CHAPTER VI THE SIEGE OF PRZEMYSL--THE STRUGGLE ON THE SAN

“When Przemysl falls,” wrote Mr. Granville Fortescue in the _Daily Telegraph_, “the name of Radko Dimitrieff will ring around the world.” It was not, however, the immediate object of General Dimitrieff and his coadjutors to bring about a hurried capitulation of this commanding fortress and its 30,000 defenders. The Russian headquarters in Galicia could well afford to play a waiting game and let the grim business of starvation do its work.

In our second chapter we brought down the record of events on the Galician theatre of war to the important capture of Jaroslav by the Russians on September 21, after only three days’ investment. The Colonel Shumsky from whom I have already quoted points out the enormous significance of this capture when taken in conjunction with the all-round breakdown of the Austro-German conception. That plan assumed, he opines that Western Poland would have been cut off, and there would have been a last development of the Austro-German forces from Jaroslav over Ivangorod and East Prussia seawards. From “the Baltic to the Carpathians” was certainly the grandest of grand conceptions--instead of which, we have the well-nigh incredible estimate of _a million_ Austrian troops put out of action in less than two months of war, and the frank statement by one of their general officers that “the enemy is too much for us.”

It would appear that the Austrian forces operating along the line Lublin-Holm in August to September included the 3rd, 11th, 12th, and portions of the 7th, 13th, and 14th Army Corps, with five cavalry divisions. But in one day’s fighting alone they are known to have had 20,000 casualties, the mobility and rapidity of the Russian offensive seeming quite to have paralysed them. After Lemberg, the capture of Halicz and later still of Jaroslav rendered their position still more unenviable. As Professor Pares points out, “the chief harm which Germany and Austria could inflict in a war against Russia was to conquer Russian Poland, whose frontier made defence extremely difficult. Regarding this protuberance as a head, Germany and Austria could make a simultaneous amputating operation at its neck, attacking the one from East Prussia and the other from Galicia. But the German policy, which had other and more primary objects, precipitated war with France and threw the bulk of the German forces westward. Thus the German army in East Prussia kept the defensive, and Austria was left to make her advance from Galicia without support.” We have seen in part how that forlorn advance was destined to be beaten back in blood.

Perhaps never in the history of war have more lies, false rumours, and unintelligent anticipations got into print than in connection with the momentous event happening in Galicia consequent upon the “pleasant surprise” of the capture of Jaroslav on September 21. As that important success, taken in conjunction with the huge battles in East Prussia and Russian Poland, certainly implied the imminent danger of Przemysl, we heard all sorts of things about the fate of that great fortress. It was on the eve of capture, it was on fire, most of the forts were taken--the garrison was driven to the inner defences, etc., etc. In short, Przemysl was by the many-headed held to have been captured, or at all events isolated, quite early in September. But the powerful German advance into Poland, with the co-operating Austrian movement on their right in Galicia, had put the fortress for the moment out of danger. Jaroslav’s fall was a decided nail in the coffin of Przemysl, but no more.

This fortress--whose remarkable orthography was the subject of a sly little joke by Mr. Lloyd George in a speech on the war--is stated to have been insufficiently garrisoned (30,000). It has not a large civil population, and after September 21 the extreme step was taken by the Commandant of expelling all persons who had not provisions for a siege of three months. The retreating Austrians did not have time to destroy the bridges over the San, and the almost complete isolation of Przemysl was rendered more acute by the announcement that, “as the crow flies,” the Russian advance-guard was not more than 135 miles from Cracow itself! The general line of the Austrian retreat was mainly towards that famous and historic city, where the hospitals and houses were already crowded with their thousands of wounded. Such a retreat would link them up to the right wing of their German allies, when they would become a more component part of the Kaiser’s forces. Comparisons were freely bandied about, in which the energetic Russian pursuit was likened to Kutusoff’s chase of Napoleon’s Grand Army in 1812, and to Lee’s pursuit by Grant in the American Civil War in 1864. In any event, the crumbling away of the Austrian defence of Galicia was now so significant as to dwarf minor considerations.

The retreat towards Cracow was marked by a good deal of demoralisation and by the plundering of the estates of some of the Polish aristocracy. The capture of the railway junctions of Debica and Chyrov by the conquering foe further isolated the threatened fortress, while the passage of the Carpathians by way of the Uszok Pass was planting the Russian army firmly upon Hungarian soil, where there were no great places of strength to be reduced. The tables had been turned with a vengeance, and the invasion of Austro-Hungary was an accomplished fact. What would Germany do in face of these changed conditions? became for a week or so the burning topic among strategists and lookers-on at the great game.

Coincident, presumably, with the expulsion of most of the civil population, the garrison of Przemysl were placed upon three-quarter rations. If one thing was humanly more certain than another it was that, except by a miracle, relief could not reach them--they gleaned as much from their wireless communications with the retreating arm, the Russians not having yet succeeded in destroying the wireless station.

Late September and the first part of October was occupied by the Russians in the two main directions of pressing with great masses of troops the Austrian retreat towards Cracow, and in completing with slow but sure tenacity the investment of Przemysl, where the thousands of mouths to feed were now placed upon half instead of three-quarter rations. A series of sanguinary combats went on almost uninterruptedly with the beaten Austrians, who always fought bravely enough, but invariably continued their retirement with heavy losses in men and material of war. The great events in Russian Poland already narrated were naturally exercising their indirect influence in this quarter.

Professor Pares was privileged to visit the Galician battle-fields in October, and his impressions are of all the more interest from the fact that we have little else save scrappy official reports to go upon. Mr. Pares visited Galich, Stryl, and Rava-Ruska, and of the latter place he writes:

“Our visit to Rava-Ruska presented much greater military interest; we drove round the south, east, and north front of the Russian attack on this little town and very valuable explanations were given by an able officer of the General Staff. On the southern front near the station of Kamionka Woloska, where there were lines of trenches, the deep holes made by bursting Russian shells, and sometimes filled with water, lay thick together.

“The eastern front was more interesting. Here there were many lines of rifle-pits, Austrian, Russian, or Austrian converted into Russian. The Austrian rifle-pits were much shallower and less finished than the Russian, which were generally squarer, deeper, and with higher cover. An officer’s rifle-pit just behind those of his men showed their care and work, as was indicated in letters written just after the battle. Casques of cuirassiers, many Hungarian knapsacks, broken rifles, fragments of shrapnel, potatoes pulled up, and even such oddments as an Austrian picture postcard, were to be found in or near the rifle-pits.

“These wide plains, practically without cover, were reminiscent of Wagram. A high landmark was a crucifix, on which one of the arms of the figure was shot away; underneath it was a ‘brothers’ grave,’ containing the bodies of 120 Austrians and twenty-one Russians. Another cross of fresh-cut wood marked the Russian soldiers’ tribute to an officer: ‘God’s servant, Gregory.’ Close to one line of trenches stood a village absolutely untouched, and in the fields between stood a picturesque group of villagers at their field-work, one in an Austrian uniform and two boys in Austrian shakos.”

He noted that cavalry had played but an inconspicuous part in this desperate fighting. The Russians, he says, were always attacking. They felt the supremest confidence in the power of their artillery (“though the proportion of field-guns to a unit is less numerous on the Russian side than on the German or Austrian”), and, when questioned as to the enemy’s rifle-fire, they would reply, in characteristic Tommy Atkins fashion, “Oh, nothing striking.” Many men told Mr. Pares that they did not believe the Austro-German liked fighting at close quarters with the bayonet as much as the Russians did. The one thing for which the latter felt respect was the hostile heavy artillery, though claiming that their own field-artillery was superior. Their extraordinary endurance in the trenches, and their calm resolution and unswerving belief in their own prowess and the justness of their cause impressed him profoundly.

This commentator felt compelled, however reluctantly, to bear witness to the brutality of the retreating Austrians to the Polish peasantry. Of this he saw numerous examples, as also instances of the people’s retaliation upon the enemy, such as the wholesale destruction of the Austrian General Desveaux’s beautiful chateau. Little things will stick in the mind, and Mr. Pares noted amid the ruins of this noble house a map of the Austrian army manœuvres of 1893, “twenty years after.” The Russians deemed themselves among friends when they mingled with the Ruthenian inhabitants of Galicia, speaking their language and treating them with all good fellowship. The invaders’ relations with the Jewish population were scarcely so amicable in all cases.

Another correspondent of a great newspaper who had the harrowing experience of traversing some of the battle-fields of Galicia after the Austrian breakdown presents the following vivid and touching picture:

“In the very centre of this zone of misery two roads intersect, and at the angle stands a huge wooden cross on which hangs the carved figure of the Saviour. For a hundred years, no doubt, this monument to brotherly love has hung above the cross-roads so that the pious might pause in their journey to cross themselves and mutter a prayer. Nothing could be more incongruous than to see this sacred emblem: the mute evidence of a religious people. The top of the wooden upright is shattered by a bullet, while one arm of the figure of Jesus has been carried away by a shrapnel shell. What, indeed, must have been the thoughts of the patient Austrians lying in their exposed position and dying in hundreds as they beheld the shot and shell bursting about the carved figure of Him whose work on earth was to spread peace and brotherly love! The patient face of the Christ looks down upon a newly made grave wherein lie the shattered remains of 124 men who died almost at the foot of the sacred figure.”

For the defence of Przemysl many thousands of workmen were impressed to assist in the work of strengthening the fortifications, being called in from the neighbouring villages under threat of extreme penalties. The quantity of ammunition in the place was enormous, but the shortage of provisions is claimed by the Russians as being due to the swiftness of their initiative, whereby great quantities of stores intended for the defending force had been captured. The investing army had now a large number of batteries in position, and though they could well afford to take things easily so as to avoid needless wastage of life, the progress made was steady. German, and not Austrian, leadership was directing the defence of the stronghold. Every effort was made by them to hearten their men into the belief that the combined Austro-German operations proceeding towards the river San might, and in all likelihood would, culminate in the relief of the place. On this point, and of the operations in Galicia generally, Colonel Shumsky wrote during the second week of October:

“All the attempts of the enemy to cross the San have ended in a miserable fiasco. The Austro-German forces are making their attempts at various points of the river. First the artillery deluges the right shore with shells, and then infantry detachments approach the river; but Russian shrapnel causes them enormous losses. Dead bodies are washed down the San to the Vistula, and on to Sandomir and Ivangorod.

“Before this fortress the battle continues day and night without a moment’s intermission. The Germans are giving the defence a very energetic character. To all appearances the fortress is well supplied with ammunition. Our troops are making a gradual but persistent attack. Sometimes a regiment becomes impatient with the slowness of the progress and storms the nearest line of works. Sometimes a sharp blow, delivered in the night, brings about the fall of a strong fort. In this way several works have been taken.

“These unexpected blows clearly greatly excite the garrison. Right through the night projectors search the battle-field, and their long white rays rest tremulously on every fold of the ground. At times something alarms the forts, and the air is instantly filled with the thunder of roused Austrian guns. The fire is then kept up for thirty minutes to an hour before it again subsides.”

He adds that “the tremendous strategic front becomes elongated just as it does in France.” This immense battle-line was now beginning to be known to the strategists as the line “Cracow-Przemysl-Thorn,” as it began to be growingly obvious that Austrian Cracow and Silesian Thorn would presently be the scene of the biggest operations of the conflicting Empires.

On October 13-14 great Austro-German columns were in touch with their enemy south-east of Sandomir and west of Przemysl. On the first of the dates named an Austrian force deploying by way of Samok-Lisko upon Sambor was hurled back with the loss of 7 officers and 500 men captured, and next day they lost several hundred more prisoners. Hitherto the success of the Russian arms in Galicia had been so continuous that the official despatches and the newspaper reports in the Petrograd papers were fairly representative of the facts, patriotic feeling experiencing no temptation to practise a diplomatic “economy of the truth.” But now we find it hard to reconcile the Petrograd reports with reliable information from other sources as to what was happening in the region of the San.

The news that came from Petrograd, directly or through Rome and Paris, told of repeated victories over the Austrians on the San. But it would seem that these reports were only repetitions of news already sent, and referred to the opening stage of the fighting with the Austrian advance on Von Hindenburg’s extreme right.

There appears to be no doubt that the peril of Warsaw and the need of drawing heavy reinforcements from Galicia to assist in repelling the German invasion of Poland and then in following up the enemy’s retirement, led to the army on the San being so weakened for the moment that all it could do was to hold its own for a while about Sandomir, near the junction of the San and the Vistula. In doing this it rendered a solid service to the Grand-duke Nicholas, as it prevented the line of the Vistula being turned above Ivangorod.

But something had to be sacrificed to secure this result. Jaroslav was abandoned for the moment, and reoccupied by the Austrians, and the siege of Przemysl was raised. There was a day of enthusiastic rejoicing when the relieving column marched into the hard-pressed and half-starved city. Received at the gates by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the troops marched amidst cheering crowds to the town hall, where General von Kusmanek, the commander of the fortress, stood waiting to greet them.

Even more welcome than the battle-grimed soldiers was the long convoy of supply wagons that they escorted. The garrison and the people could again enjoy an unstinted meal, and looked forward to a long respite from the trials they had endured. But the military authorities had no illusions in the outlook. Przemysl had hardly been relieved when bad news came from the scene of the great battles in Central Poland, and the pressure of the Russian forces began to be felt at once, for on the news of the Grand-duke’s success against Von Hindenburg they at once abandoned their attitude of stubborn defence for a vigorous offensive. It was realised that Przemysl might soon be once more ringed round with fire and steel, so steps were taken to prepare for a new siege. Supplies of all kinds were poured into the place by day and by night, the control of the junction at Jaroslav facilitating this revictualling operation. At the same time some thousands of the non-combatant population were sent away so as to reduce the number of “useless mouths” to a minimum. In a week Przemysl was ready to defend itself again, and to face a siege under greatly improved conditions.

The work had indeed to be interrupted before Von Kusmanek had done all he hoped to accomplish. For the retreat of Von Hindenburg in the centre was at once followed by the column that had attacked Ivangorod returning through Radom. The whole invasion was collapsing and the Austrian position on the San had become untenable. Petrograd could now resume a true record of Galician victories, as the retiring enemy fought a series of rearguard actions each of which ended in the capture of Austrian prisoners by the pursuing columns of the Russian left.

But before telling of the closing scenes of Von Hindenburg’s ambitious effort to overrun the country of the Vistula and clear Galicia of the Russian armies, as a result of his hoped-for success, we must note some characteristic aspects of the campaign that reveal the special characteristics of the Russian soldier and his leaders. These will bring out something of the human interest of the war better even than the story of marches and battles and strategical combinations.