On July 26, 1915, the Russians made a determined counteroffensive from the line of Goworowo-Wyszkow-Serock in an effort to remove the threat to the rear of Warsaw. This, however, had little success, the Russians losing 3,319 men to the Germans in prisoners. To the south of Warsaw the Germans had seized the villages of Ustanov, Lbiska, and Jazarzew, which brought them nearly to the Vistula, just below the capital. The great attacks of the Germans on the troops defending Warsaw were being hampered to some extent by the laying waste of the country by the retiring Russians. Difficulty in moving heavy artillery on roads had also interfered with their progress, but on the morning of July 28, 1915, Von Woyrsch crossed to the eastern shore of the Vistula between the mouth of the Pilica and Kozienice at several places, and was threatening the Warsaw-Ivangorod railway. Novo Georgievsk was steadily being inclosed. The Russian counterthrusts in the neighborhood of Warsaw both on the north and the south of the city were repelled by night and day. To the south near Gora-Kalvaria a desperate attempt of the Russians to push forward toward the west on the night from July 27th to the 28th, 1915, was shattered. 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. On the evening of the 29th they attained the Warsaw-Kiev railway at Biskupice, about halfway between Lublin and Cholm, thus crowning their efforts to get astride their important line of communications. The Russians were destroying everything of value in the country as they retired, even burning grain in the fields. 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. In Courland the Germans continued to push forward, so that on the 12th of August they were enabled to seize the important railway center Mistan. Hope in Russia died hard. Press correspondents up to July 29, 1915, still spoke of the possibility of the Russians standing a siege in their principal fortress on the Warsaw salient. On the 29th, however, reports came from Petrograd that the fortresses of the Warsaw defense were to be abandoned and the capital of Poland given up to the army.