Page - 245 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Fortress on the San 245 of the Army High Command, were a particular advantage. Even so, all this failed to alter the fact that the fortress was left to fend for itself. With the exception of the Imperial and Royal 1st Army, which remained with the en- emy, the other armies pulled away from the Russians and withdrew behind the San into the Carpathian foothills. They had to be replenished, since there were not only heavy losses in terms of the dead, wounded and those taken prisoner to be compensated. Just as important was the loss of guns, which needed time to be replaced. The withdrawal also created problems, since Conrad had so clearly planned for the opportunity of renewing the offensive, and for psychological reasons had not made any preparations at all for the withdrawal. As a result, it had to be initiated in an overly hasty way.588 However, instead of exploiting this fact, the Russians regarded the retreat of the Austrians as a welcome pause in operations. They wanted to secure the conquered territory, repair the old forti- fications in Lviv, press ahead with the siege of Przemyśl, where over 100,000 Austrians were trapped, until they could make an assault, and also to compensate for their own losses. Of the 800,000 Austrians in first three and then four armies who had begun with the operations in the north-eastern theatre of war, around 400,000 had been lost, of whom 100,000 had been captured as prisoners of war. The Russians had lost 250,000 men, of whom 40,000 had been captured. On the evening of 10 September, a telegram was written by the Army High Command to the Chief of the German General Staff von Moltke, in which the position of the Imperial and Royal Armies was described in stark terms and a request was made to send the first German forces to become free in the west to the Galician theatre of war. Yet the telegram was not sent.589 There was still a reluctance to admit their own weakness directly to their alliance partners. The severe setbacks that the Austro-Hungarian troops suffered led to the dismissal of more commanders. However, the personnel measures, as the Monarch let it be known in the written order to the War Ministry and Army High Command mentioned above, were designed to be used only when no other response was possible. ‘However, this should not in all cases decide the longer-term fate of these unfortunate people.’ Each individual case was to be investigated. ‘In such a manner, not only the person affected shall be given the opportunity to explain his conduct, but also through an evaluation of the individual case in connection with the accompanying events and their consequences, the path to justice shall be opened and guaranteed.’590 However, Conrad wanted to replace any general who failed to deliver what was expected from him. Taking other factors into consideration was practically the last thing on his mind. For him, the most important aim was to overcome the crisis of the battle in Galicia, to keep the position of the Army High Command unchallenged and, if possible, to further strengthen it, to gain operational freedom and to return once more to the offensive. For the Imperial and Royal troops, the focus of the conflict had now really shifted to the north-eastern theatre of war. From the perspective of the Army High Command