There was now no longer any doubt that the chances of success for this third invasion of Serbia were beginning to assume very slender proportions. The three army corps in the Austrian center and right had been completely broken and were now retreating in mad, disorganized flight toward Valievo and Rogatitza. Even should the Serbians fail to follow up this section of the enemy's forces with full vigor; even should it have a few days for re-forming, the loss of so much war material made such a possibility very difficult. There would hardly be time, under any circumstance, to draw fresh supplies from over the frontier before the Serbians could come up with them.
On December 7, 1914, the Uzitsha Army reached Pozega. The First Army, after storming and taking the heights of Maljen, advanced and formed a line between Maljen and Toplitza. The Third Army made a strong push forward and reached the line from Milovatz to Dubovitza, making a great haul of guns and prisoners. Only the Second Army failed to make any headway. Obviously, the Austrian field commander realized that the situation in the center was lost; this would account for his attempted diversion in the north. Here two Austrian corps held their ground successfully and they not only were able to check the advance of the Second Army, but they advanced to an attack against the detachment of Belgrade at Kosmai and Varoonitza.
On the whole, however, the fortunes of war had, during that day, rested decidedly with the Serbians. They had captured 29 officers, 6,472 men, 27 field guns, 1 mountain gun, 15 gun carriages, 56 wagons loaded with artillery ammunition and between 500 and 600 ordinary transport wagons. Above all, the situation in the south, where it had at first seemed most hopeless, was now retrieved beyond question and the Austrians in that section were fleeing helter-skelter before a lively Serbian advance, led by the Serbian Generals Yourishich and Mishitch.
The next day, December 8, 1914, began with hard fighting around Uzitsha, but the division here (the Uzitsha detachment), was not to be pressed back on its very own home soil; the Austrian lines wavered, broke, then scattered, the soldiers fleeing for the frontier. The First Army continued triumphantly, as it had done the day before, advancing and sweeping all in its way before it. It ended the day by storming and entering Valievo.
The Austrians holding Valievo had carefully prepared for its defense, for this town they were reluctant to give up. The approach by the main road had been heavily intrenched and the guns were in position. But the main force of the Serbians circled around in the hills and flanked the position of the Austrians, taking them completely by surprise. They broke and ran, and while the fugitives hurried off toward Loznitza and Shabatz, a rear guard of Hungarians on the hills to the northwest put up a rather indifferent fight before they, too, fled in mad disorder. The last of them were caught by the Serbian artillery and, while running over a stretch of rising ground, over a hundred were shot to pieces by shrapnel. When the Serbians arrived the ground was literally covered with mangled forms; here and there sat a few wounded.
The Third Army likewise shared in the general triumph. It reached the Kolubara, at its junction with the Lyg. Throwing out one of its divisions eastward, it threatened the right flank of the enemy on Cooka, then permitted the Second Army to carry that position. By this movement the Serbians succeeded in driving in a wedge and completely cut off the three beaten and fleeing corps in the south from the two in the north, which were still showing some disposition to hold their ground.
The operations in the west and northwest now resolved themselves into a wild, scrambling foot race for the frontier. The worst of the fighting was now over; indeed, the Austrians now fought only when cornered. Most of them were by this time unarmed, thinking of nothing but how to reach the frontier before the first of the pursuing Serbians.
Only a powerful literary pen could paint such a picture as was now spread over the land of Serbia. Wounded warriors, now resolving themselves into helpless, suffering farmers, simple tillers of the soil, save for the tatters of their blue and gray uniforms which alone indicated what they had been, lay by the roadsides and along mountain trails, abandoned by their comrades. Others lay mangled, their forms beaten out of all recognition. Scattered over all, wherever road or trail passed, lay guns and cartridges, sometimes in heaps, where they had been dumped out of the fleeing wagons. And further on lay the wagons themselves, some thrown over on their sides, where the drivers had cut the traces and continued their flight on the backs of their horses.
Later in the day, December 8, 1914, the scenes along the highways took on a different character. The main columns of the pursuing Serbians had passed on, but straggling files of those too tired or too weak to be in the fore of the chase still continued onward. More slowly followed a steady stream of returning refugees, their oxen, in various stages of life and death, yoked up to every conceivable manner of springless vehicle, piled high with odds and ends of furniture and bedding which had been snatched up in the mad hurry of flight. On top of the bundles lay sick and starving children, wan with want and exposure. Beside the wagon walked weary women or old men, urging their animals on with weird cries and curses, returning to the devastated remains of what had once been their homes.
Later still, from opposite directions, came processions of Austrian prisoners, sometimes thousands of them, guarded by a handful of Third Ban Serbian soldiers, still wearing their peasant costumes. Among the prisoners were smooth-faced youths and old men, some in the uniforms of soldiers, or of Landwehr, or Landsturm. All types of that hodge-podge of nationalities and races which the flag of Austria-Hungary represents were there; Germans, Magyars, Croats, Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks, Rumanians, Lithuanians, and Bosnian Musselmans.
In between the convoys straggled men of the Serbian army who had fallen out of the chase by the way, most of them Third Ban men, too advanced in years to keep up the pace set by the younger men. Nowhere moved anything but suffering, bleeding humanity.
On this scene the sun, a glowing disc of copper, finally set, and the struggling figures merged into the deepening dusk, and presently only black, halting shadows were creeping along the dark trails and roads.
CHAPTER LVII
THE FATE OF BELGRADE
During all this time a separate drama was being enacted in and around Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Unfortified and not especially adapted for defense, except for the breadth of the Danube flowing along its low front, it was the cause of a general, world-wide wonder that it should not have fallen almost immediately into Austrian hands. Quite aside from military values, the capture of an enemy's capital always makes a strong, moral impression, on both sides.
Beginning with the early morning of July 29, 1914, when a detachment of Serbian irregulars beat off a river steamer and two troop laden barges which were attempting to approach the shore just below Belgrade, there followed a period during which the citizens of the city had their full share in experiencing the horrors of warfare. The booming of heavy siege artillery and the screaming of shells at first startled them, then became so commonplace as barely to attract their attention. The attacks and counterattacks on mid-river islands became incidents of daily occurrence. Ruined buildings, wrecked houses and dead bodies in the streets became an unmarked portion of their everyday life.
For the greater part of this period Austrian cannon, planted across the river, poured shell, shrapnel, and incendiary bombs into the city, with intent to batter down its modern buildings and to terrorize the inhabitants. Over 700 buildings were struck by bombs, shells, or shrapnel, and of these sixty were the property of the state, including the university, the museum, foreign legations, hospitals, and factories. The foundries, bakeries and all the factories along the Serbian shore of the river were razed to the ground. Austrian howitzer shells dropped through the roof of the king's palace and wrecked all of the gorgeous interior. The university was riddled until the building, with its classrooms, laboratories, library, and workshops, was entirely demolished. Even the cellars were destroyed by great shells, which broke down the walls, pierced their way into the