Central Powers take Jarosław

On 14 May 1915 the leading units of the German 11th Army of General August von Mackensen stood before the fortifications of Jarosław. Two weeks earlier the Central Powers had broken the front at Gorlice, and the Russian 3rd Army of General Radko Dimitriev had fallen back as far as the San. The Russians decided to defend the line of the river, and Jarosław was one of three strongly fortified bridgeheads on it, along with Radymno and Sieniawa. The British chronology of the war records the capture of the town under 14 May. The assault began that day, but the fighting lasted until 16 May: according to the 1922 Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Germans took the fortifications on 15 May and entered the town early in the morning of 16 May. Some works, including the Austrian official history, give 15 May as the day Jarosław was taken.

Bridgehead on the San

The Russians had held Jarosław since the autumn of 1914. In the first days of May 1915, when news came of the defeat on the Dunajec, they began winding up their offices, carrying off equipment and digging trenches. The defence line ran in a semicircle through the suburbs and the surrounding villages, from Kruhel Pawłosiowski through the town park at Olszanówka and the manor at Pawłosiów to Widna Góra and Kidałowice. It was held by the Russian XXIV Corps, and in the town itself mainly by the 62nd Infantry Division. On 12 May the Russian civil authorities left, and the next day soldiers set fire to the food stocks gathered at the station that they had not managed to carry away. According to a local chronicle the warehouses burned for two days, and the poorest inhabitants managed to carry off some of the food.

Jarosław was attacked by the German Guard Corps of General Karl von Plettenberg and the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps of General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg, in which the Kraków 12th Infantry Division and the Hungarian 39th Honvéd Division fought. On the afternoon of 14 May, after a short bombardment by heavy artillery, the first attack from the direction of Pełkinie was repulsed by the fire of Russian batteries on the right bank of the San. During the night the Central Powers’ troops attacked again, and further north the Russian X Corps abandoned Leżajsk and withdrew across the river, blowing up the bridge behind it.

The assault

On 15 May the heavy artillery showered the Russian trenches and the suburbs with shells. The heaviest fighting was for Pawłosiów, Kidałowice and Hill 264 above the town, called Widna Góra or Cupajówka. The infantry attacks broke down under fire several times, and Austrian soldiers later complained that their own artillery had also shelled them. According to Polish accounts, the artillery of the 12th Division was commanded by General Tadeusz Rozwadowski, later chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army. The Russians lost some of their positions that day, but held on in the town until nightfall. On the night of 15–16 May the commander of the 3rd Army allowed the XXIV Corps to abandon Jarosław. The regiments withdrew across the San, leaving a company in the trenches in each case to keep up a sparse fire and deceive the enemy. The last units crossed the river at dawn and set fire to the bridge behind them, and early in the morning of 16 May the first Germans entered the town.

The town after the battle

The two-day bombardment badly damaged Jarosław. Shells damaged the Benedictine convent, the tower of St Anne’s Church, the Dominican church and monastery, and the Siemieński manor and palace at Pawłosiów. The inhabitants sat out the fighting in their cellars. Sketches of Jarosław’s history written before the Second World War say that the capture of the town cost several hundred dead, and that the streets and surrounding fields were strewn with the bodies of soldiers of both sides. The fallen were buried in several war cemeteries, the largest of which was laid out on the slope of Widna Góra.

Beyond the San the Russians still held prepared positions and for the following days shelled the eastern part of the town. According to German accounts, on 17 May Emperor Wilhelm II came to Jarosław and watched the fighting on the river from a hill above the town. Mackensen set up his headquarters in Jarosław for almost a month. The capture of the bridgehead opened the way to the fighting for the line of the San and, in the longer term, to the recapture of Przemyśl.