End of the second battle of Ivangorod

On 21 July 1915 the two days of fighting in the western forefield of Ivangorod, that is, the fortress of Dęblin, came to an end. In the morning General Götz von König’s German Landwehr Corps broke the Russian position east of Zwoleń, and in the afternoon the Russians began to fall back along the whole sector. The British chronology of the war closes with this day the second battle of Ivangorod, begun the day before. The Austrian official history does not use this name: it describes the fighting of 20 and 21 July as one stage of the march of General Remus von Woyrsch’s army detachment from the Iłżanka to Ivangorod and the Vistula.

The Silesian Landwehr, which had been storming the Russian trenches all through 20 July, began to gain the upper hand during the night. By morning it had broken through the front on a width of about 2 kilometres. Under strong Russian pressure near Policzna the attack came to a halt for a while. General Hermann Kövess then turned the Austro-Hungarian 7th Cavalry Division, reinforced with three infantry battalions, back to the east, and it broke the resistance on the Laski–Bogucin line. By the afternoon victory was certain. Woyrsch ordered a relentless pursuit, so as not to let the Russians dig in again in front of the fortress. He sent a strong group with a Landwehr cavalry brigade towards the bridges over the Vistula at Nowa Aleksandria, today’s Puławy.

The main Russian forces, XVI Corps and the Grenadier Corps of the 4th Army, fell back to the line Kozienice–Gniewoszów, right by the Vistula. Already in the morning the Russians had withdrawn towards Ryczywół and Warka the cavalry that covered their retreat on the northern sector. In the evening the Austro-Hungarian 9th Cavalry Division occupied without a fight the abandoned Russian bridgehead at Ryczywół on the Radomka. Among the many prisoners taken that day were soldiers of the militia, the opolchenie, belonging to the garrison of Ivangorod. The next day, from intercepted and decoded Russian radio messages, the Austrians and Germans learned that on 21 July XVI Corps had received orders to destroy the railway line right up to the forts of the fortress and to withdraw at ten in the evening.

The Russians had no intention of fighting a decisive battle here. Since the beginning of July their command had been preparing to give up the left bank of the Vistula, except for the bridgeheads, and the positions at Zwoleń and Policzna were above all meant to keep the enemy away from the fortress. Woyrsch’s troops, however, cleared within a few days the whole area from the Iłżanka to the Pilica and stood on the Vistula. Now they were to cross it. At the end of July the Landwehr forced the river north of the fortress, at Ryczywół, while the Austro-Hungarians remained at Ivangorod to close it off from the west.