The Campaign in Russian Poland — Themes and Context

f Lyck, his troops had already been fighting for seven days and nights without a rest. But they were flushed with victory. This engagement of the 8th is likely to be known as the battle of Ratchka, from the name of the village on which the German right rested. It was ascertained that they had been reinforced with men and guns (several batteries being captured) from Königsberg. The rapidity of the advance seems to have had a staggering effect, and the enemy lost hundreds of his horses in the marshy boglands of the Suwalki province, leaving his heavy artillery, or much of it, to its fate.

A wounded Russian officer, in a description of the battle of Augustoff contributed to a Petrograd journal, pays a deserved tribute to the coolness, intelligence, and enthusiasm of the Slav soldier under fire. The troops, he says, were simply “chuckling with delight” on receiving an order to turn the enemy out of a position which could only be carried by great expenditure of life. With the utmost _sang-froid_ they put the Germans to rout, then leaving them to the tender mercies of a particularly vigorous and merciless pursuit by the Cossack cavalry. Fresh enthusiasm was aroused by the appearance of General Rennenkampf, who rode on to the position to thank his gallant soldiers for the extraordinary exertions that had given them the well-worn field. The music of several bands then joined in the celebration, playing the beautiful Russian National Hymn to a perfect tornado of cheers from the weary but satisfied troops.

What a change had come over the scene within one month! A proud and unbroken enemy no longer retained a foothold upon Russian territory. Whether regarded as a serious invasion, or as a movement of co-ordination with the vaster invasion of Russian Poland now about to be described, the attempt had been signally beaten back in blood. “Whether,” wrote an English critic of the situation, “the Russians intend to aim at Berlin or Vienna, is of minor consequence. The great point is that they seem able to do what they like and to choose their particular objective as they please. Nothing has been more exhilarating than the brilliant strategy of Petrograd. The Russian soldiers have proved not only their steady persistence--a quality which we always knew to be one of their principal assets--but also a rapidity of movement and a dashing spirit of attack with which the world was hardly prepared to credit them.”

CHAPTER V THE DEFENCE OF THE VISTULA

General Rennenkampf received from the Tsar telegrams congratulating him upon his well-ordered retreat and his victorious counter-attack and resumed invasion of East Prussia. In this message the Tsar noted that, during the retreat, the Russian General had not left a single pound’s weight of supplies to the enemy.

Before passing on to the story of the larger conflict in Central Poland, we may note some interesting incidents which occurred during this ebb and flow of the war on the East Prussian borders. One of these incidents shows that, with all their elaborate war training, the Germans were liable, from lack of ordinary precautions, to fall very easily into a dangerous trap. It occurred during the fighting around Wirballen, the little frontier town well known to all travellers from Western Europe to Russia as the point at which the railway from Ostend by Berlin crosses the frontier. The place was held at the time by the Russians, and was attacked by a German column.

After about an hour and a half’s brisk fusillade, which was but weakly replied to, the Germans advanced, fearlessly and without further precautions, under the impression that their enemy had withdrawn. But on crossing the frontier-line into Russian territory, their feelings became too much for them, and, preluded by loud shouts of “Hoch!” they sang with fervour their familiar _Die Wacht am Rhein_. At that moment the Russians, who had remained carefully sheltered by their trenches all the time, poured in a deadly rifle-fire, backed by the immediate charge of a sotnia of Cossacks. Taken at a disadvantage and utterly surprised, it was said that not a man of the German force survived to recross the border.

The German Emperor’s beautiful hunting-box at Rominten near Insterburg, where he had been wont to sojourn every autumn for the shooting of elk and other big game, fell into Russian hands. The following humorous extract is from a letter written home by one of the officers who had the good fortune to be temporarily quartered amid such luxurious surroundings:

“After a series of terrible battles, we are reposing on William’s magnificent estate. Undreamt-of beauty is all round us. The place is splendidly equipped, so that we have at our disposal everything we could wish for, and we are riding his celebrated horses, and enjoying delicious dinners prepared by his man cook. Especially beautiful is the park, with its glorious shady avenues. It swarms with rare animals, and birds are flying free everywhere. By the way, our soldiers have caught a William parrot in the park. It speaks excellent German, but our men are teaching it their own language, and it is learning to address its Imperial master with compliments I should blush to repeat in company.”

Another isolated but interesting incident of this Prusso-Polish frontier fighting was the destruction near Mlawa, on September 5, of the Zeppelin airship Z 5,--the second Zeppelin known to have been brought down in this region since the commencement of hostilities. The Z 5 had been cruising in the neighbourhood for several days, and it was not until the date mentioned that her movements were observed to be growing very irregular and uncertain. She tried hard to shape a course for her own frontier, but finally collapsed in some fields. It was then found that her envelope had been literally riddled by Russian bullets. Her crew managed, however, to blow up the airship, whose commander, severely wounded, requested to be placed out of sight behind a haystack, so that he “might not witness the end of his dear Zeppelin.”

A possible explanation of Von Hindenburg’s advance to the Niemen was that the German General Staff hoped by a serious threat in this direction to lead the Russians to diminish the pressure upon Galicia in order to reinforce their right. At the time of the operations Colonel Shumsky, perhaps the best-known military writer in Russia, pointed this out, and at the same time suggested that the menace from East Prussia could have no serious result. “Will the Germans,” he asked, “compel us to abandon the operations in the Carpathians and throw our forces across to the Niemen, or shall we compel the Germans to restrict their activity on the Niemen, and fling themselves into Cracow and Galicia to save Austro-Hungary? The advance of the Germans from East Prussia cannot have any decisive object. A lightning-like stroke could only be delivered if the Germans were finished with France and could move all their forces against us.”

It appears that something was done to draw reinforcements from the western theatre of war for the German armies on the Polish frontier. Reserve and Landwehr troops organised since the declaration of war were moved in the same direction, and, according to Russian estimates of a subsequent date, by the end of September the Germans had concentrated twelve army corps of about 400,000 men on the frontier in the centre about Thorn and Posen. It appears, however, that at the time the Russian Staff did not realise that this formidable concentration was in progress, and thought that their opponents were putting forth their chief efforts on the two flanks of the long curved line northwards--for the struggle in East Prussia, and southwards for the defensive campaign in Galicia.

The Germans, however, were preparing for a serious stroke in the centre of the Polish theatre of war, and, despite his failure on the Niemen, the chief command of this great effort was entrusted to General Hindenburg. The fame he had acquired by his expulsion of the enemy from East Prussia had only been slightly overclouded by the defeat on the Niemen, and it was thought that the German generals in East Prussia could be safely left to defend against Rennenkampf’s farther advance through the wilderness of forest, marsh, and lake which forms the natural barrier along the frontier of the province.

The German plan was to abandon the mere passive defence of their frontiers, assume the offensive, and strike a blow directly against Warsaw and the group of fortresses beyond the Vistula that form the citadel of the Russian power in Poland. The German armies were to advance from the borders of the provinces of Posen and Silesia in a converging march upon Warsaw. The left column from Thorn was to advance along the south bank of the great bend of the Vistula which runs north-westward from Novo Gorgievsk by Plock. The central column from the Posen frontier was to march on Lowicz and the great factory town of Lodz--after Warsaw the largest place in Poland--the third column, which had already occupied Czenstochowa, just inside the Russian frontier towards Silesia, was to protect the flank of the advance and march on the Vistula in the direction of Ivangorod. A fourth column was to march on Kielce, forming the link with an Austrian advance through Northern Galicia towards the river San, which was intended to reoccupy Jaroslav and raise the siege of Przemysl.

The country through which the line of advance lay was the undulating Polish plain, a district with many clumps and belts of forest, and almost destitute of good roads. Once the weather broke, at the end of autumn, much of the ground would be reduced to a marshy condition that would make it impassable until the first frost of winter hardened it again. The German Staff hoped to carry through the campaign while the region was everywhere practicable, and, even if Warsaw were not captured, to make the Vistula their line of defence, where, having secured the railways behind them, they might hope to hold their own on a front shorter by many hundred miles than the long curving frontier of their own territory.

It was expected that the first movement into the Polish plain would have the result of forcing the enemy not only to abandon the advance already begun towards Cracow, but to evacuate a considerable part of the ground they had overrun in Galicia, and at the same time to withdraw some of their forces from the East Prussian border. German reports went to show that the enemy had no large forces in the country between the middle Vistula and the Posen-Thorn frontier. The first stage of the German advance would, therefore, not be likely to meet with any very serious opposition.

Why, it may be asked, had not the Russian military authorities taken fuller precautions, in the earlier days of the war, for safeguarding the Polish territory from invasion and spoliation? Why had not the immensely long and valuable line of the river Vistula in particular been occupied in heavy force at the time of the mobilisation in August? A semi-official statement of mid-October replied definitely to these criticisms. It was pointed out that the consideration was a purely military one. It was a fundamental rule of warfare to sacrifice everything of lesser importance to the main issue. Thus, the first “impudent invasion” from the German side had demanded a large transfer of troops. Next the Austrian concentration in Galicia, and their attack in the Lublin district, had needed a big force in that quarter. Thirdly, the invasion by way of Eastern Prussia had required substantial means to deal with and crush it. “This temporary victimisation of the Vistula district is the outcome of a praiseworthy decision of our strategy. Now the situation is different, and strategic and other aims coincide upon the Vistula until the enemy has been finally beaten.”

Intense enthusiasm was aroused throughout Russia by the announcement that the Tsar would proceed in person to the fighting area. In front of the Winter Palace at Petrograd, thousands of students and others paraded and demonstrated in honour of their “Little Father,” as well as to celebrate news of the victories in Galicia and East Prussia.

The German columns met with little resistance in their advance across the Polish plain. Lodz was occupied, and the two northern columns gained touch east of the town and advanced on a wide front between the northern bend of the Vistula and its tributary, the Pilitza, their objective being Warsaw. The right moved forward through Kielce and Radom against Ivangorod. According to German accounts, the advancing armies were joined by large numbers of the peasants, who welcomed them as deliverers; but the Russian story is that the people fled in terror before the invaders.

We have to depend during the war for our news of what is happening in Poland almost entirely upon Russian accounts official and non-official. The German wireless reports give only the briefest outline of the official view of the situation taken at Berlin, and these reports are often cut down by our own censorship. The few reports from Berlin that were allowed to be published in England contained, it is true, some references to a victorious advance of the Austro-German armies into Poland in the first days of October. But, at the time, these were treated as fictitious claims of success, for it seemed strange that, in the numerous telegrams that came from Russian sources, there was not a word of any important events in the central theatre of war. Official news told of fighting on the East Prussian border and in Galicia, and non-official reports were full of detailed statements as to the complete collapse of the Austrians, an invasion of Hungary through the Carpathians, attacks upon Przemysl that had reduced the fortress to desperate straits, and steady progress in the direction of Cracow.

It was, therefore, a surprise to every one when, towards the end of the second week in October the official bulletin from St. Petersburg admitted that Von Hindenburg had forced his way up to the left bank of the middle Vistula and overrun all Western Poland--this, too, at a time when all the rest of Europe believed that the Germans were still on the frontiers of Poland and Galicia, and busy preparing the fortresses of Thorn and Posen for a siege. It was afterwards explained that the Russian retirement to the Vistula was a deliberate “strategic” movement intended to lure the Germans to destruction. But it is fairly certain that the Russians had sent such large masses of men northwards and southwards for the operations in East Prussia and Galicia, besides providing for an army they were concentrating on the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus, that their forces in Central Poland had been considerably reduced. During Von Hindenburg’s advance they were busily engaged in reinforcing the army on the middle Vistula and in the Polish triangle of fortresses, and for this purpose they drew in several army corps from their left.

Weakened by this withdrawal, the Russian army in Galicia gave way before the advance of the Austrian armies on the German right. Jaroslav was abandoned, the siege of Przemysl was temporarily raised, and General Brussiloff concentrated his forces to protect Lemberg from recapture.

The right column of the German advance, pushing forward through Radom, reached the river Vistula near Ivangorod, tried to force a passage over it below the fortress, and attacked the outlying defences of the place. The columns of the left and centre, under Von Hindenburg’s personal command, penetrated to within a few miles of Warsaw, where at last they met with serious opposition. The Grand-duke Nicholas began to push a considerable force westward from the city to protect it from even a temporary occupation, while his main line of defence lay along the right bank of the Vistula above and below the city. It was early on the morning of October 11 that the thunder of the guns told the inhabitants of Warsaw that a great battle had begun at the very gates of their city.

During the preceding days there had been rumours not only that the Germans were approaching in great force, but that the Grand-duke was about to evacuate the city.

The wealthier classes of Warsaw are largely made up of those who hold government positions, or whose interests are, in one way or another, closely connected with the existing Russian regime, and there was something like a panic as the rumour spread that the place might soon be in the hands of an invader. The alarm was increased by the sight of German aeroplanes circling high over the houses and dropping bombs into the streets. One of these aeroplanes had an accident to its engine and fell on the estate of Count Briansky in the suburbs of Warsaw. The aviators were murdered by a mob of peasants before they could be taken prisoners by the troops.

For three days Warsaw could hear the cannon thunder close at hand. Indeed, at first, it seemed to be coming nearer and nearer on the south side of the city. The arrival of long trains of wounded men hour after hour told that the fight was a costly one, and this fighting close to Warsaw was only part of an engagement stretching out upon an enormous front along the Vistula. The Grand-duke was, however, holding his own and using the central position in front of Warsaw as a starting-point from which to drive a way into the German line, while along the river the enemy were wasting their forces in desperate attempts to effect the crossing.

The Siberian Army Corps, now in action for the first time in Europe, proved themselves fighting men. Their attack turned the scale in the centre. The great wedge pushed forward from Moscow began to tell upon the German resistance, and as it gained more and more ground new masses of troops were brought across the river to extend the region of the close fighting. The weather had broken, and the battle was fought out under cloudy skies and amid driving showers of sleety rain.

On October 14 Warsaw heard the cannon thunder less loudly. The enemy’s centre was being driven steadily back with the loss of thousands of prisoners and many guns. Higher up the Vistula towards Ivangorod the German attempts to gain a footing on the east bank had also failed.

According to the _Utro Rossii_, elaborate attempts to cross the Vistula on rafts (after aeroplane reconnaissance) took place at two points, between Ivangorod and Sandomir and between Ivangorod and Warsaw. In the first of these attempts the Russians carefully waited until two battalions had crossed and then fell on them with the bayonet, while the rafts were cruelly raked with rifle-fire. In the second instance, the enemy were similarly uninterrupted while throwing their pontoons across. Then a burst of shrapnel fell upon the masses as they were in the act of crossing. The river ran red with blood, hundreds of corpses floated down the stream, and but few escaped. On the following day a tremendous artillery duel lasted for several hours. The Russians got the range and established their superiority, as was evidenced by the smoke and flames beginning to rise from the miserable villages within the enemy’s position, and by the slackening of his fire. The scene was one of sublime horror. The sky for miles was lit up by the blaze of the burning buildings and by the myriads of bursting projectiles. It was the beginning of the end of the invasion of Russian Poland.

Warsaw itself “returned to the normal” on October 14. The frightened people had been a good deal dispirited and disheartened by what had appeared to them like a falling-back of their defending army, and many of them had, indeed, already fled from the threatened city. They were further discouraged by the dissemination of a German proclamation announcing that the enemy would be in Warsaw “by the 18th”--instead of which, by the date named the Kaiser’s army was in full retreat. Now, however, the aspect was brighter. Numbers of ragged and dejected prisoners (but many of them Poles) were being brought into Warsaw daily. Institutions and shops that had been shut up were reopened. The utmost animation prevailed where yesterday there had been pessimism and dejection. Cheering crowds gave cigarettes, apples, milk, and bread to the Russian troops as they marched past with faces set towards the German frontier. The agony of Warsaw had endured for five or six days. All that time the outside world had watched and waited without being satisfied, so rigid was the Russian censorship of news.