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Next update's done! I'll add the diacritics and footnotes tomorrow.

Part One Hundred-Eight: The Eastern Front in 1907

Polish Front:
Like the Italian front, the war in Poland continued to feature not much movement among either the Alliance Carolingien or the New Coalition. There was some movement in East Prussia during the winter months as the frozen temperatures allowed the Russians to advance across the Masurian Lakes. With the lakes frozen, Russia launched a large offensive across the entire Prussian front in January. The southern flank moved slowly; while the winter conditions made movement somewhat easier, the armies still had to contend with the German defenses and the hilly terrain between the lakes. Nonetheless, the more numerous Russian forces pushed the Germans back and reached the villages of Mragowo and Ketrzyn by the end of January and Biskupiec by the beginning of March. In north Prussia, the Russians crossed the Deime River and reached Eylau and Neuhausen[1] in a month. With the Russians directly threatening Königsberg and Allenstein, the Germans quickly diverted soldiers from Poland and Hungary to Prussia.

With over fifty thousand German soldiers en route to the two cities, the German forces there dug in. For two weeks beginning on March 14, the Russians hammered at the German defenses in the cities and tried to capture Braunsberg[2] to cut off Königsberg's rail connection with the rest of Germany. However, the German defensive positions held and with the arrival of fresh troops, the Germans launched a counterattack on the first of April. The Russians, fatigued and demoralized by the hard push through eastern Prussia that failed to take the two cities, retreated back through Prussia. By the middle of May, the Russians had retreated back to beyond the Masurian Lakes and their positions at the starting point of the Prussian winter offensive. By June the German army had made their first crossing into Russian territory in the area and had captured Suwalki and Augustowo.

In Poland, the combat front had been mostly confined to the stretch between Kalisz and Warta along the Warta River, but starting in 1907 the range of fighting became much more spread out. During the East Prussia offensive, the Russians pushed slightly into Germany proper. The brief Battle of Thorn in April resulted in the Russians holding the city of Thorn for a mere eleven days before being pushed back across the border. Further south, Germany brought in more men from Breslau to enlarge the Warta theatre. In April the fresh German army entered Russia from Kempno and captured Wieruszow and Wielun. Meanwhile, part of the German army in Warta moved south along the right bank of the Warta river and met with the Breslau army, overrunning the Russian defensive positions at Widawa on April 29th. During the next month, the Germans moved east from Widawa toward Warsaw, reaching Petrikau by the end of May.

While the Germans were making gains in Poland, the Siege of Krakow was still going nowhere and the city refused to surrender. Attempts to starve the city into submission were thwarted by the failure to capture the rail lines heading north and east of Krakow that connected it with the rest of Russia and Galicia. However, in the spring of 1907 the Germans achieved some gains toward fully cutting Krakow's supply lines off. In March, the German offensive north of the city launched another attack on Miechow. The Germans took Miechow on March 30th, at last severing the Russian supply line between Warsaw and Krakow. In April the Germans also moved to take more territory east of Krakow. The army under Conrad von Hötzendorf took the villages of Niepolomice, and set up an artillery placement twelve miles east along the southern bank of the Vistula in May. From there, the rail line along the northern bank of the Vistula was in range of the German artillery. Beginning in mid-June, Hötzendorf began shelling the railway line and hoped to end the Siege of Krakow after over a year.


Hungarian Front:
While the Prussian and Polish lines saw the most movement in the spring of 1907, the Hungarian section of the eastern front had its biggest moves in the first months of the year. From January to February, the German army made slight gains in the trenches of central Hungary. By the arrival of spring to the Danubian plain, the Germans had advanced to the hills around Tatabánya[3]. Meanwhile, the New Coalition was pushed back in the northern trenches to the Danube. In April, German forces in the northern trenches attempted a large push across the Danube at Sturovo and Esztergom. Over two hundred thousand men were involved on both lines on either side of the Danube, but after a month of attempted river crossings and artillery bombardments by both sides, the New Coalition still held firm on the right bank of the river.

On either side of the Danubian plain, there was also mixed movements along the fronts. On the southwestern edge of the Hungarian lines, Lake Balaton continued to pose a large natural barrier along the front. The Germans pushed the New Coalition forces back after breaking through to a position on the lake. In February, New Coalition armies pulled out of the town of Keszthely on the far western point of Lake Balaton and conceded the city to German troops. The fighting for the remainder of the northern edge of the lake lasted into May. However on the 18th of that month, the German army defeated the New Coalition in the battle of Veszprém, giving the Germans control over the full northern bank of Lake Balaton. To the west of the lake, the New Coalition was also pushed back as far as Bak and north of Lendava. While there was some movement in these parts of the Hungarian front, the Slovakian front remained largely static due to both sides' concentration on the other parts of the eastern front.

[1] Eylau is Bagrationovsk, Neuhausen is Guryevsk.
[2] Braunsberg is Braniewo.
[3] About 30 miles west of Budapest.