Central Powers retake Orsova

On 13 November 1916, after three days of fierce fighting, including street fighting, the Romanian defenders abandoned Orsova. This Hungarian port town on the Danube lay on the west bank of the Cerna, at its mouth, just above the Iron Gates gorge. The Romanians fell back to the east bank of the Cerna, and Orsova, which they had taken at the beginning of September, returned to Austro-Hungarian hands after more than two months. This is how the Austrian official history and the Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu describe these events. The British chronology of the war gives the date of 22 November, when the Romanians also abandoned their positions behind the Cerna. In Romania, which reckoned time by the Julian calendar, 13 November was 31 October.

Two failed attempts

After taking Orsova the Romanians dug in, and the front on this far western wing of the Romanian 1st Army fell quiet for a long time. Colonel Szivó’s Austro-Hungarian 145th Brigade tried to recover the town on 1 October. Its right wing, supported by monitors from the Danube, broke into the western part of Orsova, but in the afternoon the Romanian 17th Infantry Regiment from Mehedinți county drove it out of the town in street fighting in which grenades were used. Another attack, on 27 October, brought only a small gain of ground, because the Romanians, contrary to Austrian hopes, had not weakened this sector at all. Szivó had to go over to the defensive.

The attack of 11 November

The new attack was linked to the great offensive of General Erich von Falkenhayn’s German 9th Army, which on 11 November set out to break through the front in the Jiu valley, some 100 kilometres to the north-east. The Szivó group was to pin down the Romanian Cerna group so that it could not send help to the Jiu, and in the longer term to break through via Turnu Severin into the Romanians’ rear. For this purpose it was reinforced with the German 2nd Cyclist Brigade, numbering some 1,200 rifles according to Kirițescu, and two Bosnian battalions of the 145th Brigade. Opposite stood the remnants of the Romanian 1st Division: according to the Austrian official history, three infantry regiments and four batteries, combined into the so-called Cerna detachment.

On 11 November the Szivó group attacked and pushed the Romanians at Orsova back towards the Cerna. On 12 November fighting went on to clear the northern part of the town. During the night of 12–13 November the Romanians counter-attacked north of Orsova but were repulsed. On 13 November, as Kirițescu writes, after violent street fighting they gave up the town and withdrew to the left, east bank of the Cerna. According to the Austrian official history, on that day the allies drove the enemy from the whole west bank of the river.

The front on the Cerna

There the success ended. The Romanians occupied strong fortifications on the east bank of the Cerna and on Mount Alion, and attempts to drive them out failed. Szivó asked for more heavy artillery, but Falkenhayn replied that the Romanians would have to give up the east bank anyway once they began to retreat before the German corps on the Jiu. Colonel Demetriad’s Cerna group, made up of the 17th, 31st and 57th Regiments, held the line of the river, although during the fighting the command took away three more of its battalions, sent over the mountains to the Jiu.

Falkenhayn was right. After the Romanian defeat on the Jiu the Cerna group was cut off, but at the demand of the allied advisers, who did not want to yield the Danube waterway to the enemy, it was ordered to stay where it was. On 22 November the Austro-Hungarians forced the Cerna, and a German battalion entered Turnu Severin in its rear. During the night of 22–23 November the Romanians abandoned the river bank and began a desperate retreat eastwards. On 6 December, surrounded on the Olt, they capitulated to Colonel Szivó.