The Second Seal

by Dennis Wheatley

  Recalling Sir Henry Wilson’s statement, that the Russian armies would take several days longer to mobilise than those of the Dual Monarchy, de Richleau was delighted to think that von Hötzendorf had already lost his big opportunity and got himself into a glorious muddle. But he said with suitable gravity:

  “That seems most unfortunate. I imagine sound strategy would have dictated an immediate offensive against the Russians with everything we could muster while we still had the advantage of numbers; but now it appears unlikely that we shall be able to bring up our 2nd Army in time to participate in the first great battle.”

  “I fear that is so,” the Colonel agreed glumly. “But, of course, we are deriving some compensation from the deployment of the 2nd Army in the south. With his 5th and 6th Armies in Bosnia, General Potiorek could have menaced Serbia only from the west; whereas with the deployment of the 2nd Army to the north, he has been able to do so on two fronts; so the Serbians will be greatly weakened by having to retain forces along the Danube which might otherwise have been used to resist our offensive across the Drina.”

  “How is it going?”

  “It has started well. Potiorek’s 5th Army began its advance on the 12th and entered Shabatz almost unopposed. It is now approaching the Jadar. But I am not altogether happy about our future prospects down there. In my view General Potiorek has deployed his 6th Army too far to the south. Of course, he has to deal with the Montenegrins on his right flank and take care of a Serbian division that has moved up from Uzhite; but the trouble is that it is now right out of touch with the 5th. When the 2nd is withdrawn and the Voyvode Putnik realises that he has nothing to fear from that direction, he will be able to oppose our 5th Army with practically the whole of his forces. As he has ten divisions in northern Serbia he will outnumber our people, and I fear we may suffer a temporary reverse.”

  Having regard to the relative quality of the troops engaged, de Richleau had no doubt at all that his new colleague’s pessimism was fully justified. By now his professional interest was so fully engaged that he had forgotten not only the danger of his own situation, but its implications; and momentarily found himself thinking as though he were really an Austrian Staff officer. Instinctively, he said:

  “In that case General Potiorek should be ordered to wheel the bulk of his 6th Army eastward while there is still time for it to come up alongside the 5th.”

  Colonel Pacher took off his pince-nez and blinked up at him with a shake of the head. “I see you are as yet unacquainted with one of our major difficulties. After the C.-in-C., General Potiorek is the foremost soldier in our army. In addition, through his friend Baron Bolfas, the Emperor’s A.D.C., he has great influence at Court.”

  “I should have thought his incredibly inefficient arrangements at Sarajevo, having been largely responsible for the Archduke’s murder, would have cost him that,” put in the Duke.

  “No. He is still in high favour, and remains a law unto himself. He will not accept advice from us, let alone orders, and frequently goes over the C.-in-C.’s head. He is doing so at the moment in a matter that is causing us the gravest concern. The 2nd Army has the most positive instructions that in no circumstances is it to cross the Save-Danube line; but he insists that it is essential to the success of his campaign that it should at least make a demonstration in force before leaving, and is doing his utmost to secure the Emperor’s consent to involve it.”

  “I see his point of view; although it is most reprehensible conduct on the part of a junior commander. Of course, if he succeeds, it may give us a victory in the south. But what of the north?”

  “It has been decided not to wait for the 2nd Army, and in the course of the next few days we are launching our first offensive.”

  “Do you consider that really wise?” hazarded the Duke.

  “The C.-in-C. is a great believer in the offensive,” replied Colonel Pacher non-committally. “Our ten cavalry divisions have already penetrated deep into Russian territory and are meeting with little opposition.”

  De Richleau had already decided that if he were going to be hanged at all he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and indulge his passion for this fascinating game of war by learning all he could; so he asked without hesitation:

  “In which direction are we going to strike?”

  Colonel Pacher stood up and together they studied the map, which now had a line of pins, varying in thickness, running in a great ‘S’ bend across its upper half. From Cernowitz, on the Rumanian border, the line was thin, representing a scratch Command which had been got together under General Kövess to cover the upper reaches of the Dniester. It ended a little south of Lemberg, and from in front of that city up to the right bank of the Vistula, across which lay Polish soil, the pins were massed solidly, showing the 3rd, 4th and 1st Armies disposed over a front of a hundred and sixty miles. Then, along the Vistula and in the neighbourhood of Cracow, the line of pins thinned out again where General Kummer, with another scratch Command, was covering the frontier up to the German border. Kummer’s Group lay at right angles to the 1st Army along the southern frontier of Poland, and from there the huge Polish salient bellied out westwards. Its arc had pins only at distant intervals to show German Landwehr units under General von Woyrsch which provided a dubious screen for Breslau and Posen. Then, north of the Polish salient, from Thorn across East Prussia to the Baltic, there was a group of flags about the same in number as those representing one of the three main Austrian Armies. It was labelled ‘8th German Army: General von Prittwitz’.

  Placing a square-tipped forefinger in the middle of the gap that separated Warsaw, in the centre of the Polish salient, from the key railway junction of Brest-Litovsk, that lay a hundred miles behind it, Pacher said:

  “We intend to strike due north, cut off Warsaw, and join up with the Germans advancing south to meet us from East Prussia.”

  “And where are the Russians?” inquired the Duke, as not a single flag indicating the enemy had yet been stuck in the map.

  “We don’t know for certain,” the Colonel admitted rather lamely. “We have reason to suppose that there are four Armies in the Southern Group under General Ivanov, which is opposed to us, but we have no definite information regarding their whereabouts.”

  THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE ARMIES ON THE EASTERN FRONT

  De Richleau endeavoured to hide his astonishment, and remarked tactfully: “Of course, in the early stages of a war it is always difficult to locate the enemy’s main concentrations. But I should have thought it would be incurring a very grave risk to expose our right flank in such a manner.”

  “Our cavalry screen has met with very little opposition in front of Lemberg, so the C.-in-C. considers it unlikely that the enemy will be in a position to launch a serious offensive in that direction for some time. On the other hand, we do know that they have pulled everything out of the Polish salient to behind the line of the Vistula, so it seems obvious that they are massing east of Warsaw; and the C.-in-C.’s objective is to catch and smash them there before they have a chance to deploy in line of battle. As they have evacuated the Polish salient, Kummer’s Group and von Woyrsch’s Landwehr should be able to advance almost unopposed to in front of Warsaw, and with the Germans coming in from the north we should succeed in over-running the whole of Poland.”

  “But will they? Apparently they have only one Army in East Prussia. To carry out their share in this plan effectively they would need to launch practically the whole of it due south towards Syedlets. That would leave their northern frontier naked. If you are right in your belief that no great part of the Russian forces are opposite our southern front, it follows that they must have very large ones up in the north. I cannot believe that the Germans would be willing to expose East Prussia, and by denuding it of troops, give the Russians the chance to launch a major offensive straight on to Berlin.”

  The Colonel sighed. “I very much fear you are right about that. The Germans promised us their co-operation during peace-time ta
lks, and for the past week the C.-in-C. has been pressing General von Prittwitz to deploy his 8th Army in the manner agreed; but we have so far got no satisfaction from him. In fact, last night a telegram came in from Captain Fleischmann, our liaison officer with the 8th Army, which was most depressing. It reported that the Russians are entering East Prussia from Kovno and Olita, and that von Prittwitz is about to strike at them; and that until he has checked the enemy advance he cannot consider committing any of his troops to a southward drive into Poland.”

  “Yet the C.-in-C. still intends to launch his offensive almost immediately?”

  “Yes. We are hoping that by the 20th or 21st the Germans may have dealt with the Russian incursion into East Prussia, and be ready to help us. If not, the direction of our attack will probably be more to the eastward. But we shall attack all the same. The C.-in-C. is a great believer in the offensive.”

  With that Colonel Pacher returned to his work and left the Duke to speculate on the information he had just acquired. Since the Russians had withdrawn all their forces from western Poland, and the Austrian cavalry was meeting with little opposition further south, it seemed clear that the Grand Duke Nicholas was acting with commendable caution. It was estimated that Russia’s initial mobilisation in Europe would put 2,700,000 men in the field, in addition to 900,000 special reserves and fortress troops. Of this colossal force, mainly consisting of highly trained regulars, not one thousandth part could yet have been expended. Obviously the Grand Duke, whom de Richleau knew to be a very capable commander, was holding them well back, so that the bulk of them could be hurled with equal ease at any enemy offensive that developed, whether it came from the north, south or centre. Yet von Hötzendorf, minus his powerful 2nd Army, and now doubtful of the German co-operation on which he had counted, was still determined to butt his head into this Russian hornets’ nest.

  At lunch, when the Duke exchanged a few words with the C.-in-C., he did not wonder at finding him morose and ill-tempered, nor was he surprised to notice that several of the more capable officers, like Colonel Pacher, looked a little anxious. But the majority were delighted to be on their way to the front and talked of the coming campaign with happy optimism. Few of them had ever seen a shot fired in anger, and they displayed a contempt for the enemy that showed they knew nothing of the bravery and tenacity of the average Russian soldier.

  Their attitude to their allies, the Duke found amusing. They looked down on the Germans as a people lacking in taste, refinement and sensibility; yet they were ingenuous enough to admit that they counted on them to pull Austria-Hungary’s chestnuts out of the fire for her. Their admiration for the German army was unbounded, and they clearly thought of it as a miracle-machine impervious to all the hazards and human weaknesses affecting the fighting forces of other nations. They were confident that von Prittwitz’s single Army in East Prussia could take on any number of Russians, defeat them in a matter of a few days; then, with unruffled precision, about turn to descend on Warsaw; and that the German armies in the west would be in Paris in a month.

  There was no news yet of any serious fighting on the Franco-German frontier, although the Germans were reported to have penetrated some eighty miles deep into Belgium. But the 3,000,000 French and German troops that must soon clash head-on in the west had lesser distances to cover than the Austrians and Russians, so the great collision might now occur any day.

  De Richleau recalled the paper that Winston Churchill had written at the time of the Agadir crisis in 1911. He had predicted that by the 20th day after mobilisation the Germans would have forced the line of the Meuse; but had gone on to point out that by the 40th day they would be so fully extended that, providing the French husbanded their strength in the meantime, they should then have a good prospect of giving battle under favourable conditions. Would the French husband their strength? The Duke wondered. If so, all might yet be well. If not, he feared that the optimistic prophecies of his Austrian companions, that the Germans would be in Paris by mid-September, stood a very good chance of being fulfilled.

  The railway ran almost due north to Teschen on the Polish border, followed it north-east to Cracow, and only then, having rounded the corner of the Carpathian Mountains, ran eastwards through Tarnow to Przemysl. So from mid-morning the train had been right up in the operational zone; but it was not until lunch time that it entered the concentration area of the main armies. From then on every road and by-way it passed contained a slowly moving column of horse-drawn vehicles driven by troops clad in olive green; and at every railway siding stood trains, containing more men, more horses, more guns, more wagons, that had been shunted off the line to let the C.-in-C.’s train through. It seemed as if whole cities must have been denuded of their male populations and traffic so to flood this normally peaceful countryside, and it was an awe-inspiring thought that, within a week, for many thousands of this horde of healthy, cheerful human beings there would be no escape from mutilation, capture or death.

  Soon after three o’clock the train arrived at Przemysl. It was a town of some size, having a population of nearly fifty thousand which, even in peace time, was considerably augmented by a large permanent garrison; as it was a major bastion in the northern defence system of the Dual Monarchy and ringed by thirty-six forts mounting between them no less than a thousand guns. On a hill above it stood the ruins of an old castle built by Casimir the Great; but the town itself offered few sights of interest. It was a dreary manufacturing and trading centre, and when a fleet of cars transported the Archduke, von Hötzendorf and their staff to the quarters assigned to them, they found these in keeping with the place.

  Colonel Pacher whispered to de Richleau that the C.-in-C. had made it plain that he was most averse to conducting battles from a luxurious headquarters, so his well known asceticism had been duly catered for. They were conducted to ancient bug-ridden barracks furnished only with bare tables, a few score of wooden chairs and straw palliasses to sleep on.

  That evening the C.-in-C. held a conference at which de Richleau was not present; but he learned afterwards that important news had come through from Serbia. On the previous day, the advance of the Austrian 5th Army had been held up by exceptionally heavy rain; but this did not appear to have immobilised the Serbians, as General Putnik had moved up in the night and launched a violent assault. In consequence, there had been very heavy fighting on the river Jadar all day, and General Potiorek had appealed through the Emperor for the active assistance of the 2nd Army. Its advance units were already about to entrain for the north, but von Hötzendorf, his wisened face black with rage, had felt compelled to agree to it making a demonstration in force before leaving.

  However, de Richleau was far more concerned with his personal problem of getting away through the Russian lines before the K.S. should learn where he had got to; and, on the following morning, when he had a chance to examine the situation maps of the immediate front, he found that this was going to be a more difficult matter than he had supposed.

  Owing to the deep penetration of the Austrian cavalry into Russia, it appeared doubtful if there were now any Russian troops within a hundred miles of Przemysl. Long before he could cover that distance on horse-back, his disappearance from H.Q. would be noticed and, fearing an accident had befallen him, his colleagues there would institute widespread inquiries, which would probably result in his being located. Then, he would be forced to return and offer some explanation, and even the outline of a satisfactory one at present exceeded the scope of his imagination. No staff car had been allotted to him, and to attempt to steal one would be a risky business. Even if he succeeded, he would have to abandon it on the edge of the battle zone, as the cavalry patrols would naturally warn any officer in a car not to proceed farther; and the sight of a staff Colonel walking towards the enemy on foot would again require an explanation of a kind that his brain refused to furnish. Anxious as he was to get away, he therefore decided that he would do better to wait, anyhow until that night, on the chance that some matter w
ould arise during the day which would provide him with a legitimate excuse for leaving Headquarters.

  Unlike von Hötzendorf, the Duke was not the type of soldier who believes that sleeping hard and eating indifferent food is necessarily good for the brain; and, to his pleasure, he discovered that the Chief of Staff, General Count Bellegarde, was of the same opinion. So he asked his senior out to lunch, and they found a good little restaurant just off the main street of the town.

  The Count was a rather ponderous gentleman who owed his appointment to Imperial favour. But he was no fool, and towards the end of the meal it emerged that he was by no means happy about the prospects of the offensive. He declared that it was one thing to fling the main Austrian armies against Warsaw if the Germans were prepared to meet them there, and quite another if they were not.

  Suddenly an idea germinated in the Duke’s brain, and he said: “We shall certainly be taking a big risk if we go ahead without having more definite information about von Prittwitz’s intentions, and in a matter of such vital importance telegrams containing half-promises are anything but satisfactory. Why not send some responsible officer to his H.Q. in East Prussia to impress upon him how essential it is that he should give us his co-operation, and find out definitely what he is prepared to do?” As an apparent afterthought, he added casually: “As I joined the C.-in-C.’s staff only yesterday morning, I could well be spared to undertake such a mission if you considered me suitable.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” the Count nodded. “I’ll think about it: and if we don’t have better news by to-morrow, I may put it up to the C.-in-C. The thing that troubles me even more, though, is that the Russians probably know the composition of our forces and the broad outline of our plans.”

  “What on earth leads you to suppose that?” asked the Duke in surprise.