The great stroke at Przasnysz was the most dramatic feature of a grand offensive all around the German lines that were endeavoring to close in upon the Russian armies. On July 16, 1915, the Archduke Joseph struck hard at the Russians on the Krasnik-Lublin road in an endeavor to carry the fortified positions at Wilkolaz. His men, however, were thrown back after ten furious assaults. Krasnostav, on the road to Cholm, was attacked on the same day by the army of General von Mackensen, and after a series of desperate rear-guard actions had been fought by the Russians was swept over by the German Allies. By the close of the day the Germans had taken twenty-eight officers, 6,380 men, and nine machine guns. The Germans, prepared in the recent pause in the fighting, by the bringing up of their artillery on the long lines of communication which now stretched behind them, with troops reenforced by such fresh forces as they could muster, were hurling themselves upon the Russian defensive positions everywhere along the line. Thus, on the forenoon of July 17, 1915, the army of General von Woyrsch, whose objective was the mighty fortress Ivangorod, operating just to the west of the upper Vistula, broke through the Russian wire entanglements and stormed the enemy's trenches on a stretch of 2,000 meters. The breach was widened in desperate hand-to-hand combat. The Teutons by evening inflicted a heavy defeat on the Moscow Grenadier Corps at this point and the Russians were forced to retreat behind the Ilzanka to the south of Swolen. Some 2,000 men were taken prisoners by the Germans in this battle and five machine guns were captured. Far in the northeast in Courland the army of General von Buelow, on July 17, 1915, defeated Russian forces that had been rushed up at Alt-Auz, taking 3,620 prisoners, six cannon and three machine guns, and pursuing the Slavs in an easterly direction. Desperate fighting was also taking place to the northeast of Kurschany. Notes of anxiety mixed with consoling speculations had begun to appear in the press of the allied countries when the vast German offensive had thus become plainly revealed and had demonstrated its driving force. A Petrograd dispatch to the London "Morning Post" on the 15th of July, 1915, said of the German plan that it was to catch the Russian armies like a nut between nut crackers, that the two fronts moving up from north and south were intended to meet on another and grind everything between them to powder. The area between the attacking forces was some eighty miles in extent, north to south, by 120 miles west to east. The writer offered the consolation that this space was well fortified, the kernel of the nut "sound and healthy, being formed of the Russian armies, inspired not merely with the righteousness of their cause, but the fullest confidence in themselves and absolute devotion to the proved genius of their commander in chief."