Fighting to retake Przemyśl begins

On 24 May 1915 German and Austro-Hungarian troops began the fighting to recover the fortress of Przemyśl, which the Russians had taken two months earlier. The main blow of the day was the attack by General August von Mackensen’s German Eleventh Army on the eastern bank of the San, north of the fortress. By the evening the Russians had lost Radymno and several nearby villages, and thousands of their soldiers had been taken prisoner. The British chronology of the war records the start of the battle for Przemyśl under this date.

A fortress on the flank

After the breakthrough at Gorlice the armies of the Central Powers reached the San in mid-May and, after heavy fighting on that river, held a bridgehead on its eastern bank near Jarosław. Przemyśl, however, partly rebuilt by the Russians and garrisoned by their troops, sat on the flank of that bridgehead and prevented any further advance east. There was too little heavy artillery to storm the forts, and bringing it up over the wrecked roads and bridges would take time. It was therefore decided to cut the fortress off from Lviv. Mackensen was to strike south-east from the bridgehead, through Radymno, towards the road from Przemyśl to Mościska, while the Austro-Hungarian Third and Second Armies were to attack towards the same road from the south.

The Russian command itself did not know whether to defend the fortress. A few days earlier Austro-Hungarian telegraphists had managed to tap into the fortress’s line and intercept an evacuation order issued by the commander of the South-Western Front, General Nikolai Ivanov. That order was soon cancelled, however, and the Russian garrison remained in the forts.

Radymno

On the afternoon of 23 May the Eleventh Army’s artillery began registering. At 8 a.m. on 24 May, after a two-hour bombardment, the infantry went into the attack. General Hermann von François’s German XLI Reserve Corps and General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg’s Austro-Hungarian VI Corps caught in a pincer the projecting salient of the Russian XXI Corps’ positions near Radymno. The Russians fell back hastily towards the San and came under fire from guns and machine guns on the opposite bank. According to the Austrian official history hundreds of them drowned in the river and thousands chose to surrender. Around midday the Germans took Radymno. On the southern flank, however, the attack stalled in front of the Russian XII Corps, which was holding out on the Rada stream, and in the north the Hungarian 39th Honvéd Division halted in front of a strongly fortified bridgehead at Zagrody.

Further north the Austro-Hungarian 12th Infantry Division took the villages of Wietlin and Wysocko, and the German Guard Corps broke through as far as Bobrówka. The Russian XXIX Corps, which was to strike the flank of the attackers, was itself outflanked by the Guard and fled in disorder behind the Lubaczówka. The new commander of the Russian Third Army, General Leonid Lesh, plugged the gap in his front with cavalry divisions and a medley of infantry units. Some Russian regiments, recently brought up to strength, melted away that day to 200–300 men. The next day the bridgehead at Zagrody fell. During 24 and 25 May Mackensen’s troops took about 21,000 prisoners and 39 guns.

South of the fortress

The same day the troops attacking from the south also went forward. At 4 a.m. the German Beskidenkorps attacked, and four hours later the left wing of General Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli’s Austro-Hungarian Second Army. Here the Russians were holding the hills near Husaków and Pnikut, on positions with up to seven lines of trenches in places. The attackers got to within 100–150 metres of the Russian wire, but could get no further. They lacked heavy artillery, and the Austro-Hungarian divisions were bled white after three weeks of pursuit and fighting.

On the Austro-Hungarian side of the front commanders were changing in these days. The day before, Italy had declared war on Austria-Hungary, and the commander of the Third Army, General Svetozar Boroević, left to take command of the troops on the Isonzo. His army was taken over by General Paul Puhallo.

The fighting for Przemyśl went on for another ten days. The Russians counter-attacked in the north, near Sieniawa, and south of the fortress the Austrians gnawed their way through successive lines of trenches the whole time. The issue was decided by the storming of the forts of the northern front, after which the Russian garrison abandoned Przemyśl. On 3 June 1915 German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered the town.