The Central Powers retake Przemyśl

On 3 June 1915, the feast of Corpus Christi, German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Przemyśl. The Russians, who had taken the fortress in March, withdrew from it during the night and blew up the bridges over the San behind them. After ten days of fighting, which had begun on 24 May at Radymno, the largest fortress of the Habsburg monarchy returned to Austria-Hungary. Russian rule in the town had lasted 73 days.

The night of the retreat

The fate of Przemyśl was decided on the northern front of the fortress. From 31 May German and Austro-Hungarian heavy mortars had been smashing the forts there between Orzechowce and Żurawica, and the infantry took them one after another. At noon on 2 June General Paul von Kneußl’s Bavarian 11th Infantry Division captured Fort X at Orzechowce, and in the evening further works. Almost the entire northern ring was lost. The same day the commander of the Russian Eighth Army, General Aleksei Brusilov, after long hesitation, decided to abandon the fortress. During the night of 2/3 June the garrison withdrew to a new line east of the town, through Medyka.

The Russians were able to withdraw because to the end they held the corridor leading east, towards Mościska and Lviv. South-east of the fortress the Austro-Hungarian Second Army and the German Beskiden Corps had for weeks been storming their positions on the hills near Husaków in vain. As late as the afternoon of 3 June Austro-Hungarian units, among them regiments from Eastern Galicia and Bukovina, unsuccessfully attacked a Russian position there in a copse on Gaj hill. The Russians defended themselves fiercely to keep the road open for the garrison leaving Przemyśl.

Morning in the town

Between 3 and 4 a.m. the first soldiers of Kneußl’s division entered the town from Zasanie (PL), the district on the left bank of the San. According to the Austrian official history this was a battalion of a Prussian Guards regiment attached to the division a few days earlier; Polish studies speak of Bavarians and give the time as 3.30 a.m. On the northern edge of the town they met the Austro-Hungarian 4th Cavalry Division. As all the bridges had been destroyed, the San was not crossed until about 11 a.m., over a makeshift bridge that the town engineer built from abandoned Russian equipment. The first general to set foot in the town was the commander of the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, General Berndt. Part of his division immediately set off in pursuit and ran into Russian rearguards at Medyka.

From the south-west the Austro-Hungarian X Corps entered the fortress. Its 45th Rifle Division set off as soon as news of the Russian departure arrived after midnight, and by 9 a.m. was on the Tatar Mound (PL). From the south the first to cross the ring of forts was a Viennese Landsturm brigade. When the commander of X Corps, General Hugo Martiny, drove into the town at about 11 a.m., the Corpus Christi procession was just leaving the church. According to Przemyśl studies the inhabitants greeted the arriving troops almost as liberators. Crowds came out into the streets, soldiers were showered with flowers, and flags hung from many houses.

73 days under Russian rule

For Przemyśl two and a half months of Russian occupation were coming to an end. The first commandant of the fortress was General Leonid Artamonov, the last General Sergei Delvig. The Russians presented the capture of Przemyśl as a great triumph. On 23 April 1915 (10 April by the Julian calendar) Tsar Nicholas II came here with the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. He took a parade, handed out decorations and inspected the captured forts, and the next day left for Lviv.

The new authorities imposed Russian ways. According to Przemyśl studies the Polish language was banned in offices, and Russian and new curricula were introduced in schools, in the spirit of Russification. The Greek Catholic Bishop of Przemyśl, Konstantyn Chekhovych, was harassed when he refused to hold an Orthodox thanksgiving service. The Jews suffered the occupation most severely. On Saturday and Sunday, 17 and 18 April, the Russians arrested them by the hundred in synagogues and prayer houses, locked them in the barracks at Bakończyce (PL) and forced them to rebuild the fortifications, and whole families were expelled from the town. Other inhabitants too were driven to work on roads and forts. Epidemic typhus spread through the town. When the front approached Przemyśl in May, the Russian civil authorities left the town.

Joy and bitterness

In the afternoon of 3 June General August von Mackensen arrived in Przemyśl. In a telegram he laid the recovered fortress at the feet of Emperor Franz Joseph. At the headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian army in Teschen the success was welcomed, but it was felt bitterly that the Germans, and not the Emperor’s soldiers, had been the first to enter the fortress. The Austrian official history later stressed that the assaults of the Austro-Hungarian X Corps from the south-west had drawn part of the Russian forces and guns away from the northern front.

The Central Powers had no intention of stopping. Already on 2 June the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, instructed Mackensen to carry the offensive east of the San until a decision was reached. On 3 June at Pless he agreed with the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, on orders for all the armies in Galicia. The objective was to be Lviv. In western Galicia new German divisions were already detraining. The fighting east of Przemyśl, at Medyka and Mościska, went on over the following days, and a few days later the commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian army, Archduke Friedrich, came to the recovered fortress.