Battle of Mościska and Lubaczów

The Battle of Mościska and Lubaczów opened the road to Lviv. After the recapture of Przemyśl the Russians halted a dozen or so kilometres east of the fortress, on the hills near Mościska and in the forests along the Lubaczówka. General August von Mackensen, who now commanded three armies, the German 11th and the Austro-Hungarian 2nd and 4th, spent more than a week bringing up reinforcements and ammunition. On 12 June 1915 the troops of his left wing crossed the San and the Lubaczówka near Sieniawa, and on 13 June, after a hurricane bombardment, the attack began along the whole front. After three days of heavy fighting the Russian 8th Army of General Aleksei Brusilov had to fall back to the last fortified line before Lviv.

Name and dates

On this page we adopt the dates 12–15 June 1915, following the British chronology of the war on which our timeline is based. The Austrian official history, which calls it the “breakthrough battle of Mościska and Lubaczów” (Durchbruchschlacht bei Mościska und Lubaczów), and the article in the 1922 Encyclopaedia Britannica date the battle in the same way. The German official list of battles, used in regimental and divisional histories, speaks more briefly of the “breakthrough battle of Lubaczów” on the same days. In Russian documents, dated according to the Julian calendar, these are the days from 30 May to 2 June.

The first day, 12 June, was a prelude: the crossing of the San and the Lubaczówka on the left wing. The main attack began on 13 June. On the night of 15–16 June the Russians abandoned their positions along the whole front, and the next day the Battle of Gródek and Magierów began, which the Austrian official history already counts as a separate battle on the road to Lviv.

Background

Przemyśl fell on 3 June. The chiefs of the general staff, the German Erich von Falkenhayn and the Austro-Hungarian Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had assumed as late as May that the offensive would reach the San and the Dniester, after which part of the forces would leave to face Italy. Now they decided that they had to go further. Falkenhayn believed that halting in Galicia would tie German troops down there for a long time or expose Austria-Hungary to new defeats. Mackensen’s reports said that the Russian army was weakening and was short of ammunition everywhere. Conrad had no doubt that the next blow had to be struck from Przemyśl towards Lviv. He also hoped that recovering the capital of Galicia would keep Romania from turning against the Central Powers. On 3 June the two chiefs of staff agreed at Pless on the orders for all the armies in Galicia, and on 4 June the headquarters at Teschen issued them.

Mackensen received new forces. From 4 June the German XXII Reserve Corps, the 22nd and 107th Infantry Divisions and the Bavarian 8th Reserve Division were detrained near Rzeszów. Besides the German 11th Army and the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, which he had commanded since the start of the offensive, the Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army of General Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli also came under his orders. The Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army, which had fought at Przemyśl, handed its corps over to the neighbouring armies.

On the Russian side the situation was grave. According to Russian reports cited by the Austrian official history, the armies of the South-Western Front lost 412,000 men killed, wounded, captured and missing in May alone. Divisions were down to the strength of a regiment or even less, hundreds of thousands of rifles were lacking, and new soldiers were led to the front unarmed, to pick up the rifles of the dead and wounded. The front commander, General Nikolai Ivanov, nevertheless reported to the supreme command on 5 June that the positions had to be held with the utmost tenacity, because the enemy would eventually run out of shells. Russian headquarters agreed with him. The 3rd Army of General Leonid Lesh was to defend the front from the Vistula near Tarnobrzeg to the Lubaczówka, and Brusilov’s 8th Army further south, as far as the Dniester. Ivanov withdrew several corps from the line into reserve. Three of them, the XXIX Corps and the II and V Caucasian Corps, as well as the IV Cavalry Corps, were to assemble near Lubaczów.

Plan and forces

Mackensen decided to strike with the 11th Army north of the Gródek ponds, towards Magierów. The Austro-Hungarian 2nd Army was to cover its right flank and outflank the Russian positions at Gródek from the north, while the 4th Army was to cross the San between Sieniawa and Ulanów and cover the left flank. The main attack was set for 13 June, and the 4th Army was to begin its crossing a day earlier.

Through the first days of June the 2nd Army, with the German Beskidenkorps, kept up its attacks south of Mościska. On 4 June it broke through the Russian positions on a front of 8 kilometres and at last took the Gaj hill, fought over since May, but then it stuck on the hills in front of the town. On 9 June Mackensen halted these attacks until the general offensive.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica each of Mackensen’s three armies had about 14 infantry divisions. The 11th Army held the front from the lower Lubaczówka to Czerniawa on the river Wisznia. On its right wing stood the XLI Reserve Corps, then the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps of General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg, the Prussian Guard Corps, the XXII Reserve Corps, the German X Corps and General Behr’s combined corps. The VI Corps, the Guard and the XXII Reserve Corps formed the main assault group. The 2nd Army stood in an arc from Czerniawa round Mościska to the marshes of Wielkie Błoto, and the 4th Army on the San from the mouth of the Lubaczówka to the Vistula.

Course

The crossing at Sieniawa, 12 June. The 4th Army opened the battle. According to the Britannica, at 5.40 a.m. its artillery opened fire on the Russian positions at Sieniawa, from which the Russians had driven the Austrians back across the San on the night of 26–27 May. The German 119th Infantry Division from Behr’s corps and the German 22nd Division, attached to the Austro-Hungarian XVII Corps, crossed the river in the morning and, despite strong resistance from the Russian III Caucasian Corps, broke into its positions. Things went more slowly for the Austrian 26th Rifle Division opposite Sieniawa itself, where the Russians were alert and strong. The Austrian official history notes that this caused alarm in the staffs, right up to headquarters at Teschen. In the afternoon the crossing succeeded here too, and in the evening the division passed through Sieniawa. Engineers built two bridges over the San.

The main attack, 13 June. At 4 a.m. some 700 guns and howitzers, including heavy and the heaviest mortars, opened fire from Mościska to the Lubaczówka. According to the Austrian official history the heaviest bombardment lasted an hour and a half. In the trenches 120,000 soldiers waited for the order to assault. The attack went best in the centre. The Austro-Hungarian 12th Infantry Division of Arz’s corps broke into the Russian trenches in the first assault and took 1,500 prisoners. The neighbouring Hungarian 39th Honvéd Division fought until midday for a heavily fortified copse that the artillery had not destroyed, but in the afternoon both divisions were already attacking the second and third lines. The Guard advanced even faster. The XXII Reserve Corps, after hard fighting for the villages, entered dense forests, and the German X Corps crossed the Lubaczówka. By evening the troops of the 11th Army were already resting beyond the captured Russian trenches. On the San the 4th Army took the whole of the former bridgehead at Sieniawa and the Jurowa Góra hill. The 2nd Army made less progress. The Beskidenkorps took an advanced Russian position, but the main line at Mościska still held.

The second line, 14 June. The Russians began to withdraw during the night. In the morning airmen saw long columns of troops and baggage trains on the road to Jaworów, and fires raged around the station at Mościska. The Russians nevertheless halted on a second, carefully prepared line 15–20 kilometres behind the first, running through Krakowiec and Oleszyce. The 2nd Army set off in pursuit beyond Mościska and met fresh resistance only at midday. When Arz’s corps approached Krakowiec, the bridges in the little town were already burning. In the afternoon the 12th Division and the Guard attacked together the hills near Wielkie Oczy and, after several hours of bloody fighting, drove the Caucasian Grenadier Division and the Russian 34th Division from them. By midday the German X Corps had broken the resistance of the XXIX and V Caucasian Corps on the Lubaczówka and moved on Lubaczów. That day Ivanov formed a separate group under General Olokhov near Lubaczów, which was to strike the flank of the attackers, but most of its corps were already drawn into the fighting.

The breakthrough, 15 June. The last day of the battle was just as hard. The 2nd Army fought all day for the hills and villages east of Mościska, and the Beskidenkorps stormed the hills near Bonów only late in the afternoon. On the axis of the main attack the Russians threw in parts of two fresh divisions, but in the evening the 12th Division took their fortifications west of Nahaczów, and the Guard broke into the positions near Lipowiec. On the left wing the German 20th Division reached the southern edge of Lubaczów, and the 19th Division drove the Russians out of Oleszyce. On the San the 4th Army took further hills beyond Sieniawa and advanced past the village of Dobra.

Brusilov did not want to give battle in the open with his bled-out corps. According to the Austrian official history, many of his divisions had only 2,000–3,000 bayonets left. On 15 June he therefore ordered a retreat to the long-prepared line from the area of Rawa Ruska through Magierów and Gródek along the Wereszyca (PL). The Russian 3rd Army was to fall back to the line Dzików – Cewków – Tarnogród, towards the Tanew. When Böhm-Ermolli’s troops went in to the assault before dawn on 16 June, they mostly found empty trenches. Only Lubaczów, defended by Siberian units, still had to be taken that day.

Losses

Complete figures for the losses were never compiled. According to the Austrian official history, the German 11th Army alone took 34,000 prisoners from 13 June. Losses in killed and wounded on both sides were high, because the Russians defended fiercely, especially on the second line, and kept committing further divisions. The Encyclopaedia Britannica states that since the start of the spring campaign in Galicia the Central Powers had captured 971 Russian officers and 391,000 men, 304 guns and 763 machine guns.

Significance

The battle ended in yet another breakthrough of the Russian front. The Russians lost the positions they had spent more than a week fortifying east of Przemyśl, and between Mackensen’s armies and Lviv they were left only with the line of the Gródek and the Wereszyca. On that same line in September 1914 the Battle of Gródek and Rawa Ruska had been fought, in which the Austrians tried in vain to recover Lviv.

The breakthrough also changed the situation further south, on the Dniester, where for several days the Russians had been pressing the South Army near Żydaczów. Threatened from the north, they soon had to abandon the southern bank of the river. On 17 June, at a conference in Chełm, the Russian supreme command and the front command were already reckoning with the loss of Lviv. Five days later Austro-Hungarian troops entered the city.