1914

The year in brief

On 28 June in Sarajevo Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Promised full support by Wilhelm II, Austria-Hungary handed Serbia an ultimatum on 23 July and declared war on it on 28 July. In early August Germany declared war on Russia and France and entered Belgium, and on 4 August Britain and its whole empire found themselves at war with Germany. In the west the French and British halted the Germans on the Marne in September and forced them to retreat, and the German plan for a quick victory collapsed. In the autumn the Allies held Ypres, and by the end of the year the Western Front had congealed into a line of trenches from the sea to Switzerland. In the east the Germans destroyed the Russian Second Army at Tannenberg, but Russia beat the main Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia, took Lviv on 3 September and laid siege to Przemyśl. On 23 August Japan declared war on Germany, and on 29 October Ottoman warships shelled Russian Black Sea ports and Turkey entered the war. Serbia, invaded by Austria-Hungary for the third time, drove the invader out in December, and on 15 December the Serbs returned to Belgrade.

For Poles the war had a particularly dramatic dimension, as the inhabitants of the three partitions served in the armies of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, on opposite sides of the front. On 1 August the German-Russian border, running through Polish lands, became a front line, and from 4 August the Germans subjected Kalisz to bombardment, executions and arson. On 6 August Józef Piłsudski's First Cadre Company set out from Kraków, on 16 August the Supreme National Committee was founded in Kraków, and the Riflemen's units became the Polish Legions, fighting alongside the Austro-Hungarian army. Russia responded with a proclamation by Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, who on 14 August promised to unite the Polish lands under the Tsar. In the autumn great battles passed through the Kingdom of Poland: in October the Germans reached the approaches to Warsaw, and on 6 December they took Łódź. In Galicia the Austrians held Kraków, and after the Battle of Limanowa the Russians fell back behind the Dunajec. The Legions fought at Laski and Anielin, Mołotków and Krzywopłoty, and on 22–25 December the First Brigade fought at Łowczówek the hardest battle of Piłsudski's troops in 1914.