Battle of Kraków

The Battle of Kraków, also called the first battle for Kraków, was fought in the second half of November 1914 on the northern and eastern forefield of the fortress of Kraków. After their defeat on the Vistula the Austro-Hungarian armies fell back to the city itself, and the Russian armies followed them towards Silesia and Kraków. On 16 November the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army sallied from the fortress and struck the Russians in the flank. For ten days bloody fighting raged on the frozen fields between Kraków, Proszowice and Słomniki, involving several hundred thousand soldiers on both sides. Neither side won a decisive success. The Russians did not take Kraków, and the Austrians did not drive them away from the fortress.

Name and dates

On this page we use the dates 15–28 November 1914. We take the start date from the British chronology of the war on which our timeline is based, which records the beginning of the Battle of Kraków under 15 November. The actual Austro-Hungarian attack began at dawn the following day. The end date is given by the Polish Wikipedia, according to which major troop movements ceased on 28 November, when the last units of the 4th Army withdrew under the cover of the forts. The English Wikipedia dates the battle in the same way. Other authors, among them Henryk Łukasik, author of a monograph on the Kraków fortress, and also the German Wikipedia, end it on 25 November, when the Austro-Hungarian command broke off the attack. In Russian historiography this fighting is part of the Częstochowa–Kraków operation, lasting from 1 to 11 November in the Julian calendar, that is from 14 to 24 November.

Some Polish publications also distinguish a “second battle for Kraków”, fought at the beginning of December on the south-eastern forefield of the fortress, near Wieliczka. More recent research based on military documents, however, indicates that these were merely skirmishes on the fringes of the Battle of Limanowa, and that the story of a great battle in this area grew mainly out of the press of the time.

Background

At the beginning of November 1914, after the failed Battle of Warsaw and Dęblin, the armies of the Central Powers were retreating westwards. The Austro-Hungarian 1st Army of General Viktor Dankl took up positions on the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, north-west of Kraków, and the 4th Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand fell back to the forefield of the fortress. The German 9th Army left by rail for the north, to the area of Thorn, from where on 11 November it attacked the Russians, opening the Battle of Łódź. In Silesia, between the Austrians and the Germans, there remained the Landwehr corps of General Remus von Woyrsch.

Behind them came the Russian armies of the South-Western Front of General Nikolai Ivanov. North of the Vistula, towards Silesia and Kraków, the 4th Army of General Alexei Evert and the 9th Army of General Platon Lechitsky were advancing. Around 14 November the latter reached the line Wolbrom – Skała – Słomniki – Proszowice. South of the Vistula, from Tarnów, the 3rd Army of General Radko Dimitriev marched west, and further east Brusilov’s 8th Army pressed on towards the Carpathians. Behind the front the Russians closed the ring around Przemyśl for the second time.

Lechitsky did not intend to storm Kraków. The fortress had a double ring of forts. The Russians lacked ammunition and heavy guns, and the experience at Przemyśl had shown what assaults on forts cost without such support. Two corps of the 9th Army were merely to blockade the fortress from the north and north-east and to cover the left wing of the forces advancing on Silesia.

The fortress and the city

Kraków had been preparing for a siege for weeks. The commandant of the fortress, General Karl Kuk, had already in September ordered visitors to leave, and residents who wished to stay to lay in food supplies for three months. At the beginning of November, as the Russians approached, compulsory evacuation was announced. About a third of the inhabitants left the city. On the forefield of the fortress villages were burnt so that the enemy would find no shelter in them, and more trenches and field fortifications were built. The first Cossack patrol appeared at the edge of the fortress as early as 9 November. In mid-November the Russian vanguards occupied the hills near Kocmyrzów, from where field artillery shelled the forts in the Krzesławice area, though without doing them much damage. On 17 November the command ordered the city tollgates to be closed and banned entry to Kraków.

In those same days part of the Polish Legions reached the city. After the retreat from the Vistula the 1st Legions Regiment found itself in the area of Wolbrom. Józef Piłsudski with three battalions slipped through by night between the retreating Austrians and the advancing Russians, by way of Ulina Mała, and reached Kraków around 11 November. The two remaining battalions stayed north of the city.

Course

16–19 November. The Chief of the General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, decided to take advantage of the Russians having come up to the fortress and to strike the left wing of the 9th Army. At dawn on 16 November the 4th Army left Kraków along the Warsaw and Proszowice highways. It was reinforced with 18 battalions from the fortress garrison, and the attack was supported by more than a hundred fortress guns. At the same time, in the north, Dankl’s 1st Army and Woyrsch’s troops were fighting. The Tyrolean XIV Corps of General Josef Roth drove the Russians back across the Dłubnia (PL) river, crossed the border of the Kingdom of Poland and by 19 November had pushed the enemy towards the valley of the Szreniawa (PL). The heaviest fighting took place near Iwanowice, and also near Igołomia, Czulice, Karniów and Kocmyrzów.

On 17–18 November, on the western edge of the battlefield, at Krzywopłoty near Bydlin, two Legion battalions under Major Mieczysław Ryś-Trojanowski held off Russian attacks for two days. 46 legionaries were killed and 131 were wounded or taken prisoner. The Battle of Krzywopłoty passed into the legend of the Legions as “the Legions’ Thermopylae”.

20–25 November. The Austrians’ progress proved much smaller than expected. On 20 November several battalions crossed the Vistula at Sierosławice and landed on the left bank near Nowe Brzesko, but this too brought no breakthrough. To help the threatened wing of the 9th Army the Russians moved corps from Dimitriev’s 3rd Army across the Vistula. These relatively fresh units went over to the attack and began pushing the Austrians back towards Kraków. Meanwhile columns of Russian prisoners were marched through the city, and captured guns were brought into the fortress. On 25 November, in view of Russian superiority and the German failure at Łódź, the Austro-Hungarian command broke off the attack.

26–28 November. The units of the 4th Army withdrew under the cover of the forts. On 28 November the last of them entered the perimeter of the fortress, and the Russian 3rd Army took over the front east of the Dłubnia. The Russians held their positions blockading Kraków from the north and east.

Losses

According to Henryk Łukasik, author of the monograph on the fortress, some 40 divisions, nearly 400,000 soldiers, fought on both sides. The Polish Wikipedia, drawing on a more recent monograph by Adam Zakrzewski, speaks of nearly 300,000. According to Łukasik the Austrians took some 17,000 prisoners, and according to other sources as many as 28,000. They themselves lost more than 30,000 killed and wounded. There are no reliable figures for Russian losses.

Assessment

Historians judge the outcome of the battle differently. Older Polish studies, including Łukasik’s works, see it as an Austro-Hungarian defensive success: the Austrians are said to have repulsed the main Russian thrust at Kraków and saved the fortress. More recent research, on which the Polish Wikipedia draws, speaks rather of a tactical Russian victory. It points out that the Russians had no intention of storming the fortress, and that the Austro-Hungarian attack did not achieve its aim of smashing the left wing of the 9th Army and driving it away from Kraków. The German Wikipedia calls it a broken-off and inconclusive battle. What is certain is that Kraków remained in Austrian hands, and the Russian march on Silesia from the south was halted for the time being.

After the battle

At the end of November the Russian 3rd Army approached Kraków from the south-east. Around 30 November the Russians took Wieliczka, and also Dobczyce. Their patrols reached Bieżanów, on the forefield of the forts. Further south the Russians took Bochnia and Nowy Sącz. This threatened to outflank the fortress from the south.

Conrad decided to forestall this blow. He counted on the Russian supply lines being overextended and the soldiers exhausted after heavy losses. On 28–30 November two corps of the 4th Army, released from the fighting north of the city, were moved by rail from Kraków to Jordanów, Mszana Dolna and Chabówka. Supported by the German 47th Reserve Infantry Division, they were to strike from the south into the flank and rear of Dimitriev’s 3rd Army. Only the essential garrison was left in the fortress. At the beginning of December the Battle of Limanowa began, which was to decide the fate of Kraków and western Galicia.