End of the Battle of Hermannstadt

On the morning of 29 September 1916 the last Romanian infantry brigade left the battlefield south of Hermannstadt. The Romanian I Corps of General Ioan Popovici, attacked for three days from the north by the German–Austro-Hungarian XXXIX Reserve Corps and from the rear by the Alpenkorps, which on 26 September had come out onto the road in the Red Tower Pass (Turnu Roșu), broke out of an almost closed ring and escaped across the mountains into Romania. In Romania, which reckoned time by the Julian calendar, it was 16 September.

The outcome had been decided the day before. On 28 September the Romanian 23rd Division, attacked from the front by the German 187th Division and from the rear by the Alpenkorps, fell back to the village of Sadu, and the 13th Division, threatened by the German cavalry, which had closed the ring from the east, abandoned its positions without orders. By evening the whole corps was crowded at the entrance to the pass under the fire of the German artillery. The Romanian 2nd Army, sent to the rescue at last, was still far away. Popovici ordered a retreat. Three battalions pushed the tired companies of the Alpenkorps off the slopes above the road, and all night wagons and guns squeezed through the pass under machine-gun fire. The Romanians managed to save almost all their artillery, but a great many wagons thrown into the river were left in the Olt. The infantry crossed the Făgăraș Mountains by footpaths, and the 1st Cavalry Brigade covered the crossing until noon on 29 September. In the evening the completely intermingled units assembled at Câineni, already on the Romanian side of the mountains.

According to the Austrian official history, the Romanians left 3,000 prisoners, 13 guns and much equipment on the battlefield. That same day the Romanian 2nd Army, advancing to the rescue on a front stretched over 67 kilometres, clashed with the German 89th Division. The Romanian 6th Division, attacking in close masses, was decimated by artillery and machine-gun fire and abandoned twelve guns, three of which it recovered in a counter-attack. The most advanced units of the 2nd Army came to a halt about ten kilometres from the objective they were to have reached the day before.

Some chronologies of the war state that on 29 September the Austrians “recaptured” Hermannstadt. This is inaccurate: the Romanians never took the town. At the beginning of September they stood outside Hermannstadt, but did not enter it, and an Austro-Hungarian territorial battalion remained in the town throughout. The victory of 29 September did, however, clear the Romanians out of the whole Hermannstadt basin.

Falkenhayn did not achieve his full aim, because the Alpenkorps was too weak to close the pass on its own. Even so, he defeated the I Corps and inflicted on the Romanians their first heavy defeat in Transylvania. General Popovici lost his command. His successor, General David Praporgescu, took over on 30 September and had to defend the pass from the south. The German 9th Army could now turn east, towards Brașov, against the Romanian 2nd Army.