End of the second battle of Kraśnik

On the night of 18–19 July 1915 the Russians quietly abandoned their positions along the whole front between the Vistula and the Bug. On the morning of 19 July the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army, who had been fighting for nearly three weeks on the hills north of Kraśnik, saw empty trenches before them. Thus ended the second battle of Kraśnik. The British chronology of the war closes it on this date. The Austrian official history restricts the name to the fighting of 1–10 July and describes the following days as part of the offensive of Mackensen’s whole army group.

The last days of the battle brought the 4th Army no success. After the breakthrough of the Russian lines on 3–4 July and heavy counter-attacks by Russian reserves on 7–10 July, the front came to a halt on the Urzędówka (PL) river, between Urzędów and Wilkołaz. On 16 July Archduke Joseph Ferdinand renewed the attack, with the main thrust along the road from Kraśnik to Lublin. For three days his infantry fought for every Russian outpost, but did not break the main position. According to the Austrian official history the chief obstacles were concealed strongpoints and flanking positions that the artillery had failed to destroy. Only the army’s wings advanced somewhat.

The Russian withdrawal was decided by events on other sectors. East of the Wieprz the German 11th Army broke the front at Krasnystaw, and on the west bank of the Vistula the troops of Remus von Woyrsch broke through the Russian lines at Sienno. In the north the Germans had been attacking on the Narew since 13 July. To avoid being destroyed, the Russian armies between the Vistula and the Bug fell back to a previously prepared line just south of the Lublin–Chełm railway, through Niedrzwica and the hills above the Chodelka (PL). On the same day, 19 July, at a conference in Siedlce, the commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, authorised the commander of the North-Western Front, General Mikhail Alekseyev, to withdraw the armies from the Vistula eastwards on his own initiative. According to the Austrian official history this amounted to the final decision to give up Warsaw and Ivangorod.

The retreating Russians burned villages behind them. Urzędów, which had lain on the front line itself for two weeks, suffered most. The market square burned down with most of its houses, and the outskirts went on burning for several days. The inhabitants tried to defend their homes against the arsonists, some of them with weapons in hand. On the southern sector of the front near Urzędów in those days stood the I Brigade of the Polish Legions. Its commander, Józef Piłsudski, was quartered in the town from 14 to 19 July, and about thirty volunteers from Urzędów joined the brigade at that time.

On 19 July the 4th Army set off in pursuit and by evening stood before the new Russian positions. The very next day another heavy battle began there, named after the Chodelka river. Lublin, which the Austro-Hungarians had been trying to reach since the beginning of July, was taken only on 30 July.