End of the Battle of Mărăști

On 1 August 1917 (19 July by the Julian calendar, then used in Romania), General Alexandru Averescu’s Romanian 2nd Army attacked for the last time the Măgura Cașinului massif, a rocky peak (1,167 metres) above the valley of the Cașin river, on the northern edge of the Vrancea region. The attack failed, and in the evening Averescu gave up further attempts. So ended the Battle of Mărăști, the first victory of the Romanian army rebuilt after the defeat of 1916. A British chronology of the war records under this date the end of the “first phase of the Battle of Mărășești”. In reality it was Mărăști: the battle at Mărășești, 30 kilometres away, was to begin only five days later, when the Germans went over to the attack.

The last assault

After breaking through the front on 24 July and entering the Soveja basin, the Romanians still lacked several peaks on their right wing, above the Cașin valley. On 30 and 31 July they took the Războiului and Seciu mountains and the Frumoasele Mari hill. Above the valley, however, still towered Măgura Cașinului, driving a wedge into the lines of the Romanian 8th Division. The summit was defended by the Austro-Hungarian 82nd Infantry Regiment, made up of Székelys, reinforced by further battalions. According to the Austrian official history (“Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg”), on 31 July the Romanians stormed the summit several times from the north-east and tried to outflank it from the valley side, but were driven back by grenades and counter-attacks by reserves.

On 1 August the Romanian artillery again shelled the mountain, and the infantry attacked frontally and by working round the summit from the north. The Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu describes why the attack collapsed. The positions on the summit were partly hewn into the rock and partly concreted and armoured, so the Romanian field guns could do nothing to them. During the bombardment the defenders lowered their machine guns on hoists into underground shelters. Firs felled by the shelling and torn wire only enlarged the belt of obstacles in front of the trenches. The enemy had strong artillery and a precisely ranged field of fire, and his infantry counter-attacked at once. The Russians in the neighbouring sector, who were to close the encirclement from the north, refused to take part in the attack. Averescu judged that further attacks would bring only bloody and useless losses. The ridges captured south of the mountain, from which the Romanians commanded the whole mountain borderland, were enough for him.

The balance

According to Kirițescu, on the evening of 1 August the fighting ceased along the whole front of the 2nd Army. Its line ran in a wide arc from Măgura Cașinului through Mount Seciu, Zboina Neagră and Tulnici to Bârsești and Valea Sării on the Putna. The Austrian official history admits that the Romanians drove the enemy back about 20 kilometres and occupied roughly 500 square kilometres. Even greater, in its view, was the moral gain: the Romanian soldier had regained faith in his own strength, and the enemy had to admit that Romanian commanders and soldiers had learned the craft of war. The most important result, however, was a different one. Averescu’s attack upset the plans of the Germans, who had been preparing their own offensive across the Siret at Nămoloasa and had to shift it elsewhere. Kirițescu stressed that in this battle the attacker lost fewer men than the defender: the Romanians had about 4,900 killed, wounded and missing, while they took nearly 2,800 prisoners alone.

From offensive to defence

The victory could not be exploited. As early as 27 July the Romanian high command had ordered a switch to the defensive, because in the north the Russian army was still retreating. After the fall of Tarnopol Austro-Hungarian troops were occupying Bukovina and approaching Czernowitz and the border of Moldavia. Instead of attacking, Averescu’s army was to take over the sector of a Russian corps being withdrawn on its right wing, as far as the Doftana valley. The Romanian 7th and 12th Divisions relieved the Russians there by the beginning of August. The Romanian 1st Army also began taking over the front on the Siret from the Russian 4th Army, part of which was to go north, into a reserve protecting Moldavia from the direction of Bukovina.

In those same days in Iași, under the chairmanship of King Ferdinand I, meetings were held on a possible evacuation of the government and the army to southern Russia. On 2 August Averescu held a memorial service at Soveja for those killed at Mărăști, in the presence of the heir to the throne, Prince Carol. On the other side, the German Supreme Army Command decided to exploit the disintegration of the Russian army and drive the Romanians out of their last corner of the country. The German 9th Army was to strike north from the Putna towards Adjud, and General Friedrich von Gerok’s group from the mountains, through the Oituz valley. The Romanians, who only a week earlier had been attacking, had to prepare for defence.