The Empire Strikes Back



   With their enemies already on the offensive, Great Britain and her allies began their counterstrokes from late April to early May of 1900. Many of the leaders and organizers would later write of Herculean efforts to get all of their forces moving and while I do not doubt this I do reject their almost universal excuse for missing their original start dates. They all complained excessively about the weather. I can’t deny that this is often a factor in impeding military operations but, in this case, it seems rather unlikely. The more plausible explanation is that the allied grand strategy was mostly a result of reacting to situations  that were largely created by their enemies. It is clear that the state of the war had created quite a shake up in the leadership of the allied cause. Many of the men that would be running both the war departments and the field operations would be very new to their posts.
One might think that many of these men had risen from obscurity due to their actions on the field but, this was not always the case. The perfect example of this was Lord Roberts who, up till this point, had been commanding British forces in India. He had been greatly criticized back in England, both in the papers and privately, for his inaction. These criticisms were valid but, in Roberts defense, he fully believed that a Russian invasion of India was inevitable. Roberts had been the victim bad intelligence and it was something of a coup for the Russian Secret Police who seems to have been ultimately responsible for feeding Roberts this information.
Of course Roberts, who had been a very aggressive commander in his earlier days, did not sit entirely still. It is true that he sent precious few reinforcements to South Africa but, at the same time, Roberts was attempting an invasion of French protectorates in South East Asia. Again, Roberts was in possession of bad intelligence and he greatly over estimated French strength which, at the time, even France’s allies thought was vast in that region. The truth was that their strength was every bit the illusion as was the Russian army in central Asia. French Indo-China’s real defense lay in the rouged terrain and lack of infrastructure. It prevented large scale operations of the type that Roberts was attempting and what ultimately led to him giving up on his grand designs.
Ironically, Roberts attempts at neutralizing the Russians would have probably worked better in the jungles of South East Asia as opposed to the steppes of Kazakhstan. He might have been better served sending the bulk of his forces into Afghanistan and threatening the crucial Russian lifeline to the Pacific, that being the trans-Siberian Railway. It’s understandable why he chose not too do this. The British had invaded Afghanistan twice in the past thirty years and had not done so well. This could possibly explain why Roberts chose to appoint one of his noted explorers of Central Asia, Francis Younghusband, to organize a small expedition. Their objective was to travel north and into Russian territory where they were to begin sabotage of the railroad.
Younghusband seemed perfect for the job as he was very familiar with that region, having led many expeditions there for the Royal Geological Society. The railroad seemed to be an exposed nerve for the Russians and, given it’s length nearly impossible to defend. Younghusband was charged with avoiding any major confrontation with Russian troops while destroying isolated sections of the railroad in hit and run attacks. At best, he would slow down the traffic on this vital artery and, at worst, he would force the Russians to deploy more men to guard the vital lifeline.
As Roberts discovered, his worst case scenario was not worst case at all. Younghusband led just over one hundred hand picked men north and only he knew the route. No one from the Younghusband expedition was ever heard from again. I will not speculate on their fate or go over the many theories about what happened to Younghusband as it is now the staple of late night shows devoted to the paranormal. Conspiracy (as well as Yeti and Alien Abduction) theories are plentiful and can be found in other sources. What is safe to say, based on Russian records, is that not one attack against their precious railroad was ever made.
It was the last straw for Balfour who was now in de facto control of the Salisbury Cabinet. A personal friend of Lord Salisbury, Lord George Cruzon, was dispatched to India to replace the current Viceroy and his first official act was to relieve Roberts and send him home. Here is where Roberts proved the old axiom of one being promoted to their level of greatest incompetence. Not long after he returned home he was appointed command of the British Continental Expeditionary Force. One might wonder how Roberts was placed in this most crucial posting and many point to politics. The truth seems to be less ominous and dark. Roberts was simply the only man available with any real experience. This speaks more to the size and scope of Britain’s deployments to Germany. It had been a very long time since a British field army had been deployed to the continent and the BCEF was quite possibly the largest ever.
Roberts first job would be to crack the nut that the army of Franz Joseph had, so far, failed to do. It would seem, at first glance, that Roberts was in no hurry to take Belgrade but, I have to say this is an unfair judgment of him since it was clearly not his idea to wait. That fell squarely on the shoulders of Field Marshall Waldersee who had some grand designs of his own and viewed the British operations in Serbia as subordinate to the real war that he was fighting in Poland and Prussia. Even though there is little doubt that Waldersee’s interactions with Roberts were partly designed to “put the British Field Marshall in his place,” it must also be noted that Waldersee’s ideas are not without merit. In either case, Roberts had little choice in accepting Waldersee’s plans since he had been ordered to do so.
This was why British, German, and Austrian guns would begin pounding away at Entente lines at the very same instant from the Baltic sea to the Danube river. The Germans would attempt a virtually identical plan to the one that had failed them in the first days of the war. Their objective was to isolate and lay siege to the city of Warsaw. This time was different and, to Waldersee’s sorrow, far more difficult as the Austrians had now been pushed back to the other side of the Carpathian Mountains and could no longer effectively threaten the Russians from the south. The Austrian attempts to force the passes and seize the city of Krakow would prove to be a complete disaster. Even so, and despite large numbers of casualties, the Germans were slowly pushing the Russians back.
Roberts and the BCEF would have no easier a time in successfully concluding the siege of Belgrade. The Serbs fought tenaciously and inflicted heavy losses on the British assaults against their fortifications. The former King of Serbia, Milan, had used his time, and Russian aid, very effectively. The Serbs fought the British to a standstill. By the time that his initial assaults were finished, Roberts discovered that his army was effectively wrecked. This would prove temporary but, it required time for Roberts to reorganize so that he could go back over to the offensive.
This was not to say that the British offensive was a complete failure. It was far from that, only, at the time, Roberts had no way of knowing this. The man that was well aware of this was Milan. His forces had already been strained by months of siege and a successive wave of Austrian assaults. What the British had managed, and quite to the unpleasant surprise of Milan, was to inflict terrible losses on his army.
The Serbs were simply not prepared for the tenacity of the British who proved far more capable than the Austrian conscripts that they had faced up till now. Many of the Austrian units were not Austrian at all. Most of their troops were drafted from regions of the empire that had little love for the Hapsburg dynasty and a good number of their soldiers found themselves more sympathetic to the Serbian cause. More than a few would desert and go over to the Serbian side. Even those who remained would fail to press home attacks or take undue risks for a cause that they had been forced to fight for. The British did not suffer from any of these handicaps.
If the BCEF was in bad shape after the assaults on Belgrade then it is equally true that Milan’s army was a complete shambles. The Austrians were not the only ones who had an army that suffered from political turmoil. Many in the Serb trench’s were not fully supportive of their current leadership. Despite the respect commanded by Milan, the opposition to the Black Hand was considerable. While this opposition would never fully organize or outright oppose the war it did not have to. It was enough to whisper doubts about the reasons for Serbia’s involvement and the competence of the junior officer corps and their allegiance to the radicals. This sentiment would be enough to keep most Serbs from wholeheartedly supporting the conflict. It would also greatly restrict Milan’s military options.
For Serbia, Belgrade was the entire war. If Belgrade fell to the allies then Serbia would effectively be out of the conflict. Milan was well aware of this and it is most likely why he elected to keep defending his positions around the capital. He did so when it was very obvious that he could no longer hold them. Roberts attacks may not have achieved tactical success but they did not have to. The British had forced Milan to consume precious resources and manpower that he could not hope to replace. In effect, the only real defense he had left was a bluff and he was lucky that it would take time for Roberts to realize this.
It was also not the only effect. Waldersee’s plan was working despite the fact that even Waldersee did not seem to realize it. Fortunately for Waldersee, neither did Czar Nicholas. The coordinated allied assaults had achieved an overall effect that was very similar to  Roberts assaults on Belgrade, of which, was almost a microcosm for the entire front.
The larger allied offensive did not achieve it’s objectives on the battlefield but, what it did do was force the Russians to divert resources from their own operations. It would strain the Russian transportation system and tax their general staff even if it did not break either. Most important of all, the supplies and reinforcements for the Russian drive towards Constantinople was whittled down until the Russian general staff was forced to postpone it. It was the first tiny crack in what, up till that point, had seemed an almost unstoppable Russian war machine.