The second Russian advance on Cracow commenced with the second German advance on Warsaw, and both operations naturally reacted on each other. The Russians were at the very gates of Cracow by 5th Dec., but were then checked by an Austro-Hungarian counter-offensive which threatened both their flanks. The loss of the Dukla Pass (12th Dec.) forced a general retreat on this front, and was followed by the loss in turn of the Lupkow and Uszok Passes. By 20th Dec., however, the Russians, who had fallen back behind the River Nida, turned on their pursuers and drove them north again until they were once more in possession of the Carpathian passes.
The Germans were no more successful in their second advance on Warsaw than the Russians had been in their march on Cracow. Hindenburg's urgent call for reinforcements, which had helped to relieve the pressure on the Western front in those critical days round Ypres, enabled him to attack all along the line on 18th Nov. The main assault was delivered by von Mackensen on the line held by Ruzsky from Gombin, on the Vistula, to Uniejov, on the Warta. Ruzsky's retreat to the Bzura in face of Mackensen's terrific onrush was one of the brilliant episodes of the war. It continued, with an increasing bulge, until Mackensen, on 23rd Nov., burst right through this and split it in halves. The halves held, and began to close up, with two German army corps all but bottled up within. But for some blunder in timing, for which Rennenkampf was held responsible, their only way of escape would have been cut off. As it was, after three days of desperate fighting, the German corps fought their way out—but only in remnants.
The Russians themselves had suffered heavy losses and were running short of ammunition, and when Hindenburg retaliated by blow upon blow in every sector, the Grand Duke Nicholas shortened his front, evacuated Lodz, and defended Warsaw from behind the Rawka and the Bzura. Here he sustained repeated onslaughts for nearly three weeks, the fiercest fighting taking place between the 19th Dec. and Christmas Eve against Bolimov and Sochaczew. In the end the Germans failed to hack a way through to Warsaw, just as they had failed a few weeks previously in their efforts to break through to Ypres and the Channel ports on the Western front. They were still 35 miles from the Polish capital at the close of 1914.
Opening Campaign in Serbia
In the meantime the Austro-Hungarian armies, which had somewhat atoned for their earlier failures by their successes in the recent advance which had temporarily relieved Przemysl, were making little headway in their campaign against Serbia. That heroic little nation, though sadly depleted in her manhood by two years of Balkan warfare, was more than a match for her mightier neighbours in the opening stages of the European War. Austria's first punitive expedition, heralded by the bombardment of Belgrade on 29th July, was easily checked, the main invading forces being withdrawn to meet the new situation on the Russian front. Serbia and Montenegro thereupon invaded Bosnia, and an unproductive
campaign of withdrawals and advances led, towards the end of October, when Turkey threw in her lot with the Central Powers, to an Austrian invasion of Serbia in earnest. At first the Austrians, an army corps strong, and advancing in three columns, carried all before them. Valjevo fell on 29th Nov., and Belgrade ten days later. In withdrawing, however, the Serbians, ably led by the Crown Prince, Marshal Putnik, and General Mishitch, were falling back towards their bases and new supplies of ammunition; and in the battle of Rudnik, or 'Battle of the Ridges', which followed, turned on their pursuers and practically destroyed them. The battle lasted three days, at the end of which the remnants of the Austrian army corps, with the victorious Serbians hard on their heels, were in full flight to the frontier, leaving behind them 15,000 prisoners and 19 guns. All told their casualties amounted to some 80,000 and the bulk of their guns before the survivors were back in their own country, across the Danube, the Drina, and the Save.
First Months of the War at Sea
At sea the first months of the war had seen the Germans very discreetly sheltering in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, leaving it to submarines, mine-layers, raiders, and a few commerce-destroyers to do as much damage as possible and reduce the disparity between its own force and that of the Allied fleets.
The first naval action of any importance took place in the Bight of Heligoland, on 23rd Aug., when a force of destroyers, led by Commander Tyrwhitt in the new light cruiser Arethusa, with another light cruiser, the Fearless, and a flotilla of submarines under Commodore Keyes, served as a lure to draw out the Germans. They drew first a German force of destroyers and two cruisers (Ariadne and Strasburg) from Heligoland. The Arethusa greatly distinguished herself in the general engagement which followed, but, though she played the main part in driving the Germans back, she was so badly cut up that she had to be taken in tow at the end of the action. This was not until the Germans, deceived into the belief that the British ships were unsupported, sent out their heavier cruisers, the Mainz, Köln, and Aurora, just in time for Beatty's battle-cruisers, which arrived at the critical moment, led by the Lion, to settle the issue by sinking the three enemy cruisers above mentioned, besides a number of their destroyers. No British units were lost. Apart from this engagement the war in home waters for the next few months resolved itself into such isolated incidents as the sinking of the three old sister cruisers Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy by the German submarine commanded by Otto Weddigen (22nd Sept.); the destruction of four German destroyers by the British light cruiser Undaunted, supported by destroyers, on 17th Oct.; and raids by fast German cruisers on Yarmouth (3rd Nov.), on Scarborough, Whitby, and the Hartlepools (16th Dec.), the first of which led to the loss of the German cruiser Yorck while crossing the minefield at Wilhelmshaven.
The scattered units of the German navy in other seas were gradually bottled up or destroyed. The Dreadnought Goeben, and the light cruiser Breslau, which were in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of hostilities, succeeded in evading the British fleet and reached the Dardanelles, where they played no small part in persuading the pro-German Turks, a few months later, openly to side with the Central Powers. Other German warships caught by the war in more distant waters included the light cruiser Emden, on the China station. The Emden disappeared for six weeks and then turned up in the Bay of Bengal, bombarding Madras on 22nd Sept., and capturing some twenty British steamers in the same month. On 28th Oct. she sank a Russian cruiser in Penang Roads, as well as a French destroyer, but twelve days later (9th Nov.) ended her eventful cruise off Cocos (Keeling) Islands, where she called to destroy the cable and wireless station. The telegraphists on the island sent out a warning message which reached the Sydney, a British cruiser of the Australian squadron then escorting Australian and New Zealand troops to the war. Within three hours the Sydney arrived on the scene, and having the range of the Emden with 6-inch guns to 4.1-inch guns, forced the German cruiser ashore. After losing 7 officers and 104 men the Emden, burning and half-sunk, surrendered.