The Campaign in Russian Poland. Percy Cross Standing
It was claimed, in disproof of these statements, that in the region between the rivers Vistula and Bug the Russians had, up to and including September 4, captured many Austrian guns, 150 officers, and 12,000 men. It was added that, “having broken the Austrian resistance,” the Tsar’s army was already continuing its victorious advance southwards from Lemberg.
The Grand-duke and General Russky had determined that no rest must be given to the enemy’s army already so badly beaten in front of the capital of Galicia. Scouting far to the flank, the Cossack cavalry already found themselves in the passes of the Carpathians. A German division intended to stiffen the Austrian resistance along this extended line was understood to have been badly cut up on the left bank of the Vistula; but details of the affair were vague. To the west of Krasnostaw, however, a whole Austrian battalion—the 45th of the line—was cut off and surrounded, being compelled to surrender to the number of 1,500 men and nearly 50 officers.
The next Russian objective would obviously be the important and strongly fortified town of Przemysl, fifty-five miles west of Lemberg. But, before attacking this strong place of arms, it was essential to get possession of Mikolaiev. This point owes its strategical importance to the circumstance that it is situated at the junction of the railways to Lemberg, Jimacheff, and (via Stry) to the Carpathians. Entrenchments had been thrown up on both banks of the Dniester for the protection of the bridges crossing that river. With a mixed population of Poles and Jews of a little over 4,000, it had a garrison of some 10,000 men. Moreover, it was common knowledge that the Austrian authorities did not believe in the practicability of Mikolaiev being reduced either by investment or direct assault, owing to the deep marshes that surround the place for many miles. But, alas! a similar impregnability has been claimed for only too many of the fortresses involved in this war, which have held out for no longer than a few days. Mikolaiev was to prove no exception to the rule, although we are told that the fortress’s guns were mounted in “armoured cupolas.”
Apparently the place surrendered at discretion after a very moderate resistance. The garrison, forty heavy guns, and a great quantity of ammunition became the prizes of the victors; but the details of what must have been a brilliant feat of arms are conspicuously meagre. It is stated, however, that the defences included triple lines of barbed wire “and other obstacles.”
We have now the spectacle of two separate Austrian armies, that of Galicia and that which was operating in Southern Poland, striving desperately to stem the tide that appeared to be setting dead against them.
By the second week of September public interest in Russia had become deeply centred in the plight of the latter army. It was by this time fighting a series of rearguard actions with its wary and well-handled opponents. Although the majority of well-informed military critics assumed the ultimate destruction of this army as a fighting force, the extent of the assistance it might receive from the German side could not be gauged with accuracy. Thus a special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph wrote from Petrograd on September 11:
“The theory is put forward that at any rate the greater part of the 300,000 men whom the Germans are known to have withdrawn from their western front, and who are supposed to have been replaced by the Landwehr and the Landsturm corps, have been directed to the assistance of the Austrians, and not to East Prussia. An army paper issued officially at the front for the information of the troops says that on September 5 and 6 the battle continued on the Austrian front. The Russian troops operating between Lublin and the Vistula had occupied the river Chodel. They had to deal with a well-entrenched enemy, and therefore the attack developed rather slowly. Moving from Krasnostaw, the Austrian force attempted to reach the railway line between Lublin and Cholm, to cut the communications between those two places; but the plan was frustrated by the battle of September 2 and 3 at Suchodol and other Russian counter-moves. The position of the Russians was, on September 6, much stronger, and Krasnostaw was in their hands. There were then also pretty plain signs of a general Austrian retreat.”
These German reinforcements amounted, at all events, to one or two army corps, and with their co-operation hard fighting took place on September 8–9 along the entire front. It is significant that 10 per cent. of the prisoners taken on those days are said to have been Germans. The Austrian commander appears to have strengthened his left wing, now resting on the Vistula, at the expense of his right in order to attempt to hold the relentless flanking movement of General Russky. A large Austrian force was thrown for this purpose along a front running roughly from Lubisch to Komarno, which had formed a rallying-point for considerable numbers of the army broken up near Lemberg. Along this line they managed to entrench with some skill and elaboration, and Russky encountered a stubborn resistance in the task of turning them out, though it has been claimed on the Russian side that the enemy as a rule has been generally loth to wait for the bayonets to cross.
This Austrian conception of a counterstroke of their heavily reinforced right wing, with the intention of driving Russky back upon Lemberg, was in the main a good one. It commenced on September 9, when, according to one who was in the firing-line, the Austrians essayed “repeated and stubborn attacks with the object of crushing the Russian left wing and getting round their right. These movements were met by vigorous counter-attacks, and in order to ease the pressure the army on the Vistula, and particularly that portion to the south of Lublin, was ordered to push forward and, if possible, strike at the enemy’s rear. Accordingly the Russian forces in South Poland pressed on from the line Solez-Opole-Vichowe-Samostie-Komarow, and, after desperate fighting, drove the Austrians from their entrenched positions. On September 9 the enemy’s resistance was overcome, and he retired all along the line, with the Russians in pursuit. In the battles of that and the preceding day the Russians took 150 cannon, several machine-guns, and 3,000 prisoners.
“On the 10th, while the chase of the retreating Austrians was proceeding in this quarter, the Russians in the direction of Lemberg were called upon to sustain repeated assaults. These were, however, all repulsed with heavy loss, eight guns and more than four thousand prisoners being captured. Apparently the Austrians withdrawing from the Lublin province fought a rearguard action on the 12th, as mention is made of an obstinate battle on that day which ended with the rout of the enemy, who was compelled to abandon his wounded. Evidently in concert with this stand the Austrians to the west of Lemberg delivered three furious night attacks between the 11th and 12th. From the impetuosity with which the assaults were pressed home it was evident that they were a last despairing attempt to sweep back the onflowing wave of Russians.”
In a word, this series of desperate attacks and counter-attacks resulted in the total failure of the Austrian army, though stiffened by its German supports, to “hold” their terrible opponents. But it was no easy victory. Both sides fought with devoted courage and stubborn tenacity. Much of the ground was cut up with marshy streams and belts of treacherous swamp land, and one of the harrowing features of this battle was that numbers of dead lay unburied among the morasses or half sunk in the shallow streams and hundreds of wounded wretches died among these abandoned dead, undiscovered by the peasants of the district until it was too late.
In the close fighting the Russian losses were necessarily heavy, but the Petrograd official estimates of the Austro-German casualties from the capture of Lemberg up to and including this hard-won triumph on the Vistula simply stagger the imagination, and suggest that the computation was somewhat loosely made. These were the figures:
Killed and wounded, 250,000 men.
Prisoners, 100,000 men.
Guns captured, 400.
The last of these figures is probably nearest the truth. It would include the numerous guns secured by the surrender of Mikolaiev, as well as those taken on the battle-field. In the great battle the Russian artillery is said to have outnumbered that of the enemy in the proportion of two to one, and the Austrians had to abandon many batteries among the marshes when the retreat began. Amongst these were some of their formidable field-howitzers.
Amongst the Russian corps commanders specially distinguished during these days of battle, and decorated by the Tsar with the Cross of St. George for his part in the victory, was the Bilarian Radko Dimitrieff. He has had a remarkable career. Born in 1859, passed out of the Military School of Sofia as a lieutenant at the age of twenty, and then studied for a while in the Staff College at St. Petersburg. He had rejoined the