ABSTRACT
SERVIA soon made the Austrians realise that their "punitive expedition" was no mere military promenade. Before the Austrian declaration of war, the Court had moved fronl the exposed capital on the frontier to Nish, so that the bombardment of Belgrade inflicted material, rather than political, damage. The Austrian offensive, directed against the mountainous region between the Drina and the Save through the valley of the Jadar, on the one side, and from Shabatz, on the other, was repulsed in a four days' battle (August 16-19), known in history as that of the Tzer mountain and the river Jadar. Encouraged by this victory, the Servians entered Sirmia an"d Bosnia, effected a junction with the Montenegrins, and marched upon Sarajevo. But their powers of defence were greater than those of offence; their Bosnian brethren did not rise, and the liberating army had to retreat. General Potiorek thereupon organised a second Austrian offensive with even more disastrous results than the former. The Servians allowed the invaders to occupy Belgrade, and retired into the interior, while Bulgarian bands tried to cut off their communications with Salonika by blowing up a bridge over the Vardar. At this crisis, the old king took his place in the trenches, rifle in hand; his presence and the arrival of fresh munitions encouraged his soldiers, who in the battle of the river Kolubara (December 3-9) completely routed the Austrians; and, while the invaders evacuated Servian territory for the second time, the King re-entered Belgrade. Austria had received
a terrible humiliation from the people whom she had humbled in 1909, and the Servian commander-in-chief, Putnik, summed up the secret of his success in the phrase "it is our business to advance and retire." For nine months Servia suffered no further invasion. But the Austrians had left behind them a deadlier foe than their army-spotted typhus, which, together with the two Balkan and the European wars, reduced the population of Servia by about one-fifth.
