On the 7th, while the I. and Uzhitse Armies continued their advance to Valyevo and Uzhitse respectively their opponents withdrawing divergently on the Loznitsa and Shabats routes the III. turned the flank of the defenders of Kremenika and thus enabled the II. Army, weak as it now was, to make progress towards Lazarevats and Voluyak height. But on the right the Austrian attack made real progress and approached the advanced line of the Kosmay position. On the 8th and again on the Qth the Kosmay line itself was taken and retaken. On the evening of the 9th the alignment of the Serbian defensive flank was from the Danube E. of Grotska, by Umchari, Varovnitsa, and Kosmay to the Kolubara valley near Sakallia. Lazarevats was reoccu- pied by troops of the II. Army on the 9th, and the III. Army, coming up into line with the I., bordered the Kolubara as far as Valyevo, these two armies beginning the pursuit of those Austrian forces which had taken the Shabats direction in their retreat.
The 9th was in fact the turning-point of the battle, as the 3rd had been that of the campaign. On the evening of that day Poti- orek, ill informed of the state of affairs in the N., and deeply impressed with the defeat of the mountain troops (VI. Army) which he had himself accompanied and directed, gave orders for a general retreat on Belgrade, Shabats and Loznitsa. On that day also Putnik issued general directions for the continuance of an offensive which was evidently yielding much greater results than those aimed at in the instructions of Dec. 2.
The position of affairs on which the new scheme was based was: heavy and apparently increasing pressure on the Kosmay front (VIII. and Krauss), indicating an attempt to break through into the Morava region; stiff resistance of the enemy (XIII. Corps of II. Army) between that front and the Kolubara, and on that river astride the Ub routes; and full retreat of the Austro- Hungarian XV. and XVI. Corps in the divergent directions of Shabats, Loznitsa and Vishcgrad.
Putnik's objects were two: to follow up the retreating XV. and XVI. Corps quickly so as to regain possession of the national ter- ritory and rescue the inhabitants, and to attack the enemy north- ern forces f rontally and in flank before they could prepare a win- ter position on the Belgrade loop. Attacked all along the front and threatened on their right, he hoped that the Austrians would evacuate the capital without ruinous street-fighting. Some hopes were no doubt cherished of cutting off the retreat of the two corps (VIII. and Krauss) but they were slight. The physical conditions were adverse. " Our national mud," hitherto Put- nik's ally, became now a hindrance.
On the loth, therefore, the Uzhitse Army continued to pursue in the direction of Bainabashta and Rogatitsa, part of the I. Army pushed along the Loznitsa road, part towards Shabats, while the III. Army, with its left already over the Kolubara S. of Ub, began to wheel to the N., pivoting on Lazarevats, with the outer flank following the direction of Ub-Obrenovats.
But already on that day, the battle at Kosmay diminished instead of increasing in intensity. The Austrians began to draw back. Hopes of completing the wheel of the III. Army vanished. The Austro-Hungarian XIII. Corps gave ground only slowly. The renewed moral of the Serbs had sufficed to give them victory, but it could not force them through the phase of exploitation, when it was evident that the enemy was evacuating the country of his own accord and also that he would not be hustled. Had the Ub-Obrenovats direction been assigned to troops of the I. Army, which alone of the five larger formations had really experienced the sensation of clear victory, it is possible, though by no means certain, that the envelopment might have succeeded. As it was the last phase of the battle was practically a frontal drive E. of the Kolubara, with heavy local fighting and the gleaning of pris- oners and spoil, but no dib&cle. When on the i3th the left divi- sion of the III. Army seized Obrenovats, the Austrians had al- ready withdrawn clear of the flanking threat. They had, owing to the state of the VIII. Corps, decided not to make a stand on the Belgrade loop, and after one day's further fighting, they evacu- ated Belgrade which the Serbian patrols reoccupied at 10 A.M. on the isth. Meanwhile, Shabats, Loznitsa and Bainabashta
had been reached and reoccupied. by the pursuing columns of the I. and Uzhitse Armies. *
The recovery of the country and the capital intact, and the capture of 41,000 prisoners and 133 guns, with large quantities of stores, even though no Sedan had been achieved, constituted a victory that was both decisive and after a crisis of moral such as that of the end of November wonderful. It gave Serbia peace in the midst of World War for a few months to come. But her losses had been very heavy. In the three battle periods of 1914, 69,000 Serbian soldiers had been killed or had died of sickness, perhaps 15,000 had been taken prisoners, and probably 180,000 had been wounded, out of a mobilized force which at the outset numbered 490,00.
II. THE CONQUEST OF SERB:*, 1915
When the third 'punitive expedition ended in failure, Potiorek was relieved of the command, and the V. and VI. Armies were fused in one called the " Balkan Forces," to which the Archduke Eugene was appointed as commander, with Krauss as his chief- of -staff . Under cover of outposts along the rivers, the corps were reorganized and disposed for the defence of Hungary. Soon the VIII. and XIII. Corps were withdrawn for service in other thea- tres, and on Italy's entry into the war the Archduke and Krauss were transferred to Laibach to command the new front, General Tersztyanski being left with a much weakened force opposite the Serbs. The latter indeed were not fitted for the offensive. Not only were their numbers greatly reduced by the battles of 1914, but an epidemic of typhus devastated their ranks still further.
Meanwhile, Falkenhayn, reasoning not in the spirit of a Bos- nian viceroy who wished to teach a lesson, but in that of a modern war-manager, had become convinced of the necessity of open- ing a road to Turkey for the transit of munitions and expert per- sonnel. The desire to reserve or to recoup forces for this pur- pose went so far, indeed, that he constantly imposed a brake on Hindenburg's and Conrad's proposals for decisive operations in the Russian theatre. At one time in the spring, the beginnings of a German army were assembled in Hungary, though the scheme at that period only one of clipping off the N.E. corner of Serbia was abandoned before effect had been given to it. Later, when the first fear of the Italians had died away, and the Russian campaign was nearing its end, it was taken up again.
Throughout the spring and summer negotiations had been in progress for winning, or buying, Bulgaria's active support. Fal- kenhayn exercised all his influence to keep these alive, even under difficult circumstances, for though Bulgaria's price was high, with- out Bulgarian aid no forces that could be spared from other fronts would suffice for the clearance of the Orient railway, while the nature of Bulgaria's reward imposed the conquest of Macedonia in addition to the military occupation of N. Serbia. There were, further, internal difficulties between the two allies on the ques- tion of command. Bulgaria insisted on a German commander as chief, and found in this matter, naturally, Falkenhayn's entire support, but Conrad, ever jealous of the prestige of the Austro- Hungarian army and hostile to German control, long refused his consent. It was not, indeed, until the verge of the offensive that a formula acceptable to all these states was discovered.
The plan of operations adopted was the reverse of Potiorek's, and was substantially that proposed by Krauss and by Terszty- anski successively, viz., direct attack over the Sava and Danube, coupled with a cooperative attack from the Machva, for the securing of the Kolubara line and its railway. But it had the further element of Bulgarian intervention on the right rear of the defence which, if energetic and controlled as to timing and direc- tion by the same commander-in-chief as the frontal offensive, would be decisive. The appointed commander-in-chief of the group of armies was Mackensen. He was to have under him the reconstituted XI. German Army (Gallwitz), the reconstituted
1 During the period of the Kolubara campaign, there was a cer- tain amount of minor fighting between the Montenegrins and the Austrian forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Drina, about Artpvats, and about Trbinye. No results of importance were achieved on either side.
