The Volunteer Army, defeated, continually in retreat, was nevertheless imbued with a discipline so severe, that it went to the counterattack again and again with an obedience to a single will that was almost mechanical, clinging stubbornly to every fold in the ground that could be of use to it, and finding out, with diabolical skill, the enemy's weakest points.
And on the 25th of July, in the neighbourhood of Viselki, about 30 miles from Tikhoretskaya, the tenth and last day of the battle was fought to a finish.
The position of Drozdovsky's and Kazanovich's troops was even worse than it had been in the preceding days.
The Reds had managed to get in the enemy's rear, and the Volunteers were caught in a trap very Hike that into which the Bolsheviks had fallen at Belaya Glina.
But Sorokin's army was no longer what it had been nine days before.
Its eager tenseness had relaxed, and the stubborn resistance of the enemy had shaken the confidence of the soldiers, instilling doubts and despair—when would victory and rest come?
Soon after 3 p.m. Sorokin's army rushed to the attack all along the front.
The impact was terrific.
All along the horizon the guns thundered.
The troops advanced in serried ranks, never seeking cover.
Tenseness, impatience, fury were reaching breaking point.
But it was the beginning of the end for Sorokin's army.
The first wave of attackers was annihilated, by fire and steel.
The succeeding waves were thrown into confusion by enemy fire, in a welter of dead bodies and wounded and falling men.
And then occurred that which could be neither foreseen, understood, or halted—the tension of the troops suddenly slackened.
No more strength or zeal was left.
And the enemy's icy will continued dealing well-calculated blows, adding still further to the general confusion.... Markov's units, and a cavalry regiment from the north, Erdeli's cavalry from the south, cut their way through the disorganized Red troops.
The White armoured cars crept onward, with their devastating fire, and puffs of smoke came from their armoured trains.
By four o'clock the entire steppe was covered by the southward and westward retreat of Sorokin's army—an army that had ceased to exist as an efficient force.
Chief of Staff Belyakov bundled the Supreme Commander forcibly into an automobile.
Sorokin's bloodshot eyes were bulging, there was froth at the corners of his lips and his blackened hand still clutched an empty revolver.
The bullet-scarred, battered car drove frantically over heaps of dead bodies, and disappeared behind the hills.
The main body of Sorokin's ravaged troops fell back on Ekaterinodar, where the western group of Red troops, the so-called Taman army, under the command of Kozhukh, was also beginning to retreat from the direction of the Taman peninsula.
All along the line of its retreat, villages were rising, and the "outsiders," fearing the vengeance of the Cossack population, were collecting their property and their cattle, and fleeing to the Taman army for protection.
The road was barred by General Pokrovsky's White cavalry.
But though the Taman troops succeeded, in a furious attack, in dispersing this cavalry, it had now become impossible to move on to Ekaterinodar, and Kozhukh's army, with its train of refugees, had to wheel sharply south, towards the wild and impassable mountains, hoping to break through to Novorossiisk, where the Black Sea fleet of the Reds stood at anchor.
Nothing could have stopped Denikin now.
Clearing the path before him with ease, he marched with all his forces on Ekaterinodar, still occupied by the remnants of what had once been the North-Caucasian army, and took it by storm.
Thus ended the "Frost Campaign," begun six months before by Kornilov and a handful of officers.
Ekaterinodar became the White capital.
The rich Black Sea districts were hastily cleared of all dangerous and subversive elements.
Generals who had only a short time before been securing their shirts for lice, restored the traditions of a Great Power, reinstated the ancient imperial scope.
The old homely methods of gaining arms by wresting weapons and ammunition from the enemy in battle, or by raids on Bolshevik stores, were, of course, not suited to the new, ambitious plans.
Now the requirements were money, a steady influx of arms and ammunition, a war commissariat on a big scale, and powerful bases for an offensive into the interior of Russia.
The era of local civil warfare was over, and powerful external forces entered the arena.
The June victories of Denikin constituted a peculiar and unexpected danger for the German High Command.
The Bolsheviks were a foe bound hand and foot by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
But Denikin was a hostile force which the Germans did not yet know and had not had time to study.
By smashing Sorokin's army, Denikin had gained access to the Sea of Azov and Novorossiisk, where the whole Russian navy had been at anchor since the beginning of May.
The Germans were not protected from' the Black Sea side.
So long as the navy was in the hands of the Bolsheviks they had no anxiety, for they could have countered any attempt at hostile action from the sea by crossing the Ukrainian border.
But fifteen destroyers and two dreadnoughts threatened, in the hands of Denikin, to transform the Black Sea into a front of the world war.
On June the tenth Germany presented an ultimatum to the Soviet Government, demanding the transfer, within the next nine days, of the whole Black Sea fleet from Novorossiisk to Sevastopol, where there was a strong German garrison.
An attack on Moscow by the Germans was to be the penalty of nonfulfillment of the ultimatum.
At the same time the Chief of Staff of the Austrian occupational troops in Odessa sent the following dispatch to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Vienna:
"Germany is pursuing definite economic-political aims in the Ukraine.
She desires to ensure for herself, for all time, a safe route to Messopotamia and Arabia, through Baku and Persia.
"The road to the East runs through Kiev, Ekaterinoslav and Sevastopol, and hence by sea from Sevastopol to Batum and Trapezund.
"Germany intends to retain the Crimea—either as a German colony, or in some other way.
She will never again let the invaluable Crimean peninsula slip through her fingers.