Battle of Kraków ends

The British chronology of the war records under 2 December 1914 the end of the Battle of Kraków. Most studies, however, end it earlier. According to the Polish Wikipedia, major troop movements on the northern approaches to the Kraków fortress ceased on 28 November, when the last units of the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army withdrew under the cover of the forts. Some historians and the German Wikipedia even point to 25 November, when the Austro-Hungarian command broke off the attack. That is also how we date the Battle of Kraków on our site: from 15 to 28 November.

Why 2 December

We have not been able to establish what the authors of the British chronology based the date of 2 December on. They probably took as the end of the battle the moment when the whole front at Kraków had stabilised and it had become clear that the fighting would move elsewhere. In the first days of December relative calm already reigned north of the city. The Russian Ninth Army lacked the strength to renew its attack and was fortifying the positions it had won, while its units blockaded the fortress from the north and north-east. The Russians made no attempt to storm the forts.

The Russians from the south

The threat came from another direction. At the end of November the Russian Third Army of General Radko Dimitriev approached Kraków from the south-east and took Wieliczka and Dobczyce. Its patrols reached the forefield of the forts near Bieżanów. The Kraków press soon wrote of a “second battle for Kraków”, but more recent research based on military documents shows that these were only patrol skirmishes on the edge of a larger operation, and that the fate of the city was being decided several dozen kilometres away.

The blow at Limanowa

The chief of the general staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, did not intend to wait for the Russians to outflank the fortress from the south. In the last days of November two corps of the Fourth Army, released from the fighting north of Kraków, were carried by rail to Jordanów, Mszana Dolna and Chabówka. Together with the German 47th Reserve Infantry Division they were to strike from the mountains into the flank and rear of Dimitriev’s army. Only the essential garrison remained in the fortress.

At the beginning of December these troops began their attack, and the Battle of Limanowa took over the role that the Battle of Kraków had been meant to play a few weeks earlier. The first battle for Kraków brought no decision. The city remained in Austrian hands, and the Russian march towards Silesia from the south was halted. The Russians, however, still stood right outside the city, to the north and to the south-east.