To the left, caricatures of a fallen King Albert of Belgium, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, President Poincare of France, generic (?) caricatures of an English man and a Japanese soldier, Kings Peter of Serbia, and Nikola of Montenegro engaging in a tug of war, the rope being held on the right by a German (in gray) and an Austro-Hungarian soldier. Between the teams and behind the rope stands the diminutive caped figure of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, all hat, mustache, and chin.
Das Europaische Gleichgewicht 1914The European Equilibrium, 1914
". . . on 3 December the Serbian 1st Army launched a surprise counterattack from its position west of Gornji Milanovac, and before that General Živojin Mišić had shortened the front line, allowed the soldiers some rest, received and distributed the artillery ammunition that had finally arrived and decided on a counterattack, whereupon the other two armies also received orders to attack. The Austro-Hungarian front faltered, crumpled, and then collapsed."
Austro-Hungarian General Oskar Potiorek had been destroying his army in his third and largest invasion of Serbia in 1914. He had neither dressed nor supplied his troops for mountain or winter combat, and had driven them to overstretch their supplies lines. They were running out of food and munitions, even as soldiers discarded the latter in their advance. At the end of November, confident of victory, Potiorek had finally granted his men four days rest while he tried to take the Serbian capital of Belgrade.Under Field Marshall Putnik, the Serbian Army retreated, falling back on its own limited supplies. Serbia had repeatedly requested aid from their Entente Allies. France had finally delivered artillery shells.
Serbia's Great War 1914-1918 by Andrej Mitrovic, page 71, copyright © Andrej Mitrovic, 2007, publisher: Purdue University Press, publication date: 2007
1914-12-03, 1914, December, Serbia
