End of the Battle of Biskupice

At dawn on 30 July 1915 the Germans and Austro-Hungarians found the Russian trenches between the Vistula and the Bug empty almost everywhere. After the breaking of the front at Biskupice the previous day, the Russian command had broken off the fighting. During the night it ordered the Fourth, Third and Thirteenth Armies to retreat to a new line, from Nowa Aleksandria (Puławy) through the hills north of Lublin, Świdnik and Rejowiec to the Bug. The German list of battles closes the Battle of Biskupice on this day. Its best-known consequence was the loss of Lublin by the Russians.

According to the Austrian official history, the retreat could be seen from afar. North of the Lublin–Chełm highway villages were burning, and long columns of baggage trains moved north along the roads to Lubartów and Włodawa. An Austro-Hungarian communiqué of that day accused the retreating Russians of destroying settlements and even burning the grain in the fields. Laying waste to the country before the enemy arrived and forcibly deporting the population were in those weeks part of the Russian retreat from the Kingdom of Poland.

At about noon cavalry patrols of the Austro-Hungarian IX and XVII Corps of the Fourth Army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand rode into Lublin. The Austro-Hungarian XIV Corps occupied the hills north of the city. A German communiqué stated that Lublin had been taken in the afternoon. The city found itself in the Austro-Hungarian zone of occupation. From October 1915 it was the seat of the Military Government General, which ruled this part of the Kingdom of Poland.

The pursuit, however, did not go far. In the afternoon units of the German Eleventh Army ran into entrenched Russian rearguards near Milejów, Siedliszcze, north of Rejowiec and south-west of Chełm. By evening they had not broken through anywhere. According to a German communiqué of 31 July, in the fighting at Biskupice and Piaski the Germans took 4,930 prisoners, 5 guns and 8 machine guns. Mackensen concluded that the Russians intended to stand on the new line. For 31 July he ordered the wings to attack: the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army towards Łęczna and the Bug Army on Chełm. The Eleventh Army was not to move until 1 August.

The Battle of Biskupice cut the Ivangorod–Lublin–Chełm railway, which the Austrian official history calls the lifeline of the Russian forces in the Kingdom of Poland. The Russians had been defending it for weeks in order to withdraw their armies from the middle Vistula in good order. Now that retreat had to be speeded up. A few days later the Russians abandoned Warsaw and Ivangorod.