The Grand Duke refused to take any risks; he chose the more difficult task. He determined to withdraw his armies from Poland altogether, and fall back eastward and ever eastward, until his forces could be properly fed with munitions and were ready to make a stand. It was a great resolve, and few commanders would have dared to make it. Probably no other army could have made such a retirement without losing heart altogether, and hopelessly breaking down.
The last days of July saw strange scenes in Warsaw. The whole city was stripped of everything that might be useful to the enemy. The great factories were dismantled, and their plant sent eastward. Gold from the banks, books and papers from the Government offices, relics and sacred pictures from the churches, bells from the towers, copper from the roofs, wire from the telegraph poles--all were piled on great wagons which followed each other in a long procession across the Vistula bridges. Half a million of the city's inhabitants streamed eastwards in carts and in hackney carriages. Only the Poles and the poorest of the Jews remained.
About 24th July the forces in front of Warsaw began to fall back into the suburbs of the city. Meanwhile along the Narev a fierce holding battle was being fought to enable the troops in the northern part of the salient to get away. Five days later Mackensen cut the southern line between Lublin and Cholm, and the sides of the triangle were fast closing in. By this time all the stores and guns were safe, and the troops in the centre were moving through the city. Every day German aeroplanes dropped bombs in the streets, and soon, as the German shells burst among the houses, great fires began to flame up in the western suburbs. At three o'clock on the morning of Thursday, 5th August, three loud explosions shook the city. The Vistula bridges had been blown up.
Three hours later German cavalry galloped in, and that evening Prince Leopold of Bavaria with his suite rode through the streets on the way to the palace. On the eastern horizon he saw the red glow which Napoleon had seen--the flames rising from crops and villages which the Russians had fired as they fell back before the invader.
The Kaiser made no state entry into Warsaw. His exultation, however, appeared in the following telegram which he sent to his sister, the Queen of Greece: "My destructive sword has crushed the Russians. They will need six months to recover. In a short time I will announce new victories won by my brave soldiers, who have shown themselves invincible in battle against nearly the whole world. The war drama is now coming to a close."