The generalissimo, while making his preparations for this last blow, continued an unremitting observation upon all the movements of the enemy, even to the minutest details, and in order that the enemy might be constantly occupied, and diverted from suspecting our plans, he directed small attacks to be continually made upon his front. For this object the second division, posted at Siennica, received orders to advance to the small town of Jeruzalem. The division, in executing that order, fought the enemy for three successive days, the 12th, 13th and 14th of April, at Jedlina, Wodynie, and Plomieniece, and always with advantage. In one of those attacks, at Jedlina, a small detachment of sixteen Krakus attacked a squadron of Russian hussars, coming from Wodynie, dispersed them, and took some twenty prisoners. This division received also the order to communicate constantly with the corps of general Pac at Zelechow. This last general was to send continual reconnoissances towards Kock, to keep a constant observation upon the Russian corps of Kreutz and Witt. Of the movements of those two corps, the generalissimo was each day to receive the most accurate information, in order to be ready prepared to prevent, at any moment, a junction which might be attempted between those corps and their main body. General Skrzynecki, seeing that the enemy had fallen into his plan, (of which, indeed, he could not have had the least suspicion,) and full of the brightest hopes, waited impatiently in his strong position, for intelligence from general Dwernicki, and the approach of the moment for his attack upon Diebitsch. Almost sure of the successful execution of his admirable arrangements, what can express his disappointment on hearing of the unfortunate operations of the corps of general Sierawski, and of the defeat of that corps at Kazimierz in the palatinate of Lublin, _the first defeat in the whole war_. That general, in neglecting the instructions of the commander in chief, not to engage with the enemy, on account of the inferiority of his own forces, (with which forces in fact he could not expect to act but in partizan warfare,) approached Lublin, where the two corps of Kreutz and Witt were supposed to be posted, while his orders were, by avoiding those corps, and taking the most circuitous roads, to endeavor to join as secretly and as soon as possible, the corps of Dwernicki. He was probably deceived by false information as to the direction of the enemy's corps, and led to believe that those two corps had quitted Lublin, to attack general Dwernicki at Zamosc. He therefore probably took the direction of Lublin, with the idea of acting upon the rear of the enemy at the moment of his attack upon Dwernicki. In this manner general Sierawski, quitting Kazimierz, arrived on the 16th of April at Belzyca. To his great astonishment he found there a strong advanced guard of the above mentioned corps. To avoid compromitting himself, he