The Austrian XIV Corps included two divisions of outstanding mountain troops and one infantry division from the Honvédség. The Landwehr mountain division that served as the corps’ third division in peacetime, along with the corps’ independent Landwehr mountain brigade, had remained with Third Army when XIV Corps shifted west to join Fourth Army. The 41st Honvéd Infantry Division, an independent division from Budapest, instead join the Alpine troops. They swept into their first taste of combat with what the Austro-Hungarian Official History would call “too much spirit.”

This action highlights an aspect of the campaign that its historians seem to have overlooked. The Royal Honvédség received its first artillery pieces in March 1913, following authorization the previous year. With a cadre of officers and gunners transferred from Common Army batteries, the new regiments organized and trained for the next year and in April 1914 were assigned to Honvédség divisions. Thus, these divisions (and their brothers of the Imperial-Royal Austrian Landwehr) had only included artillery for four months when they marched to war, with staffs and commanders clearly inexperienced in the fine art of combined-arms tactics. The campaign of August 1914 is replete with stories like this one: the 41st Honvéd Infantry Division left its artillery behind and attacked with infantry only. Inevitably, the attacks failed at the cost of horrendous casualties.