Battle of Gródek and Rawa Ruska ends

On 11 September 1914 the Battle of Gródek and Rawa Ruska, called the Second Battle of Lemberg in the British chronology of the war, came to an end. The Austro-Hungarian armies, which for several days had been trying to recover the capital of Galicia, were halted, and at Rawa Ruska the Russians broke through their front. In the evening the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, issued the order for a general retreat.

A failed counter-offensive

After the loss of Lviv Conrad decided to reverse the course of the campaign. The Fourth Army of General Moritz von Auffenberg, victorious at Komarów, was to strike from the north, and the Third and Second Armies from the west, from the river Wereszyca (PL) near Gródek Jagielloński. At Rawa Ruska, however, Auffenberg’s army ran into the corps of the Russian Third Army marching west and became bogged down in heavy fighting. The general attack begun on 8 September on the Wereszyca brought only local successes. The Russian Eighth Army of General Aleksei Brusilov went through difficult moments but held its front, and by 10 September the Austro-Hungarian attack had petered out.

The threat of encirclement

The outcome of the battle was decided by events on the northern flank. The Russian Fifth Army of General Pavel Plehve, rebuilt after the Battle of Komarów, entered the gap between Auffenberg’s army and General Viktor Dankl’s First Army, retreating from Lublin, and threatened the rear of the whole Austro-Hungarian front. On 11 September the Russian XI Corps broke through the defences at Rawa Ruska, and Russian cavalry was already appearing behind the lines of the Fourth Army.

Conrad realised that his armies were in danger of being cut off from the crossings over the San. In the evening of 11 September he ordered all his armies to withdraw behind the San. The next day the Russians occupied the abandoned Rawa Ruska.

Consequences

The defeat ended the great Battle of Galicia, which since the second half of August had cost Austria-Hungary, according to various estimates, from about 320,000 to 400,000 soldiers, including over 100,000 prisoners. Auffenberg was blamed for the failure, although it was Conrad who had ordered him to turn his army south into unknown, marshy terrain. At the end of September the general lost command of the Fourth Army. The Russians, themselves exhausted and with dwindling stocks of ammunition, set off in pursuit late, but in the following weeks they occupied a large part of Galicia.