"Order all units to move out at once. We absolutely cannot let those shameless Russians get away. They actually ran off overnight—utterly disgraceful, the behavior of cowards!" General Böhm-Ermolli, commander of the Austrian 2nd Army Corps, spiritedly issued the order to pursue.
The more than two hundred thousand troops under the 2nd Army Corps began pursuing the Russian Army as though they had been injected with chicken blood.
In the past, they had been chased by the Russians until chickens flew and dogs jumped. Who would have thought that the wheel of fortune would turn, giving them such an opportunity? The Austrian commanders all wanted to win glory and establish merit. Naturally, none of them wanted to miss this perfect chance.
The Austrian 3rd Army Corps and 4th Army Corps also began pursuing the Russian Army. For a time, more than seven hundred thousand Austrian troops were filled with soaring morale as they launched their pursuit in the direction of the fleeing Russian Army.
At the same time, the German 8th Army Corps dispatched part of its forces south from Lviv, seizing important towns along the route and preparing to block the Russian Army. Although the retreating Russian troops numbered more than six hundred thousand, several times the strength of the German 8th Army Corps, it was almost impossible to keep all of them there. Their combat mission was simply to destroy as many Russian troops as possible.
On the roads leading from eastern Austro-Hungarian Empire into Russia, columns of Russian troops marched onward. Every Russian soldier hung his head in dejection, like a defeated rooster.
Although Russia's military strength was not the greatest among the major powers, the Russian Army had little to show for itself beyond its numerical advantage. In particular, the once Europe-renowned Cossack cavalry had faced