Seite - 299 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Death in the Carpathians 299 land. The besiegers returned the gesture with fresh bread and meat. But the Christmas peace endured only for a very short time. Towards the end of the year a large-scale horse slaughtering offensive began. Around 10,000 animals were sent to the slaughterhouses. In this way, the supply of meat could be maintained and larger amounts of animal feed could be used for the provisioning of the soldiers. Horses were still needed, however, in order to transport ammunition, supplies, the sick and the wounded within the expansive fortress area. If one of the ill-treated creatures perished, the corpse was skinned. Nothing should remain unused. For the Chief of the General Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf, the matter could not be messier. He had vehemently spoken out against a further expansion of the San fortress and had regarded the only value of this defensive belt fortress as being the location for the start of a covered deployment of troops. Now he was forced to keep Przemyśl garrisoned because it could now no longer be evacuated in time, immense amounts of stocks would have been lost in its destruction and the political and psychological effect of its relinquishment was feared. Now an entire army was surrounded in the citadel on the San River, and if they were not simply to be left to their fate, the attempt had to be made to relieve the fortress. The next operations could not be selected based on where the best chances of success were, but had instead to be directed towards Przemyśl and indeed, as was soon stated, whatever the cost. In December the Russians had been forced to withdraw their armies more than 100 kilometres, but the front near Gorlice then came to a standstill. The Commander of the Russian South-West Front, General Nikolai I. Ivanov, transferred the main force of his armies south to the Carpathian region, where on 21 December 1914 a new Russian offensive began, which forced the Imperial and Royal 3rd Army (Boroević) into the mountains and, in some places, even across the mountain ridge itself. It could be read in the British and French newspapers that it was only a matter of weeks before the Austro-Hungarian front would collapse. The Russians would be in Budapest by June at the latest.708 This setback after weeks of successful alliance fighting on the part of the Central Powers resulted in an increase in criticism of the ally. Since the war began, it had been evident that the Russians had deployed the larger part of their troops in the southern sector against the Imperial and Royal Army. Even if there had been errors in leadership, the fact of the considerable numerical superiority of the Russians could not be denied. Since Russian Poland began 10 kilometres north of Kraków and the Russians surrounded Galicia in a wide encirclement, they had far more operational options than the Imperial and Royal armies. In December, the Imperial and Royal 2nd Army had been pulled a long way to the north and now covered the Province of Silesia. But where were the German defensive and offensive components ? A German 9th Army had been rebuilt and inserted to the north of the Austro-Hungarian front, but the collaboration had been cause for heated quarrels and it ultimately occupied