A Short History of the Great WarPollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
History
A Short History of the Great War
Pollard, A. F. (Albert Frederick)
World War, 1914-1918
The latter part of the retreat had been of a more orderly character
and began to follow a plan, but the plan involved a great deal more
than the surrender of Galicia between the San and the Dunajec.
Mackensen's force was overpowering, and the German design was not to
lengthen the line by compelling a Russian retreat to the San; it only
fell short of complete success because the Russian armies had not so
far been isolated and destroyed, but there was still the likelihood of
their being driven back until the whole of Galicia was recovered and
Poland lost. For the rest of the month Mackensen's huge machine of
destruction was moving forward to the second stage of its journey on
the San. Its progress was delayed by Russian counter-attacks on the
Austrians under Von Woyrsch in Poland and on Mackensen's other wing
which was advancing from the Carpathians on to the Dniester. But by
the 18th Kosziowa had fallen and the Germans had seized the line of
the San from Sieniawa to Jaroslav. Przemysl had not been further
fortified by the Russians since its capture; it would clearly meet the
same fate as Antwerp from the German howitzers unless the Russian
armies in the field could keep the German artillery at a distance.
They could only delay matters until the stores and material were
removed from the fortress. It was now a salient threatened with
encirclement on the north and south. Russian counter-attacks at
Sieniawa and Mosciska relieved the pressure for some days, but before
the end of May Mackensen's howitzers were at work, and Przemysl was
evacuated by the Russians on 1 June.
On the same day Stryj fell to Von Linsingen and on 7 June he forced
the Dniester at Zurawno. But he had advanced too far ahead of his
communications and reserves, and on the 8th Brussilov drove him back
over the Dniester with severe losses. The Dniester was indeed the
scene of stubborn fighting for many days, and on the 18th the Russian
Government announced that the enemy had lost between 120,000 and
150,000 men in their efforts to cross it on a front of forty miles.
But the Russian stand on the Dniester only left it to Mackensen's
centre and left to turn the Grodek position and ensure the fall of
Lemberg. By 20 June the Russian communications north of the Galician
capital were severed by a battle at Rawa Ruska, and on the 22nd, after
nine months' Russian occupation, it once more fell into Austrian
hands. The Russians had not done much to commend their cause to the
inhabitants during their stay; the opportunity was seized for
proselytizing in the interests of the Orthodox Church, and Sczeptycki
the Archbishop of Lemberg, a member of the Uniate Church which had
made terms with Roman Catholicism, was treated with a harshness
compared with which the indignities inflicted by the Germans upon
Cardinal Mercier of Malines were trivial; he was interned in a Russian
monastery and deprived of all religious rites save those which were to
him heretical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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