Battle of Krasnystaw

The Battle of Krasnystaw was the first major clash of the second phase of the Central Powers’ summer offensive between the Vistula and the Bug. On 16 July 1915 the German Eleventh Army of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, spearheaded by the Prussian Guard, attacked the Russian Third Army west of the Wieprz. The objective was the railway from Ivangorod through Lublin to Chełm, the main supply line of the Russian armies in the Kingdom of Poland. In three days the Germans took successive lines of trenches, captured about 15,000 prisoners and seized Krasnystaw. The Russians, reinforced by their Guard, nevertheless refused to be broken, and during the night of 18–19 July they withdrew to previously prepared positions closer to the railway.

Name and dates

On this page we use the dates 16–18 July 1915, following the Austrian official history, which describes the “Battle of Krasnystaw” on exactly these days, and the British chronology of the war. The German list of battles uses the name “breakthrough battle of Krasnystaw” (Durchbruchsschlacht von Krasnostaw) and the same dates. The German official history combines this fighting with the simultaneous battles of the Bug Army into a single “Battle of Krasnystaw and Hrubieszów” from 15 to 22 July. In Russian historiography the battle is called красноставское сражение. In the modern calendar it is usually dated 16 to 19 July (3–6 July in the Julian calendar), and some authors extend it as far as 22 July, counting the fighting of the Russian Guard on the Wieprz on the following days.

Nor do the sources agree on the day the town itself was taken. According to the Austrian official history, the Prussian Guard captured Krasnystaw on the evening of the second day of the battle, 17 July. The memoirs of Russian guardsmen confirm that German troops entered the abandoned town on that day. The Polish historian Ryszard Maleszyk writes that part of the town may have been occupied on the evening of 17 July and the whole of it was in German hands on 18 July, and some studies give this latter date.

Background

After the recapture of Lviv on 22 June 1915, Mackensen’s forces turned north. At the beginning of July the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand was fighting the hard-fought Second Battle of Kraśnik, and the German Eleventh Army reached the rivers Wolica and Żółkiewka (PL), a dozen or so kilometres south of Krasnystaw. Here the advance stalled. The Russians defended fortified positions and counter-attacked, and Mackensen was worried about his eastern flank on the Bug. On 3 July he halted the offensive and spent almost two weeks regrouping his forces. On 8 July the new Bug Army of General Alexander von Linsingen was formed from the right wing of the Eleventh Army, and the Austro-Hungarian First Army took over the screen to the east.

On 11 July Mackensen received orders to resume the advance. Three armies, the Austro-Hungarian Fourth, the German Eleventh and the Bug Army, were to reach the line Novo-Alexandria (Puławy) – Lublin – Chełm. At the same time, from 13 July, the army of General Max von Gallwitz was attacking from the north, from the Narew. Together they were to trap the Russian forces in the westward-projecting Kingdom of Poland. The Bug Army, which had taken up positions between Hrubieszów and Grabowiec, was to attack a day earlier, on 15 July.

Mackensen decided to concentrate the main blow west of the Wieprz, through Krasnystaw. From here the railway was closest, and a breakthrough at this point made it possible to outflank from the west two strong Russian defensive lines, on the Wolica and on the Wojsławka. The Austrian official history notes that the field marshal chose the same route along which, eleven months earlier, at the turn of August and September 1914, the Austro-Hungarian X Corps had advanced on Lublin before the whole offensive collapsed in the Battle of Tarnawka.

Forces

The main strike group was made up of the German Guard Corps of General Karl von Plettenberg, the XXII Reserve Corps and the 20th Infantry Division. East of the Wieprz the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps of General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg was attacking, and between them the German 22nd Infantry Division and a mixed Guard detachment. The chief of staff of the Eleventh Army, which Mackensen commanded in person, was Hans von Seeckt. According to the Austrian official history, Mackensen’s whole army group numbered more than 41 infantry divisions, of which about 33 were committed to the advance northwards.

The Russian Third Army was commanded by General Leonid Lesh, who was subordinate to the commander of the North-Western Front, General Mikhail Alekseyev. Its corps, among them the XXIV, the XIV and the III Caucasian, had come out of Galicia with enormous losses and a shortage of ammunition. Behind the front, however, stood reserves: the Guard Corps of General Vladimir Bezobrazov, which had arrived by rail at Chełm at the beginning of July and taken up a position in the second line near Krasnystaw, and the fresh II Siberian Corps. According to the Austrian official history, the Russian Guard numbered about 40,000 and the II Siberian Corps about 32,000 riflemen. East of the Wieprz the front was held by the Thirteenth Army of General Vladimir Gorbatovsky.

Course

16 July. The battle began in misty weather that hampered the artillery’s preparation for the attack. Even so, on the very first day the German infantry west of the Wieprz took the Russian positions across the whole width of the attack and captured about 6,000 prisoners. There was, however, no breakthrough. In the evening the Germans came up against a new line of Russian trenches running from the lower Żółkiewka over the hills to the source of the Giełczew. The unbroken Russian front made it impossible to launch the Guard cavalry in pursuit. East of the Wieprz part of the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps crossed the marshy valley of the Wolica and approached the main Russian position, and the German 22nd Division took Skierbieszów and held it against strong counter-attacks.

17 July. The Germans again drove the Russians from successive positions, but once again failed to break the front. The exhausted Russian 52nd Infantry Division of the III Caucasian Corps, deprived of artillery support, withdrew from Krasnystaw. In the evening the Prussian Guard entered the town and took Góry, which lay on the east bank of the Wieprz. An officer of the Russian Preobrazhensky Regiment remembered the Germans marching into abandoned Krasnystaw in columns, with a band. The Guard now had a bridgehead across the river, from which it threatened the rear of the Russian positions on the Wolica and the Wojsławka. East of the Wieprz the VI Corps, despite heavy casualties, was unable to break the Russian defence.

18 July. Mackensen shifted the weight of the attack to the east bank of the Wieprz. The 105th Infantry Division from the army reserve was to strike eastwards from the bridgehead at Góry, and the VI Corps was to attack again from the south. Alekseyev, meanwhile, placed both reserves, the Guard and the II Siberian Corps, at Lesh’s disposal. North of Krasnystaw, near Zadworze and Stężyca, the Russian Guard regiments, the Preobrazhensky and the Izmailovsky, repelled the attacks of the Prussian Guard regiments all day and counter-attacked themselves. According to Russian accounts the Izmailovsky Regiment beat off more than a dozen attacks, and the Preobrazhensky lost about 350 men. The Russian Guard also stopped the 105th Division on the hills south-east of Góry. Arz’s VI Corps did break the Russian front at Gajowniki at 9 a.m. and by evening took the hills north of it, capturing 3,500 prisoners, but it paid a high price: according to the Austrian official history, on that day alone it lost about 1,200 killed, 4,700 wounded and about a thousand missing. West of the Wieprz the German Guard and the XXII Reserve Corps, although the II Siberian Corps had entered the fight against them, again pushed forward, and in the evening they stood near Częstoborowice and Olszanka.

During the night of 18–19 July the Russian forces broke contact and, covered by rearguards, withdrew to long-prepared positions south of the Lublin–Chełm railway, along the Siennica stream through Fajsławice and Chmiel. The Russian guardsmen, who had been preparing to counter-attack, received the order to retreat with disbelief.

Losses

According to the Austrian official history, from 16 to 18 July the German forces west of the Wieprz captured about 15,000 prisoners and drove a wedge into the front of the Russian Third Army 32 kilometres wide and 12 kilometres deep. Russian studies estimate the total losses of the Third Army over these days at 25,000–30,000 men, including about 15,000 taken prisoner. The losses of the German Guard are estimated at more than 5,000 men, and those of the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps at several thousand. The fighting destroyed what had survived in Krasnystaw from the battles of 1914. According to Austrian records from 1916–1917, more than 19,000 soldiers killed in 1914–1915 were buried in the Krasnystaw district, and in several dozen war cemeteries Austrians, Germans and Russians lie side by side.

Significance

The Battle of Krasnystaw was a tactical victory for Mackensen, but it did not bring the decision he had hoped for. The Russian front bent but did not break, and the Third Army withdrew in good order to the next line, which still covered the Lublin–Chełm railway. The breakthrough at Krasnystaw, the simultaneous breaking of the front by Woyrsch’s army at Sienno on the west bank of the Vistula and Gallwitz’s offensive on the Narew nevertheless forced the Russian command into a decision it had been putting off for weeks. On 19 July, at a conference in Siedlce, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich authorised Alekseyev to withdraw the armies from the Vistula to the east. This meant giving up Warsaw and Ivangorod.

Krasnystaw was also one of the few places where the Guards of two empires clashed directly. The Russian guardsmen, despite enormous losses, counted the defence of the Wieprz among their finest battles of the war. The fighting for the Lublin–Chełm railway went on for more than a week, and the Central Powers took Lublin and Chełm only at the turn of July and August 1915.