Grodno

“ The winter battles of the Mazurian Lakes had forced the armies at the northern end of the Russian right flank back into their great fortresses Kovno and Grodno, and behind the line of the Niemen and the Bobr. A great forest region lies to the east and north of Grodno, and between the Niemen and the cities of Augustowo and Suwalki which the Germans, after their successful offensive, used as bases for their operations. ”

“ They had two railways to help them in their retreat—the main line to Petrograd and a line connecting with the Riga-Vilna-Rovno Railway. At all costs the enemy must be held back from these railways until the guns, troops, and stores in and around Grodno could be got away. Rearguards behind Grodno and a screen of troops farther north, where the Germans had to cross a district of lakes and forests, fought gallantly, and by 12th September the salient was clear. The Germans claimed to have captured 4,000 prisoners ”

“ With the fall of Grodno the next objective of the German troops became Vilna. Indeed, on the very day of Grodno's occupation, German cavalry reached the northwest and western region immediately adjoining Vilna, in spite of the most determined Russian resistance. These, of course, were troops that had not participated in the drive against Grodno, but during that time had been fighting the Russians farther to the north, and now that Grodno was no longer to be feared, started a drive of their own against Vilna. Vilna is second in importance among Polish cities only to Warsaw itself. ”

“ He who from being a youth had grown to be a man, he whom age had not bent, had to mount his horse. Yan Kazimir arrived at Grodno, and fixed that as the place of general muster. There, then, they mustered. The Butryms in silence went forth; after them others, and the Gashtovts last,—as they always did, for they hated to leave the Patsuneli girls. The nobles from other districts appeared in scant numbers only, and the country was left undefended; but God-fearing Lauda had appeared in full quota. ”

“ I think that the Vistula may have been to them and the Slavonians what the Rhine was to the Gauls and Germans. The main question is how far can we bring them south? What justifies us in making them reach the Carpathians? At present we find them in Livonia, Courland, East Prussia, Vilna, and Grodno; but further south than Grodno nowhere; nowhere, at least, with the definite characteristics of name and language. Every inch that is given them south of Grodno must have its proper evidence to support it.
The Gothini of Tacitus are the first population that we may make Lithuanic. What says Tacitus? ”

“ Lithuania we know to be now a Russian province, governed by its own laws, except as they may be modified by the Emperor's edicts. It is divided into three governments, Wilna, Grodno, and Minsk, with a Governor-General over them. The decree of the Assembly of the Department of Grodno, is an exemplified copy of that made on the 7th May, 1843, in the case of the heirs of Kosciusko, and contains the genealogical chart of the descendants of the sisters of Kosciusko. ”

“ The Bug, another right-hand tributary of the Vistula, describes a wide curve concentric with those of the middle Vistula and the Narew, and separates the Polish governments of Lublin and Siedlce from the Russian governments of Volhynia and Grodno. Only light boats (galary) are floated down this broad, shallow stream, whose flat and open valley is often inundated. Its tributary, the Narew (250 m.) , brings the forest-lands of Byelovyezh in Grodno into communication with Poland, timber being floated down from Surazh and light boats from Tykocin in Lomza. ”

“ Sept. 2 (Thur.) Sedan capitulated 1870.
The Germans capture Grodno. The Austro-Germans cross the Styr, the Sereth, and the Strypa.
The British transport Sutherland is torpedoed in the Ægean (loss of life small) .
Sept. 3 (Fri.)
The Russians re-enter Grodno temporarily, but are forced across the Dvina at Friedrichstadt.
Sept. 4 (Sat.)
The Germans complete the occupation of Grodno. ”

“ There will be no Uistsie with us, as God is in heaven!”
In the measure of the cups, heads became heated, and warlike ardor increased. At the brink of a precipice the last effort often brings safety; this was understood by those crowds of soldiers and that nobility whom so recently Yan Kazimir had called to Grodno with despairing universals to form the general militia. Now all hearts, all minds were turned to Radzivill; all lips repeated that terrible name, which till recently had ever been coupled with victory. ”

“ His right moved along the railway from Gumbinnen towards Kovno, his centre pushed forward by way of Suwalki, [154] while his right, which had detached troops to besiege the fortress of Ossowietz, [155] on the Bobr, swept towards Grodno. The country through which he was now moving is one tangle of bog and lake; it is traversed by only three railway lines, but the roads are few. The troops moving east from Suwalki had to cross a causeway which threads the marshes to the east and south-east of that town. An army traversing such a country is at a great disadvantage. ”

“ Outside Warsaw and its immediate vicinity there is little in Russian Poland to interest the tourist. The country is generally level and monotonous, with wide expanses of sand, heath, and forest, and it is only towards the north and east that the ground may be said to be heavily timbered. Dense forests stretch down from the Russian, anciently Polish, province of Grodno, and now form the last retreat in Europe of the Bison Europeans, the survivor of the Aurochs (Bos primigenius) , which is supposed to have been the original stock of our horned cattle. ”

“ Kmita could not have others. After the defeat of the grand hetman, the enemy deluged the whole country. The remnants of the regular troops of the Lithuanian quota withdrew for a certain time to Birji and Kyedani, in order to rally there. The nobility of Smolensk, Vityebsk, Polotsk, Mstislavsk, and Minsk either followed the army or took refuge in the provinces still unoccupied. Men of superior courage among the nobility assembled at Grodno around the under-treasurer, Pan Gosyevski; for the royal proclamation summoning the general militia appointed that as the place of muster. ”

“ It seemed easily credible that the Russian commander in chief did, as reported, give orders that Mlawa should be taken be the cost what it might.
(p. 325) The northern Russian armies based upon the fortresses of Kovno and Grodno on the Niemen had not fully started on their part of this great, well-planned undertaking when the German counteroffensive was suddenly launched with tremendous strength from the Tilsit-Insterburg-Mazurian Lakes line. The disaster which followed, and which banished all hope of an advance of the Russians on this wing, has been described on a preceding page. ”

“ Other factories produce silk, shoddy and leather. The government is crossed by the main lines of railway from Warsaw to St Petersburg and from Warsaw to Moscow. The population numbered 1,008,521 in 1870 and 1,616,630 in 1897; of these last 789,801 were women and 255,946 were urban. In 1906 it was estimated at 1,826,600. White Russians predominate (54%) , then follow Jews (17.4%) , Poles (10%) , Lithuanians and Germans. The government is divided into nine districts, the chief towns, with their populations in 1897, being Grodno (q.v.) ”

“ Gronski gazed at him with great interest, for even in Warsaw he heard of him as an original and prominent personality, in the favorable meaning of those words.
He was quite a young man, with tawny hair, swarthy like a gypsy, with a countenance alive with fire, bubbling with health, somewhat loud and brisk in his manners. In the city he played an uncommon rôle not only because he had the largest medical practice, but because he belonged to the most active men in any field. ”

“ Gronski was not an energetic man, but no coward, and the thought of the being most precious to him in the world, Marynia, infused him with energy. He immediately sent the field hands for the forest rangers, as well as to the sawmill, where a dozen or more men worked, of whom it was known in the manor, as well as in the village, that they read "The Pole" and did not fear any one. The manor domestics very quickly recovered from their consternation. ”

“ You, generally speaking, carry ruin with you and join Poland to that ruin. In your party there are, without doubt, men of conviction and good faith, but blind, who in their blindness are serving a different master than they imagine."
Gronski knew that he was speaking in vain, but whether from habit, or because he wanted to relieve himself of all that had accumulated within him, he talked until the rattle of the wheels on the city pavements drowned his words. They parted rather coldly before the hotel, for Gronski's views touched the young medical student to the quick. ”

“ Whatever was lacking to the situation in natural strength had been supplied by art. This the Russians displayed above all in the Grodek position which, joining the Wereszyca on the north at Janow, stretches for a distance of more than 70 kilometres in a northwestern direction as far as the region of Narol Miasto. ”

“ To Pani Krzycki, who, next to her children, loved, above everything else in the world, Jastrzeb, the words of Gronski appealed very convincingly, but Dolhanski, recalling a village he once owned and squandered, replied, drawling his words as usual:
"Bird's milk may not be lacking, but money is lacking. Besides, it is amusing to hear these eulogies upon country life pronounced by a rich man who could buy for himself a tract of land and settle in the country, but whom it is necessary to pull out of the city with hooks." ”

“ What a pleasing encouragement to genius!
That heavy statue in front of the Gostinoi Dwor was, they say, cast to commemorate the defeat of the Poles [277] when Poland was more powerful than Russia. That ponderous arm appears disproportioned to the figure. The Gorod is much larger than the Gostinoi Dwor in St. Petersburg, but it is neither so clean nor kept in so good order: I think the shopmen are still more tiresome with their “What do you wish?” Some of the shops contain things of great value, although not displayed to view. That decent-looking woman is inspecting real cashmere shawls. ”

“ We alone unite Poland with an idea, powerful, young, and vital, if only for the reason that all youth is with us."
"In the first place, not all youth, nor even one half," answered Gronski; "and again, the church has survived and will survive many a social movement; and thirdly, your idea is as ancient as poverty itself on this earth. If you desire, sir, to contend that the form which La Salle and Marx gave it is new, then I will answer you thus: Your modern socialism has too thick tufts of hair on its scalp, but when it begins to get bald, none will scoff at it so much as the young." ”

“ The peculiar features of the city multiply as you advance. High on the left, its cathedral tower springing above the rest, appears the Hradschin—an imposing mass of building in the factory style of architecture, stretching, as one might guess, for half a mile along the bold 115 eminence, commanding the country for miles around. You can count four hundred windows. There, as every one knows, the Thirty Years' War began, by certain angry Bohemian nobles pitching two Imperial commissioners and their secretary out of one of the windows. ”

“ But this state of affairs bred within him such incessant discord that he envied men of action who journey through life without any whys or wherefores, as well as people who absolutely succumb to one great feeling.
For the old notary and Marynia, such a great feeling was music; so that as often as Gronski saw them together, so often did he have before his eyes a living example that things do exist with which one can fill out his life from dawn until the last moments,--if only one does not subject them to a too close analysis. ”

“ He sometimes compared himself to a man sitting on the bank of a river and watching its course, who knows indeed that it must roll on and disappear in the sea, but who is nevertheless interested in the movements of its waves, its currents, its whirlpools, mists rising from its depths, and the play of light upon its waters. Besides his genuine love of ancient languages and authors, Gronski was interested in politics, science, literature, art, the contemporary social tendencies, and finally in the private affairs of mankind ”

“ If we two, that is, Gronski and myself, went over there, we would not effect anything because they have seen us at the funeral, and the estimable Slavonians of Rzeslewo look upon us as men who have a personal interest in the matter. It will be necessary that some one unknown go there, who will not argue, but who will act as if he had the right and power and will command the peasants to behave peaceably. ”

“ Only the northern edge of the country on the Donetz has an appearance analogous to the adjacent Kharkiv country, with large, typically Ukrainian villages and village-towns. All the remaining region of the Donetz Plateau is a naked steppe. Here and there factory chimneys, isolated or in groups, rise, surrounded by factory buildings and laborers’ huts. The settlements come into existence and grow with true American speed. The Donetz Plateau embraces parts of the Governments of Kharkiv, Katerinoslav and Don. ”

“ A gap in the Famine Wall, which you reach by shady winding ways, gives you a glorious and unexpected view of the Hradšany; the winding ways lead you up to the summit of the Petřin, as this height is called, where you may find an outlook tower, a church, a diorama showing a scene from the Thirty Years' War, and a beer-garden—so entertainment is provided for all tastes. ”