Page - 230 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

230 Adjusting to a Longer War withdrawals degenerated into a desperate flight ; artillery and weapons were abandoned, East Galicia was lost, the Galician capital Lviv was surrounded and Brudermann was blamed for the loss of substantial parts of the crown lands. Sentence had already been passed on him well before, however : he was regarded as an imposter who had only advanced to a higher post due to his elegant appearance on horseback. The Army High Command sent staff officers time and again to the headquarters of the 3rd Army and demanded reports on the conduct of the troops and the commanders. Brudermann was eventually summoned to the Army High Command in Przemyśl. He reported and travelled back to his army feeling safe in the knowledge that his presentation had been convincing, evidently because the Army Supreme Commander did not have the courage to inform him immediately of his removal to his face. Instead, he promptly sent a letter after him, which stated : ‘To my sincere regret I received the impression today  – on the occasion of your personal report  – that the grave strokes of fate that have impacted so heavily of late on the 3rd Army and in turn on Your Excellency have also shaken your health. […] Knowing the high sense of duty of Your Excellency, I under- stand that you do not want to leave the Army of your own accord, even if your need for rest could be met to a greater extent.’551 Brudermann was taken completely by surprise, but he did exactly what Archduke Friedrich had advised.552 Brudermann described to the director of the Imperial Military Chancellery, General of Artillery Baron Artur von Bolfras, the  – in his view  – injustice that had befallen him, and at some length : ‘After I had finally brought the 3rd Army behind the Wereszczyca in an orderly fashion on the 3rd of this month after 10 days of resistance against a superior enemy east of Lviv, I re- ported personally to His Imperial Highness the Army Supreme Commander that now the very tired 3rd Army required 1 or 2 days of complete rest in order to be able with enthusiasm and full effectiveness to launch the offensive anew with the expected 4th Army. What a terrible surprise when I was informed early on the 5th by a letter from His Imperial Highness, in which he personally stated that he found that the strokes of fate of the 3rd Army had shaken my health and I should take this opportunity to re-establish the same. I assure Your Excellency that I was physically and psychologically quite normally unshaken and with my head held high faced further challenges with a clear and tranquil mind.’553 The causes of the withdrawal, continued Brudermann, had been the not yet com- plete gathering of the Army and the spatial moving forward of the deployment from Sambor to Lviv. The Russians had come together sooner than expect, so that the Im- perial and Royal VII and XII Corps had to swing in and the 23rd Honvéd Division (Major General Daempf), which had been pushed across from the Balkan theatre of war, had been seized by panic for no reason. Order was lost and a withdrawal was unavoidable.