Chapter VI: The Austrian Expedition
June, July & August 1915
By the 8th of June the French expeditionary force was ready and prepared to cross the lightly defended Austrian border in a bold attempt to take Illyria (the Adriatic coastline), push into the Austro-Hungarian heartlands, link up with the remaining Serbian Army and liberate occupied areas of that country. Meanwhile the greatest armada of ships ever assembled in the history of mankind had departed from the French port of Marseilles and was steaming on it's way to the Adriatic Sea to deliver an expeditionary force of some 60,000 men to Montenegro. Consisting of the entire French navy, the armada literally stretched from horizon to horizon. The initial advances into Austria from Italy went well, Entente's superiority of numbers in the region was well over 6:1 as the attack had taken the Austrians entirely by surprise. Indeed, the Austrians had been making overtures towards Italy joining the war on
their side only a few months before- who were they to know that Italy would seek a better deal? The only bad news for the Entente on the Italian-Austrian front was the speed with which re-enforcements were poured into southern region of Tyrol to oppose the Italian advance. The historically Austrian but nonetheless ethnically Italian province was a symbolically important region for both combatants, and there soon erupted bitter fighting in the mountain valleys. The ground was not however suited to warfare of any sort let alone an offensive and, spearheaded by the French, the Italians soon shifted their priorities eastwards, around the mountains.
Meanwhile, the French Armada had entered the Adriatic and was sailing northwards, towards the Expedition's prospective landing sites near Dubrovnik and Podgorica. Hearing alarming reports of a vast force moving towards them, the Austrian Naval scrambled from their home ports and assembled in an attempt to block the French fleet's further passage. Confident in the abilities of their fleet to overcome the Austrians the French Admirals charged straight into one of the largest naval battles ever conducted, comparable but not quite on the same scale of the duels between Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine in 1914. The battle raged for 6 brutal days as the Austrians threw everything they had in order to prevent the French breaking through, the fighting sporadically continuing through the night and raging on again in the day. The results were unprecedented in naval warfare and drew grim comparison with the severe losses experienced in contemporary land warfare- the Austrian navy was all but destroyed and the French reduced to half-strength in the near-apocalyptic battle. To this day the shallow bed of the Adriatic is littered with the hulks of ships sunk that day.
With the Austrian navy removed as a threat, albeit at a bloody and brutal cost, the landings were set to proceed on during the remaining hours of the 16th. 30,000 went to fight side-by-side with their allies in the trenches of Montenegro, whilst the other 30,000 men were disembarked onto undefended beaches near Dubrovnik, charged with securing the city and then pushing on to encircle the Austrians- that encirclement was achieved only three days after the initial landings, with the historic meeting of Serb and French troops on the 19th. With Archduke Friedrich facing the prospect of being surrounded in the mountainous terrain of Montenegro the Austrians ordered a withdrawal with orders to achieve a breakout. It was not to be however, and after withdrawing into Bosnia the KuK Army was forced to settle in for a bloody two-month siege that only ended when French soldiers captured Archduke Friedrich’s Command Headquarters at Mostar.
On the 18th of August the Archduke was forced to sign the surrender of his army, made French prisoner of war and Austria was faced with the very real and further humiliating prospect of defeat. It is somewhat bizarre in this context that Bulgaria would chose to join the war on the side of the Central Powers, but that is precisely what they did. Overconfident that they could come to Austria's aid and with high expectations of creating a 'Greater Bulgaria' at the expense of Serbia the Bulgarians met early success against the poorly defended rear areas of Serbian Macedonia. With trench networks facing north, Serbian defensive positions were usually only hastily erected and easy to overcome. The Bulgarian attack however faltered in Serbia proper, where an effective defence could be mounted and French troops arrived on the scene to stabilise things. Provided with an excellent defensive network built up by the Serbs against Austria the Bulgarian positions were formidable, putting off any serious notions of an immediate counter-attack.
Archduke Friedrich after being captured.
The rest of 1915 continued without much great event- only the same punishing attritional trench warfare in the West, the swirling destruction of the Polish campaign in the East and a slow, and painfully slow and grinding progress in the Empire of Austria-Hungary. 1916 however, would see major developments on all four of the major Fronts...
