Seite - 178 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

178 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ deficiencies became evident. As a result, 27,000 workers were brought in within a very short space of time to complete the preparations. The lines of fortifications were reinforced, ditches, entrenchments, battery positions and obstacles were erected, and depots, barracks and storage facilities were built. 1,000 hectares of forest were cleared, above all by sawing down the trees, since the heavy rainfall made it impossible to burn them down. 21 villages were razed to provide an open glacis. Within the fortress itself a massive army camp was established. Around 22 battalions of the Landsturm infantry, the cavalry, 35 companies of fortress artillery, sappers, Landsturm artillery, etc., which made up the original garrison, were joined by the troop formations that arrived in stages, and which increased the number of men occupying the fortress to over 80,000.423 However, they were not to remain in the fortress, but instead depart when the advance began. The Army High Command, however, was to be permanently established in the fortress. For Archduke Friedrich, additional headquarters, the royal military quarters, were established, which would later be relocated to Galicia. They were to be installed not at the site of the actual high command, but in Chyrów, about 35 km away. The court boarded its train during the night of 20 August. The Army Supreme Commander was to lack no comfort. The train travelled very slowly. On 21 August, an eclipse of the sun could be seen. In Jarosław (Jaroslau), a dragoon gave news of a battle ‘somewhere up there on the border, rather confused stuff’, as Count Herbert Herberstein, Lord Cham- berlain of his Imperial and Royal Majesty, the Army Supreme Commander, noted. In Przemyśl, where they arrived after two days’ train journey, there were already war-like scenes. Hundreds of Landsturm men were digging trenches, field bakeries were being erected, and troops were marching. The ‘cleansing of the theatre of war’ was also already fully underway. People were seized on a daily basis on suspicion of spying, and anyone who appeared to be unreliable was removed from the deployment zones. In one of the cleansing operations conducted by the police in the deployment zone of Galicia, in Poronin near Zakopane, a certain Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who called himself Lenin, was seized.424 However, after Victor Adler, the Social Democrat member of the Re- ichsrat intervened, saying the Lenin was an emigrant and an enemy of Tsarist Russia, who ‘would serve Austria well’, he was released and was able to travel to Zürich via Vienna.425 One can only guess what might have happened if Lenin had been hanged or at least interned like hundreds, or possibly thousands, of others who were convicted or suspected of spying. However, the hope that Lenin might one day be useful carried more weight than the initial mistrust. Suddenly, the mood changed. Bad news arrived from the Balkans. General Frank’s army, the Imperial and Royal 5th Army, had been beaten on the Drina. In the north, a Honvéd (Hungarian standing army) cavalry division had suffered a defeat after in- itial successes. Well-known people were named as having been wounded or killed.