Franz Josef’s Armies
Part Seven: Komarów Finale
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2022

Were it up to me, I think I’d just write and publish books like Infantry Attacks: Franz Josef's Armies. Infantry Attacks (our series of World War One tactical combat) has been surprisingly popular; had I known it would do so well, I would never have even considered a book about the Austrian Landwehr and Royal Hungarian Honvédség as the series’ first expansion book.

But that’s what we have, and it was a very satisfying experience. Franz Josef’s Armies meets the balance between game and story that I like to see in our books. It’s got 28 scenarios, all of them adding troops from Austria-Hungary’s national armies to the battles covered in Infantry Attacks: Fall of Empires (the August 1914 clashes at Kraśnik and Komarów). The remainder is given over to history: the Austro-Hungarian Army, its units, troops and weapons. It’s the history I’ve spent my adult life preparing to write, and it feels very odd to finally let go of it.

The tenth and final chapter of Franz Josef’s Armies and Fall of Empires wraps up the Battle of Komarów. This is recorded as an Austro-Hungarian victory, but it was the definition of a pyrrhic one. The divisions of the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army suffered enormous losses that would have been crippling in any other context, with the pre-war officer corps devastated thanks to their insane bravery in leading from the front. Within weeks the replacement drafts would include officers from the Gendarmerie (the national police) as the Army tried desperately to fill that void. The Russian Fifth Army was not destroyed, merely forced back with heavy casualties of its own. But unlike Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire could replace those losses – at least for the moment.

By the last day of the battle, the Austrians were running out of steam and for the most part allowed the Russians to pull away. Not the Bosnians. Held back from action for most of the battle, the 1st Regiment made up for the previous lack of action by fighting a series of intense actions against heavy odds. Those are the theme of our last chapter, so let’s have a look at them.

Chapter Ten
Komarów, The Finale

Scenario Sixty-Six
Enforcers
30 August 1914
Rapid industrialization in the decades just before the Great War brought urban unrest, prompting the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires to deploy “outsiders” to the big cities. Cossacks and Bosniaken served as their respective regimes’ enforcers of order, and at the far-left flank of the Austrian encirclement attempt they clashed as the Austrians continued to try to surround the Russians.

Conclusion
The Bosnians, without artillery support, made only limited gains against the determined Cossack defense. The plastuns (“crawlers”) preferred not to fight dismounted, but held onto their positions for the most part. The Cossack defense had been badly stretched when the Bosnians pulled back to await reinforcements; meanwhile fresh troops were on their way to help the defense as well.

Notes
The Cossacks are dismounted and dug in, and they have a strong hilltop position and a decided edge in numbers. That may not be enough against the Bosnians, who have Ukrainian-level morale and no artillery whatsoever. And as if their sky-high morale and initiative and plentiful leaders aren’t enough, they receive a special bonus in close combat.

Scenario Sixty-Seven
Heights of Dub
30 August 1914
Having been thwarted in their morning attack, Col. Karl von Stöhr and his Bosnians went forward again in the afternoon, aided by Lt. Col. Arnold Barwick’s 25th Feldjäger Battalion, a mostly-Czech unit from Moravia and the pre-war honor guard at Vienna’s Schonnbrünn Palace. The Cossacks had pulled out of the line during the brief respite from action to be replaced by the newly-arrived 321st and 324th Reserve Infantry Regiments.

Conclusion
This time the Bosnians had better luck, securing Dub and the heights in a series of crazed close assaults. The Russian XIX Corps’ after-action report claims that the assault was aided by troops of the Austrian 13th Landwehr Infantry Division; the Austro-Hungarian II Corps’ assessment denies this. With the heights in their hands the Austrians could potentially interdict the retreat of the Russian XIX and V Corps from the battlefield – except that Archduke Peter Ferdinand of 25th Infantry Division had assigned no artillery to Stöhr’s task force. They could take fairly impotent pot-shots with their rifles, but otherwise do nothing but simply watch the Russian escape.

Notes
Same battlefield, different defenders. The Russian reservists have the same edges in numbers and positions, and better firepower than the dismounted Cossacks. But the Bosnians have been joined by a tough battalion of Feldjäger, with the chance of more reinforcements in the form of some mediocre Landwehr infantry, who finally bring some artillery with them.

Scenario Sixty-Eight
Counter-Attack at Dub
31 August 1914
While the Bosnians on the heights did not come off to interfere with the Russian retreat, the Russian XIX Corps staff believed them a danger should they be reinforced by artillery. That vastly underestimated the Schlamperei of Archduke Peter Ferdinand, but on the next morning the corps ordered the brigade of reservists who had lost the heights – theoretically attached to V Corps, but as their division headquarters had remained in the Brest-Litovsk fortress no one on the ground seems to have known this – to take them back.

Conclusion
The Russian assault failed to dislodge the Bosnians from their hilltop – launched without artillery, just like many of the poorly-coordinated Austrian attacks, it fell apart before the reservists came within reach of the Bosnian fighting knives. But even a day later, Archduke Peter Ferdinand had done nothing to place artillery on the heights of Dub, and the Russians did not need to take the hill to secure their retreat.

Notes
Schlamperei is a German insult applied to Austrians that doesn’t really translate well; “decadent laziness” is probably a good approximation, but lacks the contempt (and sexual innuendo). It definitely applies to the archduke. This action is only recorded in the Russian XIX Corps’ after-action report and not by the Austrian formations; it’s pretty clear that the Bosnians held their ground but had no artillery (despite what the Russians claimed regarding the previous day’s fight), and no staff officer wanted to highlight Peter Ferdinand’s rank incompetence.

And that’s all for Franz Josef's Armies.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold. Leopold knows the number.

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