance on Stanislau was thrown back toward Nadworna. While the Austrian offensive was under way, General von Hindenburg unexpectedly launched a vigorous attack in East Prussia, which resulted in the destruction of the Russian East Prussian Army in the region of the Masurian Lakes. Once more a successful drive at the Russian "bread line" from the north seemed at hand. Already the armies pursuing the Russians were hammering at the Russian fortifications along the Niemen, Bobr, and Narew when the surrender of Przemysl, the siege of which had uninterruptedly gone on behind the Russian lines since November, on March 22 again presented to the Russians an opportunity to break the Austrian battleline.