Battle of the San

The Battle of the San was the second stage of the great Central Powers offensive in Galicia that had begun with the breakthrough at Gorlice. After two weeks of retreat, in mid-May 1915 the Russian armies halted on the line of the San, where they were to stop, refit and go over to a counter-offensive. But General August von Mackensen’s German 11th Army won a bridgehead at Jarosław, crossed the river and for a week beat off Russian counter-attacks. The Russians still held their positions at Radymno and Przemyśl, but they could not push the enemy back across the San. The bridgeheads won in those days served Mackensen as the base for the attack that at the end of May shattered the defence on the river.

Name and dates

We give the name and the dates 16–23 May 1915 after the British chronology of the war, which records the beginning and end of the Battle of the San in Galicia on those days. On 16 May German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Jarosław and began crossing to the east bank of the river. On 24 May Mackensen began a new attack, which the British chronology already calls the Battle of Przemyśl.

Other works divide the fighting differently. The British Encyclopaedia of 1922, based on Austrian sources, describes the period from 12 to 23 May as the prelude to the Battle of Przemyśl and writes of it as a pause in operations in which both sides prepared for the next clash. Polish regional studies usually call the fighting of mid-May the Battle of Jarosław, while Russian historians treat it as part of the Gorlice operation. Russian documents gave dates in the Julian calendar, then 13 days behind, so in them the capture of Jarosław falls on 2–3 May.

Background

At the beginning of May 1915 the German 11th Army and the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand broke through the front of General Radko Dimitriev’s Russian 3rd Army. Within two weeks the Russians lost the whole of western Galicia, the Carpathian passes and, according to the Encyclopaedia of 1922, some 170,000 prisoners as well. In mid-May they fell back behind the San. The commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, and the commander of the South-Western Front, General Nikolai Ivanov, decided that the line of the San and the Dniester was where they must make a stand. Some corps of the 3rd Army that had already crossed the river were turned back to its west bank to defend the bridgeheads. The strongest of these were built at Jarosław, Radymno and Sieniawa. The Russians fortified them day and night, and Przemyśl, taken by the Russians in March, was again being prepared for defence. The Russian units, however, were depleted and short of ammunition: according to Russian figures the infantry had a few clips per rifleman a day, and the artillery several times fewer shells than the enemy.

The Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, and the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, decided to press on with the attack. The 11th Army was to cross the San on both sides of Jarosław, the 4th Army to force the lower San, and the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army to approach Przemyśl from the west and south. Mackensen, whose chief of staff was Hans von Seeckt, sent against Jarosław General Karl von Plettenberg’s German Guard Corps and General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg’s Austro-Hungarian VI Corps. In the north, towards Sieniawa, General Otto von Emmich’s X Corps attacked, and in the south, near Radymno, General Hermann von François’s XLI Reserve Corps. Jarosław fell after a two-day assault, and its defenders from the Russian XXIV Corps withdrew across the river during the night of 15–16 May.

Course of the fighting

16–17 May. Early in the morning of 16 May the Germans entered Jarosław, and the Guard and VI Corps began to cross the San on pontoons. According to the Austrian official history, by the morning of that day five battalions of the Kraków 12th Infantry Division were already on the east bank, north-east of the town. On the 11th Army’s left wing the Germans threw the Russian III Caucasian Corps back across the river, and during the night of 16–17 May they crossed the San at several points and dug in on bridgeheads near Makowisko, Cetula and Radawa. Further north the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army reached the San at Leżajsk, Rudnik and Nisko, while south of Przemyśl Austro-Hungarian troops were closing in on the fortified Russian positions in the Strwiąż valley.

On 16 May Ivanov ordered the river line to be held and a counter-attack prepared. Two corps of the 3rd Army, XII and XXI, together with the Przemyśl garrison, were placed under the command of General Aleksei Brusilov, commander of the neighbouring 8th Army. The Grand Duke approved these plans around midnight on 17 May, but in view of the successive defeats he also suggested that Ivanov consider replacing the commander of the 3rd Army. According to German accounts, on 17 May Emperor Wilhelm II came to Jarosław and from a hill above the town watched four corps attacking beyond the river.

18 May. The Austro-Hungarian VI Corps drove the Russian 12th Siberian Rifle Division back beyond Wietlin and Sobiecin, and the Guard consolidated its hold on the Lubaczówka. The German 20th and 56th Divisions defeated part of the Russian XXIV Corps beyond the Lubaczówka, and near Sieniawa the German 19th Division took the village of Dobra and secured a crossing for the Austro-Hungarian IX Corps. According to the Encyclopaedia of 1922, Sieniawa itself was taken by the Austro-Hungarian 10th Infantry Division. Meanwhile on the lower San, opposite the Archduke’s army, the Russians went over to counter-attacks. On 18 May units of their IX and X Corps attacked at Nisko and Stare Miasto, and on 19 May, having received reinforcements, they crossed the river between Rudnik and Stare Miasto. A counter-attack by the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Infantry Division forced them back to the east bank, and at Rudnik the 8th Division repulsed further attempts to break through.

19 May. During the night of 18–19 May the Russians launched their announced counter-offensive. General Nikolai Istomin’s so-called Composite Corps, formed from reinforcements and made up of the 3rd Caucasian Rifle Division and the 77th Infantry Division, struck at the junction of the Guard and VI Corps, with orders to attack without firing or shouting. The night attack failed, and in the morning the Germans and Austrians counter-attacked. At dawn on 19 May XII and XXI Corps of Brusilov’s army attacked the positions on the west bank of the San south of Jarosław and were also repulsed. At about 1 p.m. the German 56th Division found a gap between the Russian III Caucasian Corps and XXIV Corps near Radawa and seized the crossings over the Lubaczówka. Radko Dimitriev reported that the situation was “getting worse by the hour”, threw cavalry into the breach and demanded permission for the 3rd and 8th Armies to retreat. In the evening he even urged Brusilov to withdraw XII and XXI Corps across the river without waiting for an order from the commander-in-chief. Brusilov warned the front commander that a retreat by the left wing of the 3rd Army would put his army in a hopeless position, and that withdrawing that same night would be extremely difficult, because nothing could be evacuated from Przemyśl.

20–23 May. In the end no retreat was ordered, and the front on the San stabilised. On 20 May the Austro-Hungarian 12th Division advanced towards Radymno, where the Russians held their strongest bridgehead, linked to the northern fortifications of Przemyśl. At about the same time the 11th Army command planned a new attack for 24 May on the east bank of the San, along the river Szkło, which was to push the Russians away from Przemyśl from the north. Over the following days both sides brought up reserves, and the Germans brought forward heavy artillery and ammunition along roads and railways destroyed by the Russians. The command’s decisions were also influenced by Italy’s approaching entry into the war: on 21 May the Austro-Hungarian VII Corps began leaving by rail for the South-Western Front. On 23 May Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, and the next day the Battle of Przemyśl began on the San.

Losses

The total losses for these eight days were not compiled separately. What is known is that the Russian divisions, already depleted in the retreat from Gorlice, were badly bled on the San. A soldier of the 12th Siberian Rifle Division noted after a night battle that most regiments were no more than a quarter of their normal strength. German and Austro-Hungarian units, which stormed bridgeheads and crossings under fire from Russian artillery on the far bank, also suffered heavy losses. According to estimates by local historians, about 6,000 soldiers who fell during the war are buried in the war cemeteries in and around Jarosław, many of them in the fighting of May 1915.

Significance

The fighting on the San showed that the Russians could still defend themselves and counter-attack. Their command regarded the river line as the place where the Central Powers’ offensive would come to a halt. The lack of ammunition and the exhaustion of the troops, however, meant that the counter-attacks ordered by Ivanov and the Grand Duke did not succeed, and the Germans and Austrians held their bridgeheads on the east bank. Soon afterwards General Leonid Lesh took command of the 3rd Army, and Radko Dimitriev, blamed for the defeat, was moved to command a corps.

The bridgeheads at Jarosław and Sieniawa became the jumping-off point for the attack on Radymno, which began on 24 May. The collapse of the Russian defence on the San opened the way to the recapture of Przemyśl at the beginning of June, and then to the march on Lviv.