August 31 was to be Auffenberg’s great day. Ever since the 26th he had been fighting his way forward on both flanks of Plehve’s army which was now enclosed on three sides. On the 30th Dankl’s army, pressing hard towards Lublin, had captured Krasnostav, thus threatening to separate Ewarth from Plehve. Plehve’s position was critical. His three corps about Komarov might well be surrounded altogether. On the night of the 30th he had issued orders for their immediate retreat. But was it not already too late? Here then was the prize for which Auffenberg had fought so hard and skilfully, and for which Conrad was running such desperate risks at Lemberg. The Austrian plan was simple, obvious even. On the right the Archduke Joseph with his three divisions and two cavalry divisions was to advance westward to the Huczwa and also to destroy the bridges on the Bug. On the left the Archduke Peter with a similar infantry force marching from the neighbourhood of Dub was to turn and envelop the Russian right. Meanwhile the centre of the Austrian army would press at every point the wavering Russians. The net which had been cast around the three Russian corps seemed about to close. One more thrust on either flank and the encirclement of 100,000 men would be complete. Nor were there any other Russian troops near enough to interfere.
Fortune was now to play a mischievous trick. By an extraordinary coincidence the movement of both the Austrian wings was paralyzed by exactly the same kind of accident. An aeroplane reported to the Archduke Joseph on the right that a Russian division was marching up behind him from the east. Cavalry patrols reported to the Archduke Peter that Russian battalions were encircling the northern flank of his turning movement. The division in front of him and the cavalry had already retired; his own flank was compromised. In fact however the Russian battalions did not exist, and the Russian division on the opposite wing was only a few squadrons of cavalry and horse artillery scouting forward on the extreme northern flank of General Ruzski’s army. But both the Archdukes took similar action on the false reports. The Archduke Joseph sent back both his cavalry and parts of two of his infantry divisions to the Solokija river to protect his rear, and was not strong enough to advance with the rest. The Archduke Peter fell back 7 miles to Zamosć. Thus at the moment when the steel doors were about to clang together and imprison three-quarters of the Russian Fifth Army, they swung wider than ever on their hinges, and through the gap of 20 miles Plehve’s army marched in good order to safety. Here died the last Austrian chance of victory. It was not until the morning of September 1 that Auffenberg realized what had occurred. With fierce anger and dismay he ordered the advance to be resumed, and his whole army set off in hot pursuit. They were masters of Komarov and the enemy’s position. They had captured thousands of prisoners and many guns. Their seven days’ bloody fighting had won them the honours of the field. It had won them little else.
Let us return to Conrad’s headquarters at Przemysl, where the sum of all these events, accidents and apprehensions is computed from hour to hour. Conrad had hoped that his battered and demoralized Third Army would nevertheless be able to maintain itself in front of Lemberg till Auffenberg had triumphed. But on the night of September 1 panic broke out in a Hungarian brigade which rapidly spread, and the whole division fled in disorder into the city. On the right the Cossacks stampeded the 11th Austrian Cavalry Division which did not draw rein for 12 miles. The Russian line, gathering constantly in weight, extended round both flanks of the quavering Third Army, and Brudermann with Conrad’s reluctant assent yielded Lemberg and fell back 20 miles to a line of lakes and marshes along the Vereszytsa. By September 1 all illusions had been swept away. The veil was now lifted from the theatre of war and the general situation of the masses on both sides was now plain to the Austrian headquarters. The weight and peril of the Russian advance from the east was now insupportable. In these straits Conrad’s courage and resource did not desert him. Had he commanded German troops or even fresh Austrian troops, he might have drawn from the very collapse of disastrous battle the means of victory. He rose to the occasion in his headquarters, but his soldiers, asked for more than they could perform, did not rise with him.
Certainly the plans which he produced in the intense stresses of these events command respect. His Third Army had retreated behind Lemberg and it was to be expected that the Russian centre would press forward at their heels through the city. He had observed that the general tendency of the Russian advance was inclining constantly to the northward and that his Second Army, at last in line, overlapped their left in the south. He now ordered this army to advance upon the Russian left and rear. He ordered Auffenberg to abandon the pursuit of Plehve, to turn his Fourth Army right-about and march south instead of north, their rear covered by the Archduke Joseph, now become rearguard instead of heading the pursuit. By so doing he sacrificed all hope of further successes in the northern battle. On paper at least his plan was formidable. The southward march of Auffenberg would bring his army down upon Ruzski’s right flank and rear. The Second Army wheeling up from the south would strike the Russians from the opposite quarter and while they pressed forward through Lemberg towards the Third Army on the Vereszytsa they would be smitten simultaneously on both sides. We must honour his spirit and mental resiliency; we may admire his conceptions; but the materials at his disposal were not strong enough to convert them into reality. In fact he would have been a wiser and a better general if he had without more delay ordered on September 1 or 2 a general retreat of all the Austrian armies to the San. However, the orders went forth from Przemysl and the weary and battle-strained Austrian armies set themselves in motion accordingly.
We must now repair to the Russian headquarters. The Stavka had by this time accurately divined the general situation and knew where the Austrian masses were. The Grand Duke had no intention of pressing any further advance from the east. On the contrary, the longer the Austrians remained on the Vereszytsa, and as far forward as the neighbourhood of Lemberg, the greater his chance of destroying them. His new Ninth Army descending the Vistula from Ivangorod was now coming down upon Dankl’s left and rear, while Ewarth attacked him in front. Here was the decisive strategic thrust, and the one he had intended from the first. Moreover on the night of September 1–2 tidings calculated to shake the strongest nerve had reached him. Something had happened in East Prussia, something appalling, incomprehensible and measureless in its terrible significance! Something had happened which invested the Austrian efforts to envelop Plehve with new menace. He was deeply anxious for Plehve and did not know whether or in what condition he would escape. He therefore ordered Ruzski’s whole army to turn from westward to north-westward and march to Plehve’s aid. He ordered the greater part of Brusilov’s army to incline to the north in touch with Ruzski, leaving only two corps around Lemberg in front of the Austrian right. In short, the Russian armies were to sideslip to their right, withhold their left hand, and press for a vast strategic entrapment with their right.
THE BATTLE OF RAVA RUSSKA
All these movements on both sides now began to operate simultaneously, and a curious situation resulted. Auffenberg’s army, marching south to fall on Ruzski’s right and rear, began to brush with their left elbows, as it were, against Ruzski’s army marching north upon the opposite course. Neither commander could understand what was happening. Auffenberg had expected to attack Ruzski in flank and Ruzski to attack Auffenberg in rear. As the true position gradually dawned upon them, Ruzski faced west to fall upon Auffenberg, and Auffenberg under the pressure of this attack pivoted his whole army on its left, and in two days with much difficulty and considerable skill formed front against him. At the same time in the south the Austrian Second Army, dragged about in and out of trains for so many days, arriving amid disasters and an atmosphere of panic, made no headway against the weak Russian southerly flank, and eventually took station along the Vereszytsa on the right of its maimed companion, the Third. By September 8 as the whole scene clarified, the Fourth, Third and Second Austrian armies stood at last in a single line facing east to resist the attack of only two R
ussian armies in their front, but with no other guard for their northern flank and line of retreat than the hard-pressed Dankl from whom they were separated by a gap of 40 miles. Opposite this gap, as yet unconscious of its existence, stood the whole of Plehve’s army in good order and the cavalry corps of General Dragomirov.
On the evening of the 9th Conrad, still undaunted, demanded a final effort of his worn-out troops. He realized that the whole of Ruzski’s army was now in front of Auffenberg and that consequently he had only Brusilov in front of his Second and Third armies. He was therefore in superior strength on the southern part of the front. He ordered both these armies to advance, wheeling as they did so, to take Brusilov in flank simultaneously with renewed attacks by Auffenberg upon Ruzski. He had penned these orders when a message arrived from Dankl that he was forced by the general situation and his own to order the retirement of his army behind the San river. Still Conrad persisted in his plan. September 9 was therefore the greatest battle-day yet seen upon the eastern front. Both sides had marched far and fought long and hard, and both attacked simultaneously. Conrad motored to Grodek and close to the battlefront endeavoured to inspire his troops by his presence. But the attacks of the Second and Third armies, despite their local superiority, made no progress and very severe fighting which lasted the whole day left the fronts unchanged. Both Ruzski and Brusilov, however, reported that the Austrian line in front of them was too strong to be broken. They thus paid their joint unconscious tribute to Conrad’s tenacity.
The final blow was now to be delivered from the north. General Dragomirov’s cavalry corps had penetrated deeply into the gap between Auffenberg and Dankl. Plehve, whose army was not, as Conrad had assumed, a disorganized mass, but in good fighting order, followed corps by corps behind them, leaving the three divisions of the Archduke Joseph on their left hand. The whole of this great force was already in rear of Auffenberg’s right and their march on the 11th would have involved his complete encirclement. He had already in the nick of time drawn in the Archduke Joseph’s divisions southward to strengthen his own left wing. But neither he nor Conrad had any idea how powerful were the Russian forces now traversing his rear, or what fatal points they would reach on the 11th and 12th. Fortune, whose caprice had robbed Auffenberg of his victory on the 31st, now made him a handsome amend. For this purpose she had previously bestowed upon the Russians a powerful wireless apparatus. Early in the morning of the 11th this instrument lifted up its voice and in clear tones, unmuffled by cipher, ordered the two left corps of Plehve’s army to reach the two hamlets Cieszanow and Brusno that day. The unexpected message amazed both Austrian commanders, and showed them as by a lightning flash the extent of their peril.
Conrad, still hoping against hope, ordered the Archduke Joseph to march against the intruders ‘and make more room to the rear.’ But Auffenberg, who knew that these divisions, which had been marching and fighting continuously for eighteen days were now reduced from over 50,000 to barely 10,000 men, did not pass the order on. Without losing an hour he began his retreat south-east, and guided by further Russian wireless messages extricated his army from its mortal danger. Conrad’s orders to the Second Army ‘to attack without halting, with energy and regardless of loss’ were likewise not passed to the troops by its commander, Böhm-Ermolli. The limits of human nature had been reached and the Commander-in-Chief’s orders for further battles fell on empty air. Late on the afternoon of the 11th Conrad bowed to Fate.
‘The advance of the Second and Third armies’ [he writes] had brought no effective decision. On the contrary the risk of a break-through by two Russian corps behind the left wing of the Fourth Army threatened to place it in a catastrophic situation…. In the circumstances there was only one course of action which had to be brought on with all speed, namely to break off the battle and withdraw all the armies behind the San river.’33
The order which had been wrung from him by terrible and torturing events was issued from Przemysl at 5.30 on the afternoon of the 11th. Almost on the very same hour Moltke acknowledged his defeat at the battle of the Marne and ordered through Colonel Hentsch the retirement of all the German armies of the centre and the right. Thus both on the Eastern and Western fronts the first mighty onslaught of the Central Empires upon which almost their all had been staked ended simultaneously in failure.
We must now proceed to East Prussia and study at close quarters the events whose mere report on the night of the 1st September so profoundly affected the Russian headquarters.
CHAPTER XII
THE INVASION OF EAST PRUSSIA
The command of the Russian north-west front was entrusted on the outbreak of the war to General Jilinski, who in the capacity of Chief of the Russian Staff had a year before made the final secret arrangements with the French for the co-operation of the two Allies in such a war as had now begun. General Jilinski from his headquarters at Bialystok controlled from the twelfth day of mobilization at least ten army corps and ten cavalry divisions. It was his intention to invade East Prussia and overwhelm its defenders without losing a single hour. He divided his troops into two nearly equal armies. On August 17 he ordered the advance of his First Army from the Niemen line and two days later that of his Second Army from the line of the Narev. It was known that the German forces in East Prussia were comparatively weak and the rapid conquest of this northern bastion was confidently expected.
One good look at the map of East Prussia will reveal the main conditions of its attack and defence. This long strip of German territory, stretching from the Vistula nearly to the middle Niemen River, is penned between the Baltic shore and the frontiers of Russian Poland. It is exposed to attack from the east by a Russian army based on Vilna and from the south or south-east by equally or even more important forces advancing from Warsaw or from the Warsaw-Vilna railway line.
The Generals who were to lead the two armies upon what the Russian High Command in its expansive moments called a ‘gigantic raid’ had been chosen for their reputed energy and resolution. Rennenkampf commanded the first or Vilna army and Samsonov the second or Warsaw army. Both these Generals were supposed to be the pick of the Russian Service. Both had distinguished themselves as dashing cavalry leaders in Manchuria. Unhappily they had been personal enemies since the Manchurian campaign, when a fierce altercation, descending to fisticuffs on the Mukden railway platform, had occurred between them about an alleged failure of Rennenkampf to support Samsonov at a critical moment. The responsibility for concerting the movements of these two armies and of ensuring the best relations between their leaders devolved with peculiar weight upon General Jilinski.
All the troops of these great armies had left their various concentration areas by the 13th or 14th and were diligently marching westward and north-westward to the invasion of Germany.
The defence of East Prussia in this grave hour had been, as the reader will remember, entrusted to General von Prittwitz. His nickname ‘der dicke Soldat’ ‘the fat soldier,’ was not impressive. He had at his disposal the 1st, XVIIth and XXth Corps and the 1st Reserve Corps, with one additional division and one cavalry division, and he could draw from the garrisons on the Vistula and from the fortress of Königsberg perhaps four or five detachments of partially mobile troops each equalling about a brigade. These forces constituted the German Eighth Army, which must now sustain the assaults of Russian hosts two or three times its numbers. The difficulties of Prittwitz were aggravated by the fact, obvious from the map, that whatever troops were sent to attack or arrest Rennenkampf in the north ran the risk of being cut off by the advance of Samsonov from the southwest. But for this, as for other problems, Schlieffen had left a plan. At a certain stage in their advance the Russian armies must find themselves inevitably divided by the 50-mile chain of the Masurian Lakes. At this point they would have no lateral communication and would be for several days entirely separate entities. The German plan, according to Schlieffen, was to throw the whole army at this juncture at whichever of the two Russian armies came first wit
hin effective striking distance, and then using the superbly organized railway system of East Prussia to go round and strike the other. Many a war game, with all its attendant railway time-tables, had been played upon this well-known theme in the years before the war. Here too on a smaller scale the Germans had a war on two fronts. Whatever happened in these serious preliminary battles it was Prittwitz’ duty not to be cut off, or so mauled at or near the frontiers that he could not, if the worst came to the worst, form a continuous fighting front behind the Vistula. A situation at once delicate and momentous, requiring the highest qualities, but offering also the most brilliant opportunities to a Commander-in-Chief! The task was one in which Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon or the Lee-Stonewall Jackson combination would have revelled, but in which General von Prittwitz felt himself from the outset overweighted.
He compromised therefore by sending his XXth Corps to await the Warsaw army and his 1st Corps to delay Rennenkampf, while holding the rest of his forces in a more or less central position. The Commander of his 1st Corps, General von François, ultimately to prove as we shall see the real hero of Tannenberg, was a man of independent and unruly temperament. He could not bear to yield up the sacred soil of the Fatherland to the Cossack hordes. The streams of refugees, the lines of burning villages aroused him and his soldiers in an intense degree. He vehemently urged Prittwitz to allow him to strike Rennenkampf as soon as he had crossed the frontier and to send all the rest of the Eighth Army to his aid. There would be time afterwards—just time—to get back and turn on Samsonov. For this counsel he could indeed cite the letter and the spirit of this particular Schlieffen plan. After cruel heart-searchings Prittwitz allowed himself to be persuaded by his adventurous and half-defiant subordinate. He compromised again by leaving the XXth Corps to wait for Samsonov and allowed his other 5 divisions to join François for the battle.
The World Crisis Page 17
