“The defence works of Thorn comprise nine main forts—Scharnhorst, Yorck, Bülow, Wilhelm II., Heinrich von Zalzie, Grosser Kurfürst, Hertzog, Albrecht, Friedrich der Grosse, and Dohna. Between these forts there are seven intermediate works, which are separated by distances of from half to three-quarters of a mile. In consequence of the short distances separating the forts, a most destructive cross-fire can be obtained from them.
“The forts are distant between three-quarters of a mile and a mile from the outskirts of the town, which is accordingly within easy reach of the shells of the attacking force. The forts are connected in their rear by a circular highway, on which are sixteen infantry barracks and twenty-eight subterranean magazines. To this road there radiate from the town numerous sunk ways, masked with turf.
“The advanced positions before Thorn are a mile from the forts on the right bank of the river. The armament of the fortress, according to the usual German standard, will include twenty-seven long-range guns and twenty smaller pieces for repelling assaults on each of the main forts. Thus on the nine forts there will be altogether 414 guns. The seven intermediate works will each mount ten of the larger and eleven of the smaller guns: altogether 154. In the central enceinte there are understood to be 140 guns. If the reserve is added we get an aggregate of 1,000 guns, of which 60 per cent. are of long range.
“The minimum infantry garrison of Thorn is estimated at four battalions for the forts and two for the central area. The fortress is divided into four sections, for each of which there must be a reserve of three battalions. The artillery garrison, reckoning eight men per gun, must be 8,000 strong, and there must be not less than one battalion of engineers. The total garrison cannot therefore be less than 35,000 men.”
While preparations were being made for the attack on the frontier fortresses, the Tsar and Tsaritsa, accompanied by their daughters the Grand-duchesses Olga and Tatiana, took the highly popular step of paying a visit to the garrison and hospitals of the fortress of Ivangorod, so recently the scene of such desperate German attempts to break through on this part of the line of the Vistula after the smashing defeat of their rush for Warsaw. The Imperial party came from Lublin, and were received on arrival by the Commandant of Ivangorod, the Grand-duke Nicholas Michailovitch, and by General Schwarz. The Tsar gave public expression to the feeling of national exhilaration in the following brief but eloquent words: “With faith in the help and blessing of the All-Highest, and in the power of the mighty arms of united Russia, our great country will conclude no peace until the resistance of the enemy has been finally broken, and the realisation of the tasks bequeathed to us by our ancestors has been accomplished.”
In Galicia more solid Russian successes and a notable weakening in the power and solidarity of the resistance marked the growing pressure of the invaders of Austrian territory. South of Przemysl, in one day’s fighting early in November, a thousand prisoners and some guns were taken. Przemysl was quite cut off, though replying energetically to a severe bombardment by Dimitrieff’s siege-train. A sortie was beaten back with much loss of life. On the 10th Krasno was occupied, forty miles west of the fortress, and on the same day—a busy one in this particular war-zone—the Austrians were driven into the Carpathians after a further defeat on the San which enabled their relentless enemy to occupy Sanok and Turka.
Meanwhile the main invading army was pressing on towards Cracow, with a view to carrying on the siege of the place simultaneously with the investment of Przemysl. The occupation of Tarnow, an important railway centre, brought the Russians within forty-five miles of Cracow on the east side, while the passage of the river Schrenwaja from the Polish frontier advanced them almost within range of its guns.
In fact Cracow, defended by an Austro-German garrison now estimated at 100,000 men, had been steadily preparing for the worst. A fire-zone with a radius of eight miles had been cleared of all buildings, and steel cupolas had been provided for the main belt of its forts. On the Raba, a stream which empties itself into the Vistula twenty-five miles east of the city, a series of field-works was constructed, and the little town of Bochnia was also fortified.
“You may be surprised,” wrote Mr. Granville Fortescue in the Daily Telegraph, “at the rapidity of the advance on Cracow. It resulted from the precipitate retirement of the German and the Austrian forces through South-west Poland. I am told that this withdrawal was so rapid that the Russian pursuing cavalry almost lost touch with their foes. The enemy did not stop until he was under the walls of Cracow. The force which is to attack it from the north had an almost free passage. Another Russian force coming from Tarnow had to fight for every inch of the ground occupied. The Austrian force, which has been retreating stubbornly along the Rzeszow-Neu Sandec Railway, has given considerable trouble.”
The same journal, commenting upon the extraordinary extent of the battle-zone and the probability of the final fight for the Russo-Austro-German frontier extending over weeks rather than days, rightly remarked that the average workaday intellect failed to grasp the magnitude of the giant conflict in point of mere numbers alone. It hazarded the conjecture that over five hundred miles of front three and a half millions of Russians would be giving battle to a couple of millions of Austrians and Germans!