The Siege of Przemysl was the longest siege of World War I, occurring when the Imperial Russian Army laid siege to the Austro-Hungarian fortress of Przemysl in Poland from September 1914 to March 1915. After a 133-day siege, the garrison surrendered, delivering a crushing defeat to the Austro-Hungarian Army.
History[]
In August 1914, the Russian Empire launched a two-pronged offensive against the German Empire (in East Prussia) and Austria-Hungary (in Eastern Galicia), leading to the disastrous Battle of Tannenberg and the successful Battle of Galicia, respectively. The whole Austro-Hungarian front was forced to fall back over 100 miles to the Carpathians, leaving behind the fortress of Przemysl in southern Poland. The fortresss was garrisoned by 93,000 soldiers and 45,000 impressed local Polish levies, who dug 30 miles of new trenches and set up 650 miles of barbed wire in seven lines of defense around the town's perimeter. Przemysl was a diverse city which spoke fifteen languages; it was home to Austrians, Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, reflecting the empire's diversity.
On 24 September 1914, the Russian general Radko Dimitriev laid siege to the city with his 300,000-strong Russian 3rd Army, and he ordered three days of rash assaults on the fortress walls before his artillery or Austro-Hungarian relief columns could arrive. In the first three days of the siege, the Russians suffered 40,000 losses, and, on 11 October, the Russians were forced to withdraw amid the Battle of the Vistula River. The Russians returned on 31 October after the German offensive into Poland was repelled, and they resumed the siege of Przemysl on 9 November. During the winter of 1914-1915, both sides suffered heavy losses from frostbite, disease, and monthly fighting. In February 1915, Svetozar Boroevic launched a failed relief attempt at Przemysl, but all relief efforts were defeated by the month's end. By that time, the Russian general Andrei Selivanov had assembled enough artillery to pound the fortress, constantly hitting the town with artillery fire and creating mutual distrust and racial tension among the city's diverse defenders as the toll of the dead, sick, and wounded rose. On 19 March, the garrison commander Hermann Kusmanek launched a failed sortie attempt, and, on 22 March, the remaining 117,000 defenders - including nine generals, 93 senior staff officers, and 2,500 other officers - surrendered to the Russians.