RUSSIAN VICTORIES—BATTLES OF THE SAN

Early in September, 1914, the Russians attacked strongly fortified positions at Grodek. This was during the time when the Russian northern army was busy driving back the enemy from Frampol to Biloraj. The defenses of Grodek, which included the position at Sadowa-Wisznia, were protected by a chain of six lakes and considerable ground cut up by dikes.

The Russians were commanded by General Brussilov, who duplicated here the tactics of continuous and heavy attack with which he had overcome the resistance of the Austrians at Halicz.

The Austrians had taken stand on a group of heavily wooded hills. In order to reach this, the Russians were obliged to cross a plain about three miles wide, in a series of parallels, while subjected to fire from machine guns and rifles. It was not until three days later that they were able to gain a position where their guns could reach effectively the trenches of the Russians. When the assault was made with bayonets, the trenches were found heaped with bodies. According to the Russians, the prisoners they took said they had been without regular food for many days and had subsisted on raw potatoes and wild pears. Continually harassed by the Russians, they had not time to bury their dead and so the living had fought on while the remains of their fallen comrades decayed beside them.

A brief account of the affair from the Russian viewpoint is contained in the announcement from the Russian Headquarters Staff, made September 14, 1914:

"The army of General Brussilov, against whom the Austrians made their last desperate onslaught has, on taking the offensive, captured many guns, prisoners, and artillery parks, the numbers of which are now being reckoned. General Brussilov testifies that his troops displayed the highest energy, stanchness, and gallantry. The corps commanders calmly and resolutely directed their troops and frequently wrested the victory at critical moments. General Brussilov specially mentions the distinguished services of General Radko Dmitrieff."

There is no doubt that the engagement here referred to was one of the most bitterly and desperately contested of the war. But the conflict on many fields was being conducted on a scale so huge that it loses much of its importance in a general survey. On the day following the announcement just quoted, the Grand Duke Nicholas briefly announced that "the Russians, after occupying Grodek, reached Mocziska, and are now within one day's march of Przemysl."

While Brussilov's center was moving on to Mocziska, which is about forty miles west of Lemberg, his left was advancing southwesterly along the railroad line to Sambor, and on to Chyrow. The latter place, however, was not taken until September 24, 1914. The fortress of Przemysl was thus cut off from the south.

When Grodek fell, Brussilov's soldiers had been marching and fighting without pause for longer than three weeks. The feats of endurance they had performed were extraordinary but without delay they pursued the Austrians from Grodek with the same alertness that they had shown in following them from Halicz.

In the meantime, as we have noted, Rawa-Russka had been taken. Like Brussilov, Russky was not inclined to give an enemy he had bested any chance to recuperate, and while Brussilov was pursuing the Austrian right from Grodek to Chyrow on the south of Przemysl, Russky was following up his success with equal vigor, driving toward Sieniawa the shattered forces which had opposed him.

Sieniawa was occupied on September 18, 1914, the same day that Brussilov took Sambor. Jaroslav was captured by assault on September 21. There was hard fighting on the way there, around Javorow, fifteen miles east of Przemysl, where the Russians claimed to have taken 5,000 prisoners and thirty guns. In such wise was Przemysl cut off on the north, east, and south. Behind its defenses, what was left of Von Auffenberg's army took refuge.

The Austrians also had met with reverses where Dankl's army had been falling back before the troops of Generals Ewarts and Plehve. It has been shown that the continuity of the Austrian defenses had not been effective in the region northwest of Rawa-Russka, though it extended beyond the frontier between Tomaszow and Tarnograd. After the conflict at Tomaszow, the line of the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand above Rawa-Russka to that place had been bent back on the Rawa-Russka-Jaroslav railroad, while the main body of Dankl's troops fell back on the line of the San.

Never was the Russian pressure on its rear relaxed. The pressure was especially strong from the Russian right which had fought the battle of Krasnik, after clearing the Opolie-Truobin district. The larger portion of the Austrian troops crossed the San near its junction with the Vistula. Probably they hoped that while they might place themselves, on the other side, in touch with the Austrian railroads, the river would be a barrier behind them against the Russians. It appears that General Dankl, anticipating the necessity of falling back across the San, had been sending his transports back in advance of his retreat, almost from the time the retreat began. In fact, some of the transport trains had been sighted and subjected to shell fire as early as September 9, 1914, from the left bank of the Vistula. Not until September 12 did the army itself reach the banks of the San.

Two heavy rear guards, to north and east, were left to hold back the oncoming Russians, while the main body and the baggage were crossing the river on September 12. The Vistula protected the left of one of these rear guards, the San protected the right of the other. Thus the two formed an arch between the two streams.

Marshy ground made difficult the attack on their front, but, nevertheless, they seem to have been unable to prevent the Russians from piercing the screen before the crossing of the river had been completed. There was great slaughter. The Russians claimed that they took 30,000 prisoners. The artillery of the Russians was highly effective in shelling the bridges while the Austrians were passing over them in solid masses. Beside the large number of those killed by shell fire many were reported to have been forced into the water and to have drowned.

Neither was there respite for the Austrians on the other side of the river, although, in theory, the forcing of the passage of the San by an invading army was considered an impossible task. Enormous sums had been spent by the Austrians in an attempt to make it impregnable.

Along the upper or southern part of its extent it was protected by the powerful position of Przemysl and by Jaroslav. From there a light railroad, which had been built solely for strategic purposes, ran parallel and close to its left bank almost to the point where it joined with the Vistula.

As they retired, the Austrians destroyed bridges behind them. But they were not able to destroy all, otherwise a few days' rest might have been vouchsafed the First Army. By quick work the Russians seized and maintained a hold on the bridge at Kreszov, on the frontier a few miles west of Tarnograd. As an official communiquÉ from Petrograd put it: "The Russians leaped across the river on the very shoulders of the retreating enemy."

The victory on the San, September 12-19, 1914, may well be considered one of the most important of the campaign. There is no way of estimating the Austrian losses, over and above the 30,000 prisoners the Russians say they took, but they probably were heavy. Still more important was the fact that the Russians had broken down the barrier which the Austrians had sought to put between themselves and the invaders. Save for the fact that the Austrians were now in touch with their railroads, and for the moment within reach of security, being under the shelter of Cracow, their position within the triangle formed by the Vistula was no more safe than it had been when they were above it.

The Russians reported that within that triangle they seized an enormous amount of supplies of every kind. Moreover, with the advance on Krzeszov, the last of the invading Austrians had been forced from Russian soil. No longer was an enemy left in the provinces of Podolia or Volhynia.

It must be recalled also that Russian troops which were based on Ivangorod also had intercepted German reenforcements on the left of the Vistula as they hastened across Poland to the aid of Austria. The guns of the Russians also had shelled the transports of the Austrians as they retired along the right bank. The Russian right, pressed on the retiring Austrians, had been able to spare a large number of troops, and these it had thrown across the Vistula at Josefow. These, acting as reenforcements of the Russian troops already on that side of the river, had hurried southward, paralleling the advance of the main army on the right bank and brushing aside whatever forces of the enemy they met.

In this way they were able to prevent any help from that quarter coming to the Austrians. Also, when their comrades were delivering a final blow to the Austrians at the crossing of the San, they were busy on the opposite side of the Vistula driving back a large Austrian force and occupying the important place of Sandomierz. They encountered and overcame near Sandomierz the Second German Landwehr Corps under General Woyrsch. In the neighborhood of and at the town they reported that they had taken 3,000 prisoners and 10 guns.[Back to Contents]