CHAPTER LXXII
AUSTRIANS AGAIN ASSUME THE OFFENSIVE
On December 14, 1914, the Russian General Staff announced that it had "discovered the enemy trying again to assume the offensive in Galicia." Two days later, Austro-German columns were pouring over the Dukla. It was understood that three new German army corps had been sent to the eastern front, making nine new corps since the beginning of hostilities, and that three Austrian corps were withdrawn from Serbia. The number of troops entering Galicia through the mountain passes was estimated at 175,000 men.
This movement compelled the Russians to withdraw the raiding parties which had invaded Hungary. It is unlikely, however, that Russia had planned to invade Hungary in force, so long as Przemysl and Cracow stood firm. As the situation then was, it would have been a perilous feat to send an army any distance across the mountains. Before such an invasion could be attempted, it was first necessary that the positions of the Russians in western Galicia and Poland should be greatly strengthened.
When the new Austro-German reenforcements arrived in Galicia over the Dukla, the extreme southern end of the Russian line below Cracow was pushed back from advanced positions west of the Raba to and over the Dunajec. But the Russians did not regard the menace from this quarter as a grave one. Announcement was made by General Sukhomlinoff, the Russian Minister of War, on December 23,1914, that it had been stopped "absolutely." We have said before that it was at the Austrians, rather than the Germans, that the Russians wished at this time to strike a telling blow.
On December 28, 1914, General Dankl's army sought to help the main German forces by passing over the Nida near its junction with the upper Vistula above Tarnow. The Russians suddenly were reenforced at this point by troops who swam the ice-filled stream, attacked the Austrians on their flank, drove them back, and took 10,000 prisoners.
It was about this time, when Radko Dmitrieff was operating so successfully in the neighborhood of Tarnow, that General Brussilov resumed the offensive in Galicia. He was able to feed and munition his army from Kiev. Practically all the railroad system of Galicia could be utilized by him for maneuvering troops and distributing supplies. His troops numbered only about 250,000, but their strength was increased by railway facilities. General Brussilov could afford to send a large force under General Selivanoff to help invest Przemysl.
To the Russians, however, Przemysl was not of immediate importance. The fortress commanded the railroad leading past Tarnow to Cracow, and would have been badly needed, it is true, if the army of Dmitrieff at Tarnow had been attacking Cracow. But the army of General Ivanoff had been forced by this time to retire about fifty miles north of Cracow. Therefore, the smaller force commanded by Dmitrieff was unable to do anything against Cracow from the east; and so it withdrew from the upper course of the Dunajec River and became intrenched along the more westerly tributary of the Dunajec, the Biala.
The Russian line extended from the Biala to the Dukla Pass in the Carpathians. Still farther eastward, all along the lower valleys of the Carpathians, the army of General Brussilov was holding out against a large Austro-Hungarian force. This was under the command of General Ermolli.
The chief offensive movement of Ermolli in December, 1914, was directed toward the relief of Przemysl. As has been indicated, his lines ran through Grybov, Krosno, Sanok, and Lisko, thereby putting a wedge between the army of Brussilov and that of Dmitrieff. He attacked Dmitrieff from the east along the line of the Biala and the Dunajec. In Christmas week Dmitrieff administered a heavy defeat to him, and took nearly thirty thousand prisoners and many guns. In this way he helped prepare for new plans which Grand Duke Nicholas and his staff had prepared for the Russian army in Galicia for the new year.