What happened at the Battle of Kraśnik?
From 23 to 25 August 1914, in the first weeks of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian First Army of General Viktor Dankl met the Russian Fourth Army of General Anton von Salza head-on south of the town of Kraśnik in the Lublin region. Dankl's army pushed the Russians back for three days and drove them toward Lublin, and Salza was relieved of command. It was Austria-Hungary's first victory of the war, but defeats further east soon forced Dankl to give the ground up again.1
In August 1914 Austria-Hungary and Russia each planned an offensive in Galicia and the borderlands of Russian Poland, and each misread the other. According to John Rickard of HistoryOfWar, the Russians meant to attack in the east, around Lemberg (Lviv), and believed the Austrians were gathering there too. The Austrians expected the Russians to concentrate slowly and further west, so they made their main attack with their two westernmost armies, northward toward Lublin and Chełm.2
At the western end of the Austrian line, its left flank on the Vistula, stood the First Army of General of Cavalry Viktor Dankl. Oswald von Gschließer, in his article on Dankl in the Neue Deutsche Biographie, notes that he had commanded the 14th Corps in Innsbruck and was given the First Army, on the left wing of the Austro-Hungarian forces, when the war began. His orders, Rickard writes, were to advance north toward Lublin and break up any Russian build-up there.3
An army in the wrong place
Facing him was the Russian Fourth Army of General Anton von Salza. The Russians did not believe that strong Austrian forces were this far west, and Salza was ordered south, into the country west of Przemyśl, to cut off an Austrian retreat. His army had not finished concentrating and lacked reserves, Rickard notes, but no serious opposition was expected.4
The historian Jacek Legieć, writing in the Annales of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, gives a sense of the scale. In the first weeks of the war, four armies of about 700,000 men in all fought between the Vistula and Poland's present eastern border. On the line from the Vistula to Szczebrzeszyn, Dankl's First Army fought Salza's Fourth; further east the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army met the Russian Fifth.5
Three days south of Kraśnik
The two armies collided head-on south of Kraśnik on 23 August. On the first day, Rickard writes, the Russian right ran into the Austrian left and was slowly forced back by weight of numbers. On 24 August the fighting spread along the whole front, and the Russian right was pushed back again.6
On 25 August Dankl threw his weight onto his left. The Russian right gave way, and the Russian left, now attacked in the flank, had to fall back as well. By the end of the day the Russians had been driven back up to seven miles. Legieć describes their losses as heavy and their army thrown back to the approaches of Lublin. That night Salza was relieved, and General Aleksei Evert took over the Fourth Army.7
The first victory
For Austria-Hungary it was the first victory of the war, and the first battle on the southern sector of the Eastern Front, as the National Museum in Lublin noted when its branch in Kraśnik, the Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment, opened an exhibition on it called Kraśnik 1914: a forgotten battle of the Poles. Rickard, looking at the whole campaign, rates it a minor victory.8
The Russians still believed they faced only isolated units on the Austrian flank. They decided to attack them from three sides: a corps of their Ninth Army against the Austrian left, and the whole Fifth Army, turned to the west, against the Austrian flank and rear. Legieć writes that the Fifth Army received the order on 25 August. But the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army was advancing toward it, and in the battle of Komarów that followed, from 26 August to 1 September, the Russian Fifth Army came close to disaster.9
Ground won and lost
Dankl pushed on north and, Gschließer writes, reached the outskirts of Lublin. Further east the campaign went the other way. The Russians won at the Gnila Lipa and at Rava Ruska, the battles around Lemberg went against Austria-Hungary, and the whole army had to fall back toward the Carpathians. The gains of Kraśnik were given up.10
The battle stayed with Dankl's name. In October his army advanced again toward Ivangorod alongside Hindenburg's German Ninth Army, and later it held the line of the Nida and covered Kraków. In 1917 he was made a baron with the title von Kraśnik, and in 1918 a count, Gschließer records. In May 1915, when Italy entered the war, he took command of the defense of Tyrol.11
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Oswald von Gschließer, “Dankl, Viktor Julius Ignaz Ferdinand, Freiherr von Krásnik”; Jacek Legieć, “Bitwa pod Komarowem w historiografii rosyjskiej (do 1941 r.)”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Oswald von Gschließer, “Dankl, Viktor Julius Ignaz Ferdinand, Freiherr von Krásnik”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”. ↩
- Jacek Legieć, “Bitwa pod Komarowem w historiografii rosyjskiej (do 1941 r.)”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Jacek Legieć, “Bitwa pod Komarowem w historiografii rosyjskiej (do 1941 r.)”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa, “Kraśnik 1914”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Jacek Legieć, “Bitwa pod Komarowem w historiografii rosyjskiej (do 1941 r.)”. ↩
- John Rickard, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”; Oswald von Gschließer, “Dankl, Viktor Julius Ignaz Ferdinand, Freiherr von Krásnik”. ↩
- Oswald von Gschließer, “Dankl, Viktor Julius Ignaz Ferdinand, Freiherr von Krásnik”. ↩
Sources
- John Rickard, HistoryOfWar.org, “Battle of Krasnik, 23-25 August 1914”
- Oswald von Gschließer, Neue Deutsche Biographie 3 (1957), “Dankl, Viktor Julius Ignaz Ferdinand, Freiherr von Krásnik”
- Jacek Legieć, Annales UMCS, sectio F, vol. 68 (2013), “Bitwa pod Komarowem w historiografii rosyjskiej (do 1941 r.)”
- Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa, European Heritage Days (Museum of the 24th Uhlan Regiment, National Museum in Lublin), “Kraśnik 1914: zapomniany bój Polaków”
