The 2nd, or Pomeranian Corps, has meanwhile been appointed to cope with any descent from the Russian Fleet on the Baltic shore; while the 9th Corps has been similarly left in Schleswig-Holstein for the double purpose of frustrating any attempted landing in that quarter, and also of keeping an eye on Denmark, whose hearts are practically with the Russians, and who have not yet forgotten the Redoubts of Düppel. On the other hand, the fortification of Breslau is proceeding at a rapid rate, Prince Pless and the Duke of Ratibor having lent a little army of their miners to do the necessary pick and spade work; while the Army of Silesia (under Prince George of Saxony) is now echeloned along the railway line, parallel to the Russian border, between Kreuzburg and Tarnowitz—_in utrumque paratus_—that is to say, ready either for a front march across the frontier on Czenstochau, on the Warsaw railway, or for a flanking movement of support in the direction of Cracow, as occasion may demand. The Austrians, we know, are well forward with their concentration; but owing to the fact that the telegraph wires of the Russians have now ceased to speak to the outer world, and that travellers are neither allowed into nor out of Russia, we are still very much in the dark with regard to their massings and their movements. To-morrow, however, we mean, if possible, to try and penetrate a little the veil of this mystery. FIRST COLLISION OF RUSSIAN AND GERMAN TROOPS. SKIRMISH AT ALEXANDROVO. (_By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe._) THORN, _April 30_. I have just returned from a reconnoitring ride with two squadrons of the Zieten Hussars, who pushed across the Russian frontier to within sight of Alexandrovo, the scene of the meeting (of which I had the good fortune to be an eye-witness) between the old German Emperor and the late Czar Alexander II., in September 1879, shortly before the signature of the Austro-German Treaty of Alliance. It is a curious coincidence that the first blood in the present campaign should have been drawn within view of the spot to which the old Emperor—greatly against the advice of his irate Chancellor, Bismarck—then hastened to conjure the Czar to desist from his warlike operations, and assure him, on the other hand, of his own unalterable determination to keep the peace.