offensive war of rapid maneuver which in a time before mechanization meant a focus on cavalry and light horse artillery firing shrapnel shells. Unlike the Western Front which quickly degenerated into Trench Warfare the Eastern Front remained fluid and large swathes of territory were won and lost because the length of the front and the sparseness of transport networks presented an open flank. Although the majority of combatants had heavy field artillery prior to the outbreak of the First World War, none had adequate numbers of heavy guns in service, nor had they foreseen the growing importance of heavy artillery. Since aircraft of the period were not yet capable of carrying large diameter bombs the burden of delivering heavy firepower fell on the artillery. The majority of combatants scrambled to find anything that could fire a heavy shell and that meant emptying the fortresses and scouring the arms depots for guns held in reserve. It was under these conditions that M1877's in fortresses in European Russia were sent to the front in order to support Russian armies assaulting German and Austro-Hungarian frontier fortresses. However, due to a string of Russian defeats in the first year of the war, a number of M1877's were captured by the Germans. In 1916 the Germans transferred twenty M1877's to the Western Front where they were assigned to heavy artillery battalions of the army and these soldiered on in declining numbers until the end of the war. In German service the mortars had better range due to more efficient smokeless powder and more aerodynamic German projectiles. Photo Gallery References World War I guns Artillery of the Russian Empire Russo-Japanese war weapons of Russia 203 mm artillery World War I artillery of Russia