Britain therefore found itself moving from a limited liability on the Continent to taking the principal burden in the major Entente offensive in the west in 1916. It did not do so primarily to relieve the French at Verdun. That particular task was accomplished by the Russians. Their principal contribution to the allied joint plan was to have been an attack in the north, near Vilna, but it was usurped by the diversion that preceded it. Mounted by Brusilov in Galicia, it
