At the beginning of November, just three months after the declaration
of war, it seemed that the German invasion of Poland had ended in
complete failure and that the battle before Warsaw would be decisive of
the whole conflict in Eastern Europe.
In August, while the Russian mobilisation was still incomplete,
Rennenkampf had made his daring raid into East Prussia, with the view
of helping the Allies in the west by forcing Germany to retain a
large army for her own defence in the east. Though the invaders had
been defeated by Von Hindenburg in the great battle of Tannenberg, or
Osterode, and expelled from the invaded province, the indirect object
of the raid had been obtained.
September had brought victory for Russia on both wings of the long
battle-line. On the right, or northern wing, Rennenkampf, after
fighting a series of rearguard actions in the frontier forest about
Augustovo, had retired behind the Niemen, where he was largely
reinforced, and repulsed the rash attempt of the Germans to follow
him up and force the crossing of the Niemen. After this Rennenkampf
had driven the Germans back to their own frontier, and was again
threatening East Prussia with invasion. On the left, or southern wing,
the Austrian defence of Eastern Galicia had collapsed and her army had
been driven from the Vistula. Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, had
been occupied, the line of the river San had been forced, Jaroslav
captured, and Przemysl besieged. On the extreme Russian left raids had
been made through the passes of the Carpathians into Northern Hungary,
and from the left bank of the San an army was advancing to attack
Cracow.
At the beginning of October two-thirds of Galicia had been overrun. In
Central Poland the Russian armies were advancing in three directions.
North of the Vistula an army was moving towards Thorn. On the other
bank of the great river a central column moving towards the frontiers
of the province of Posen had reached the valley of the Warthe. On the
left centre a third force on the Upper Warthe was approaching the
frontiers of Silesia; but subsequent events during this same month
showed, as we have seen, that the forces thus pushed forward from the
Russian centre towards the German frontier line were little more than
a strong screen or outpost line, while the main mass of the central
forces was still concentrated on the Middle Vistula, and in the
triangle of fortresses above Warsaw.
In the second week of October came Von Hindenburg’s great invasion of
Russian Poland. The dash for Warsaw was evidently intended to relieve
the pressure of the enemy on Eastern Prussia and on Galicia by forcing
him to draw in troops from the wings to strengthen the centre at this
critical moment.
As we have seen, the Germans partly obtained this result. Their
advancing force drove in the Russian detachments in Western Poland,
and the Grand-duke Nicholas withdrew part of the army operating in
Galicia to assist in the defence of the Upper Vistula near Ivangorod.
The result was that the Austrians were able to reoccupy Jaroslav and
to raise the siege of Przemysl for a while. Then came the days of hard
fighting along the San and the Vistula, in which the Russians not only
held their own, but, making a counter-attack in force near Warsaw,
broke through the German centre and compelled a general retreat of the
invaders.
This movement began in the third week of October, and it is quite
evident that, though defeated, the German armies and their Austrian
Allies were neither demoralised by their failure nor broken up by the
Russian counter-attack. From day to day they showed an energy and
tenacity to which it would be unfair to refuse the fullest praise. The
retreat was a slow retirement, in which each day there was a series of
hard-fought rearguard actions. The great battle-line was now surging
westward across the Polish plain, but every step of the way was to
be disputed. On October 24 stern fighting that gradually assumed the
character and dimensions of another continuous battle or series of
sanguinary combats was proceeding for the possession of this frontier.
The front extended roughly for about a hundred versts, or sixty-six
miles, from Rawa to the south of the river Iljanke. The roads leading
to Radom and Petrikau were the scene of particularly close and bloody
fighting. North of Rawa the Russian infantry established a marked
superiority with the bayonet. In one miserable village (Motchidlo) they
buried seven hundred German dead. Four hundred more were accounted for
(captured) south-east of Rawa, and two batteries of quick-firers were
taken at bayonet-point in the vicinity of Kazimerjefu.
Much of this fighting took place over marshy forest-lands, and in
weather so bad that the guns often sank to their axles. The forest of
Nemglovo was occupied by the Russian advanced troops. More artillery
and prisoners were gathered in along the shocking roads leading to Novo
Alexandrovo. Indeed, a Russian official report claimed the substantial
acquisition, during this stern forest-fighting on October 24-26,
of 3,000 men and 50 officers as prisoners, and 8 guns and numerous
quick-firers.
Many gallant counter-attacks along the ever-widening front were
repulsed with heavy slaughter. At any given point, the Russians appear
generally to have possessed a preponderance of numbers, while the sense
of victory kept the men in thoroughly good heart. The last days of
October and first days of November saw nothing save the same succession
of hard-fought rearguard actions. On November 7 Russian Poland had been
almost cleared of the invaders, and at more than one point the Tsar’s
vanguards had crossed the German frontier. On the right Rennenkampf
was again entering the East Prussian lake region near Lyck. On the
right centre north of the Vistula, from Lomza to within a few miles
of the fortress of Thorn, the Russians were close up to the frontier,
driving the German left before them through the marshy forest region of
Northern Poland. In the centre the frontier of the Prussian province of
Posen had been passed by the Cossacks south of Thorn. In South-western
Poland the Germans and Austrians were still retiring through Russian
territory; but they had abandoned Lodz and Kielce, and it was generally
expected that their retreat would only stop at Cracow and on the Upper
Oder about Breslau. On the extreme Russian left the Austrians had been
forced back half way to Cracow, Jaroslav had been reoccupied by General
Brussiloff, and Przemysl was again besieged.
During the retreat through Poland the Germans, under cover of their
fighting rear-guards, had very thoroughly wrecked the railways, and
done considerable damage to the few paved highways of the district.
This work of destruction was evidently carried out deliberately by
order of Von Hindenburg and the Headquarter Staff. A large force of
engineers must have been used to effect it, and an enormous quantity
of explosives employed in the work. Along the railways every station
had been thoroughly wrecked. The buildings were burned, the rails torn
up at all the junctions, curves, and crossings--the points at which the
relaying of the line would require special material--the water-towers
for the locomotives had been blown up, and all signals thrown down
and telegraph apparatus destroyed or removed. On both railways and
roads every bridge had been blown up, and the roads themselves had
been very seriously damaged in a way that showed that a very large
number of men must have been employed in the work of destruction. The
metalled or paved surface of the roads had been broken up with the help
of explosives, the surface being destroyed, not always from side to
side of the road, but checker-fashion. Patches of the pavement being
alternately destroyed on the left and the right side of the roadway,
where explosives had been freely used, the road had thus become a kind
of zig-zag line of yawning craters. This wrecking of the roads and
railways seriously delayed the Russian pursuit, for the country, twice
traversed by large armies, had been exhausted of what supplies it could
afford, and the Grand-duke had to feed his troops during the pursuit
by bringing up everything he needed from Warsaw and the Middle Vistula
region.
At the time the impression given by this wholesale destruction of the
means of communication in Western Poland was that Von Hindenburg and
the German Staff had definitely abandoned all hope of renewing the
invasion. It was argued that, if they intended to make another attempt
to seize Warsaw, they might indeed have done such partial damage to the
railways as would delay the Russian pursuit, but they would not have
thus thoroughly destroyed them at the cost of an enormous expenditure
of time and labour. If they meant to invade the country again in any
force the railways would be a necessity to them. The destruction of the
lines seemed therefore to be a counsel of despair, and it was expected
that the next phase of the campaign would be the defence by the Germans
of their fortified frontier-line.
So persuaded was the Russian Headquarter Staff that the German
offensive had definitely come to an end, that preparations were made in
the first days of November for the attack on the frontier fortresses of
Germany. The programme for the next phase of the campaign was that on
the left the advance in Galicia was to be pressed up to Cracow, and,
once that place was invested, there was to be a march from the left
and left centre into Silesia. The invasion of that province, one of
the great industrial regions of Germany, would be a heavy blow to the
Kaiser, and at the same time a menace to his Austrian Ally, for through
Silesia lies the easiest way from Russian Poland to Vienna itself.
Between the western end of the Carpathians and the mass of hills that
form the mountain-lands of Northern Moravia and Bohemia there is a
stretch of lower ground forming a wide hollow running south-westward
from the Upper Oder region towards Vienna. This valley has often in the
past seen the march of armies towards the Austrian capital. Thus, for
instance, it was by this line that the Russian armies, then allied
with Austria, marched south-westward in 1805. The object of the march
was to occupy Vienna, then held by Napoleon, and the adventure ended
unsuccessfully at Austerlitz.
On the right the Russian armies were to continue the new invasion of
East Prussia, and in the centre there was to be a direct menace to
Berlin by an attempt to break through the frontier fortress-line. The
railways were being partly repaired, and a siege-train was about to be
moved up from Warsaw against Thorn, the point selected for the first
attack, because the possession of it would give the Russians command of
the Lower Vistula.
The fortress of Thorn is situated within five miles of the frontier on
both banks of the river and is the junction for five railway lines.
Thus the Germans could operate on both sides of the great river. It
may be said to dominate all the highways between East Prussia and the
rest of Germany. In conjunction with the lesser, but still imposing
fortresses of Kulm, Fordan, and Graudenz, it forms the pivot for an
army acting on the defensive on the line of the Vistula. Since the
opening weeks of the war six thousand labourers had been engaged night
and day in strengthening Thorn’s defences.
A thousand fortress-guns and nine great forts, the latter named after
Teutonic rulers and leaders, constitute its main armament. They are
thus described by the Russian Colonel Shumsky:
“The defence works of Thorn comprise nine main forts--Scharnhorst,
Yorck, Bülow, Wilhelm II., Heinrich von Zalzie, Grosser Kurfürst,
Hertzog, Albrecht, Friedrich der Grosse, and Dohna. Between these forts
there are seven intermediate works, which are separated by distances
of from half to three-quarters of a mile. In consequence of the short
distances separating the forts, a most destructive cross-fire can be
obtained from them.
“The forts are distant between three-quarters of a mile and a mile from
the outskirts of the town, which is accordingly within easy reach of
the shells of the attacking force. The forts are connected in their
rear by a circular highway, on which are sixteen infantry barracks and
twenty-eight subterranean magazines. To this road there radiate from
the town numerous sunk ways, masked with turf.
“The advanced positions before Thorn are a mile from the forts on the
right bank of the river. The armament of the fortress, according to
the usual German standard, will include twenty-seven long-range guns
and twenty smaller pieces for repelling assaults on each of the main
forts. Thus on the nine forts there will be altogether 414 guns. The
seven intermediate works will each mount ten of the larger and eleven
of the smaller guns: altogether 154. In the central enceinte there are
understood to be 140 guns. If the reserve is added we get an aggregate
of 1,000 guns, of which 60 per cent. are of long range.
“The minimum infantry garrison of Thorn is estimated at four battalions
for the forts and two for the central area. The fortress is divided
into four sections, for each of which there must be a reserve of three
battalions. The artillery garrison, reckoning eight men per gun, must
be 8,000 strong, and there must be not less than one battalion of
engineers. The total garrison cannot therefore be less than 35,000 men.”
While preparations were being made for the attack on the frontier
fortresses, the Tsar and Tsaritsa, accompanied by their daughters
the Grand-duchesses Olga and Tatiana, took the highly popular step
of paying a visit to the garrison and hospitals of the fortress of
Ivangorod, so recently the scene of such desperate German attempts
to break through on this part of the line of the Vistula after the
smashing defeat of their rush for Warsaw. The Imperial party came from
Lublin, and were received on arrival by the Commandant of Ivangorod,
the Grand-duke Nicholas Michailovitch, and by General Schwarz. The
Tsar gave public expression to the feeling of national exhilaration
in the following brief but eloquent words: “With faith in the help
and blessing of the All-Highest, and in the power of the mighty arms
of united Russia, our great country will conclude no peace until the
resistance of the enemy has been finally broken, and the realisation of
the tasks bequeathed to us by our ancestors has been accomplished.”
In Galicia more solid Russian successes and a notable weakening in the
power and solidarity of the resistance marked the growing pressure of
the invaders of Austrian territory. South of Przemysl, in one day’s
fighting early in November, a thousand prisoners and some guns were
taken. Przemysl was quite cut off, though replying energetically to a
severe bombardment by Dimitrieff’s siege-train. A sortie was beaten
back with much loss of life. On the 10th Krasno was occupied, forty
miles west of the fortress, and on the same day--a busy one in this
particular war-zone--the Austrians were driven into the Carpathians
after a further defeat on the San which enabled their relentless enemy
to occupy Sanok and Turka.
Meanwhile the main invading army was pressing on towards Cracow, with
a view to carrying on the siege of the place simultaneously with the
investment of Przemysl. The occupation of Tarnow, an important railway
centre, brought the Russians within forty-five miles of Cracow on the
east side, while the passage of the river Schrenwaja from the Polish
frontier advanced them almost within range of its guns.
In fact Cracow, defended by an Austro-German garrison now estimated at
100,000 men, had been steadily preparing for the worst. A fire-zone
with a radius of eight miles had been cleared of all buildings, and
steel cupolas had been provided for the main belt of its forts. On the
Raba, a stream which empties itself into the Vistula twenty-five miles
east of the city, a series of field-works was constructed, and the
little town of Bochnia was also fortified.
“You may be surprised,” wrote Mr. Granville Fortescue in the _Daily
Telegraph_, “at the rapidity of the advance on Cracow. It resulted
from the precipitate retirement of the German and the Austrian forces
through South-west Poland. I am told that this withdrawal was so rapid
that the Russian pursuing cavalry almost lost touch with their foes.
The enemy did not stop until he was under the walls of Cracow. The
force which is to attack it from the north had an almost free passage.
Another Russian force coming from Tarnow had to fight for every inch
of the ground occupied. The Austrian force, which has been retreating
stubbornly along the Rzeszow-Neu Sandec Railway, has given considerable
trouble.”
The same journal, commenting upon the extraordinary extent of
the battle-zone and the probability of the final fight for the
Russo-Austro-German frontier extending over weeks rather than days,
rightly remarked that the average workaday intellect failed to grasp
the magnitude of the giant conflict in point of mere numbers alone. It
hazarded the conjecture that over five hundred miles of front three
and a half millions of Russians would be giving battle to a couple of
millions of Austrians and Germans!
A tide of refugees, estimated at not less than a hundred thousand in a
few days, was flying towards the city of Berlin from the East Prussian
and Silesian borders. What a change from the “To Paris--to London!” of
a few weeks previously. It was no longer practicable to conceal from
the mass of the people the news of the total breakdown of the Polish
invasion and the Austrian debacle. Events would still be slow-moving,
since the mighty military machine of All the Russians, however well
oiled, could only proceed at a certain regulated pace. Reports told
of a new conception whereby the Germans hoped, northwards of Thorn,
to concentrate masses of troops flanked by the river Vistula on the
one hand and the river Warthe on the other. Here they would have the
advantage of a battle-ground on a slightly raised platform as compared
with the marshy wildernesses of the recent Polish operations; but the
Masurian Lakes of East Prussia were by this time in Russian hands. The
pace was quickening.
Mr. Fortescue, writing from Petrograd in praise of the bearing
and discipline of the Tsar’s millions moving ever westward, could
not refrain from an expression of his appreciation of the marked
improvement discernible after the lapse of a decade in the Muscovite
“Tommy Atkins”:
“A draft of recruits, headed by a band, passed through the square
in front of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. I watched critically. They
wore their ordinary clothes; the only uniforms seen were those of
the non-commissioned officers. The astrakan cap was the distinctive
head-covering, and every other man carried a tea-kettle. If I were
a battalion commander I could not ask for a better-looking batch
of recruits. All were over 5 ft. 6 in. in height. In carriage and a
certain indefinable air they reminded me of the Guides from Manitoba.
The more I see of these troops the more apparent the vast improvement
of the Russian forces since the Russo-Japanese War becomes. That war
was a liberal education for this Army, and as teachers of the art of
war the Japanese are not to be despised. It is curious to note how this
erstwhile enemy is now welcomed as an Ally. Japanese flags are always
prominent in the colours of the nations fighting Germany. At all public
occasions when the hymns of the different nations are played the solemn
notes of the Japanese Anthem are loudly applauded. In the cause of
humanity it may be said that Japan stands shoulder to shoulder with
Russia. Russia need fear no enemy in her rear while Japan is her Ally.”
There is no doubt that the Russian Army had been in many ways improved
since the war with Japan. The greatest advance had been in the matter
of the working of the General Staff. The most remarkable feature of
this Polish campaign was the methodical way in which the huge armies
engaged on the Russian side had been concentrated and were now moved
and supplied in a difficult country and on a front of many hundred
miles. It was evident that the Grand-duke Nicholas and his subordinates
were so confident in the reorganised army that they were even venturing
to take very serious risks. It is possible that they did this with
complete knowledge of the peril they were incurring. It is remarkable
that at this stage of the campaign, instead of concentrating their
efforts on any one point, they were using the enormous numbers at
their disposal to operate in at least five different directions--in
East Prussia, on the Vistula towards Thorn, in the centre towards
Posen, on the left centre by Lodz towards Silesia, and on the left in
Galicia. These Galician operations were again being carried on on three
subordinate lines. There was an attack on the line of the Carpathians
from Eastern Galicia menacing Hungary, the siege of Przemysl, and the
advance on Cracow; and, besides all this, subsequent events showed
that two additional armies were concentrated in Southern Russia, in
view of a possible rupture with Turkey. One of these armies was in the
Caucasus, the other was kept waiting about Odessa as a reserve that
might be used for a descent upon the Turkish coasts. There were further
large garrisons kept about Petrograd, and as a reserve for the Polish
campaign in the triangle of fortresses on the Central Vistula.
This division of force between so many different objectives certainly
implied some risk of the German and Austrian Allies using their
elaborately organised railway system to concentrate a superior force
against some part of the far-extended line. The risk was taken in
order, by menacing the whole of the eastern frontiers of Germany, to
create such a state of alarm as would lead to German troops being
withdrawn from the western theatre of war. There is evidence that
movements of this kind actually took place, though perhaps not to
the extent that was reported in the French and English Press. The
movements in the end of October and during November would seem to
have been chiefly the transfer by rail of cavalry divisions with
their batteries of artillery from west to east. The war of entrenched
positions then in progress all along the western front made mounted
troops, comparatively speaking, useless. They were therefore sent
eastward. Cavalry and horse artillery require a large number of trains
for even a force of very moderate numbers, and the movement of these
trains would easily give the impression that immense numbers of men
were being sent eastward.
In the second week of November there were the first signs that the
Germans, instead of standing passively upon the defensive, were once
more venturing upon a counter-attack based upon their eastern fortress
line. This led to a second invasion of Poland from Germany, but its
story belongs to a new phase of the war. The first campaign in Poland
had closed with success for the Russian arms all along the enormous
frontier of nearly fifteen hundred miles in length, and after more
than three months of war there were no enemies on Russian territory.
The concentration of the armies of the Tsar had been completed, and
the Grand-duke Nicholas had under his command the greatest array of
combatants that had ever been assembled by any State since the history
of warfare began.
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury._
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
The one footnote has been moved to the end of its chapter.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors
have been corrected.
The following change was made:
p. 80: “through” added (advance through the)