These essentials of the ground being grasped, 
we can proceed to examine what exactly happened 
at the end of last week upon the Lublin road. 
The main forces of ths Archduke — in 
number perhaps sixteen divisions, or, say, 
rather less than one-third of a million men 
— deployed in front of Kras'nik and advanced 
to a line stretching from Urzedow upon the 
Popkowice (or Urzendowka) Brook to some- 
what beyond the countrj' town of Bychawa upon 
the Kozarewka Brook, a small tributary of the 
River Byzstryca. The whole front thus occupied by 
the main body was in length about ten miles. The 
Russians having behind them now a railway not 
twenty miles away, and being able, therefore, to 
concentrate troops and munitions rapidly, met the 
shock just to the northward of a line drawn from 
Urzedow to Bychawa, and at the first onset 
were able to force back the Austro-German line. 
wooded plateau between the Brook Popkowice and 
the River Wyznica; their riglit stretched across 
an important triangle between the upper sources 
of the Byzstryca and a small stream coming in 
from the east — a triangle the importance of which 
will be apparent in a moment, and which is erro- 
neously described in our communiques as " Hill 
118." The extreme Austrian right, o.pparently 
slightly refused, stretched out to a point due south 
of Bykchawa, and about three miles from that 
town or large village. Beyond this point only a 
comparatively thin line of posts kept up communi- 
cations across the twenty or thirty miles which 
separated the Archduke's main body from that of 
Mackensen beyond the Wierpz. 
This second line taken up by the Archduka 
after his retirement the Austro-Germans have 
found it possible to hold — at least, up to the news 
received at the m^oment of writing — and the centre 
Urzedow 
^ ^ ^ 
c:r7 
ivrtUs 
JO 
— 1 
m 
They concentrated, especially upon the centre — 
that is, upon the high road — and during the 
•Thursday and the Friday they carried the Pop- 
kowice Brook, the bridge of Wilkolaz upon the 
main road, Bychawa itself, of course, and even 
the village called after the name of the River 
Byzstryca. On the third day of the fighting the 
Austrian line, leaving in its retirement some 
15,000 in the hands of the Russians (not, remem- 
ber, a very large proportion — only five per cent.), 
was back upon the high ground which runs every- 
where north of Krasnik. Their left lay upon the 
of their effort has been the little triangle of high 
ground in front of Byzstryca village and between 
the last waters of the Byzstryca and its earliest 
tributary rivulet. This triangle of high ground 
has a summit 218 metres above the sea, the mean- 
ing of which figure and of the ground it dominates 
can best perhaps be understood by some such 
general description as follows : — 
All this countryside, of which Krasnik is the 
capital, is a watershed, or high plateau, averaging 
about 200 metres, or rather more than 600 feet, 
above sea level. It is the watershed between the 
