In the last part of August and the first part of September, 1914, there was considerable confused fighting between detached forces on both sides in the frontier country between Zamosc and Sokal. Both sides claimed successes. The Russians claimed that their wedge was driven through successfully to Tomaszow and that there a severe defeat was administered to the Austrians.
From there the latter retired to the swampy land about Bilgoraj and upon Tarnograd. The tactics of the Russians had put a last barrier between the two principal sections of the Austrians. Interest thereafter centered in Dankl's First Army.
Fighting on the Lublin-Kholm front, having been purely defensive on the part of the Russians, at first, had grown fiercer as days passed, until there was continuous battle along the entire line. When Von Auffenberg had been defeated and his right and rear threatened, the condition of the northern army seemed so critical that General Dankl decided to force the issue. He might fall back or break through the Russian defense. He decided to attempt to pierce the line between Lublin and Kholm. On September 2, 1914, the Tenth Austrian Army Corps led the assault against the weaker part of the Russian line and reached within eleven miles of Lublin. There it was halted, and so the Austrian offensive seems to have spent itself.
As we have seen, the Russian offensive began definitely on September 4, 1914. According to the Russian official announcement, two days later, "the enemy's center, lying in the region West of Krasnostaw (this being almost due north of Zamosc, about halfway to the center of a line drawn from Lublin to Kholm) was particularly disorganized. The Forty-fifth Austrian Regiment including the colonel, forty-four officers, and 1,600 men were surrounded, and surrendered." The same announcement stated that "a German division, coming to the aid of the Austrians, was attacked on the left bank of the Vistula." Presumably, the Russian troops there had come from Ivangorod.
After the Austrian First Army began to retire, it was followed by the Russian forces along its line. And this line, at first, was approximately eighty miles. As it retired, the left wing being hemmed in by the River Vistula, and the right feeling steady pressure from Russian forces on the right, where direct retreat was prevented by the swampy nature of the country, the front was contracted until it was less than forty miles.
This had been accomplished by the time the army reached the San, where it was necessary to effect a crossing by four or five bridges at different points. Dankl was highly praised for the manner in which he handled his army during this retreat, and saved it from destruction. In Russia, it had been assumed that the retreat would degenerate into a panic and the fate of the First Army was regarded there as practically sealed. Russian strategists themselves speak in high terms of the way Dankl handled his army in this crisis.
The Austrian advance on this front had its high mark on a line drawn from Opolie on the Vistula, through Krasnostaw to Grabiowiec, whence the line curved southward toward Tyszowce. And it was in the region of the latter place that the Austrians claimed a big success, though this was denied by Petrograd.
After the Russian advance on this front from Lublin and Kholm, as we have seen, had begun with the "disorganization" of the Austrian center at Krasnostaw, the next attempt was to strike at the Austrian left, starting at Opolie and developing thence along the entire line as far as Turobin.
It was on this wing of the Russian army that the chief strength had been assembled, the other parts of the line being left comparatively weak. Reasoning that even if the Austrians were able to break through the front, where it was weaker, it would only make more certain their being surrounded finally, all new troops that arrived were shifted over to the right wing.
On September 5 and 6, 1914, the Russians attacked the Austrian army at Tomaszow, situated northeast of Krubessiow and southeast of Rawa-Russka. The Austrian army retired.