End of the battle of Gorlice

Late in the evening of 5 May 1915 the headquarters of the Russian Third Army issued an order for the whole army to retreat behind the Wisłoka. Four days after the breakthrough at Gorlice the Russian defence in the foothills between the Vistula and the Low Beskids had fallen apart, and the new divisions thrown into the fighting straight from the trains had been unable to rebuild it. According to the British chronology, the battle of Gorlice–Tarnów ended on that day. For the Russians it was only the beginning of a long retreat.

The second and third positions

On 3 May the troops of General August von Mackensen’s German Eleventh Army drove the Russians from their second line of defence. They took Zagórzany, Kobylanka, Libusza and Lipinki and towards evening reached Biecz. In the north the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army was taking one hill after another near Tarnów. The commander of the Third Army, General Radko Dimitriev, asked for reinforcements, and the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, sent him a first division to help and agreed to small adjustments of the front.

On 4 May the Russians tried to reverse the course of the battle. General Vladimir Irmanov’s group, made up of III Caucasian Corps coming up from reserve and the remnants of X Corps, counter-attacked south of Biecz. The fiercest fighting was for Cieklin, where the Russians shattered several German battalions, but in the afternoon they lost the village. The counter-attack collapsed, and the Germans broke through at the junction of III Caucasian Corps and XXIV Corps. On that day units of the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps entered Biecz, according to Polish accounts led by soldiers of Colonel Franciszek Latinik’s 100th Infantry Regiment from Cieszyn. The corps that had borne the main blow since 2 May were in tatters. The commander of the Russian 61st Infantry Division reported that only “pitiful remnants” were left of his division.

The order to retreat

On 5 May General Otto von Emmich’s German corps on the right wing of the Eleventh Army reached Żmigród and threw the Russians back across the Jasiołka river towards Dukla. In doing so it threatened the lines of retreat of the Russian XII and XXIV Corps, which were still in the Low Beskids and had begun to give way before the Austro-Hungarian Third Army. Near Tarnów the Austrians were crossing the Biała.

The headquarters of the South-Western Front, commanded by General Nikolai Ivanov, argued to the high command that day that the only sensible course was to pull the whole front back behind the San. Stavka would not hear of it. Its representatives argued that the Third Army’s defeat was not so serious, and that a retreat at a moment when Italy and Romania might join the Entente would be politically damaging. The Grand Duke categorically forbade the withdrawal of the Third Army and ordered it to dig in on the positions it held. At the front, however, this could no longer be done. At about 11 p.m. Dimitriev’s headquarters issued the order to retreat behind the Wisłoka.

The balance

In four days Mackensen’s troops advanced more than 30 kilometres and shattered several Russian divisions. The Austrian historian Ernst Joly estimated the spoils of this “five-day breakthrough battle” at 50,000 prisoners and 50 guns. The attackers’ losses were also high, but they bore no comparison with the Russian ones. On the night of 5/6 May the Russians abandoned their positions at Tarnów and the town itself, which Austro-Hungarian and German troops entered in the morning. In the following days the pursuit moved east, towards Jasło, Krosno and Rzeszów.