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.