Seite - 184 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

184 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ and Belgrade would not be left to the enemy without a fight, this was to result in an almost textbook military operation, in which the Serbian forces would be encircled and destroyed. Now, however, when the time came to put this plan into action, the northern army  – none other than the 2nd Army  – was to be removed, and would only be available until 18 August, the date on which it was to be broken up and removed. This reduced the prospects of success in the Balkan theatre of war significantly, since following the departure of the Imperial and Royal 2nd Army, Potiorek had not much more than two armies with which to cover 900 km of front. The number of men at his disposal amounted to around 280,000 to 290,000, together with the guards garrisoned in the various fortresses, as opposed to the 370,000 he would have had if the 2nd Army had remained in its entirety.434 Of these large units, around half could be attributed to the command posts. The Serbs were in turn estimated to have between 210,000 and 350,000 men, depending on whether or not the reservists were included. To these were added the Montenegrins with between 40,000 and 60,000 men. Vojvoda Putnik, who had returned from Bad Gleichenberg via Budapest on 5 August thanks to the gentle- manly behaviour of the Austrian Emperor, set up his headquarters in Kragujevac. Despite the fact that the situation was not entirely clear for the Imperial and Royal troops in terms of numbers, the aforementioned command letter spoke of an offensive with rapid victories.435 Potiorek wanted to make his contribution and, above all, to exploit the fact that the 2nd Army was still available. It was to stage a demonstration on the Danube, and to tie up as many Serbian troops as possible in order to enable the other two armies to succeed. Furthermore, he also felt, however, that it ‘would be highly desirable’ if the 2nd Army were to be moved across the Danube and conquer Belgrade.436 Even though this quite clearly contradicted the orders of the Army High Command, Potiorek was not overly concerned. He had no interest in the future in sending requests or making applications, ‘but instead, to lead and command to the best of my knowledge and ability’. He also paid no thought to the possibility of remaining on the defensive, but intended to attack at the earliest possible opportunity. For this reason, he rejected the request by the commander of his 5th Army, General Frank, to delay the start of the offensive by two days. It had to be launched on 12 August as planned, and was clearly a gamble. However, what applied here were the words written by the Chief of the Military Chancellery of the Emperor to the Supreme Commander of the Imperial and Royal Balkan forces : ‘Great enemy, great honour !’437 The law of action was initially and unequivocally on the side of the Imperial and Royal Army. After the Danube Fleet had been given a sign and the shooting war had begun, there was more to be done than simply staging a demonstration and firing a few generally harmless shots at Belgrade. Despite the destruction of the bridge over the Sava River, for the Imperial and Royal troops, Belgrade was there for the taking. Couldn’t  – in fact shouldn’t  – the formations under the Balkan Supreme Command