s from this front for the Transylvania operations.
This, in fact, they had been doing, and when, on the 19th, he suddenly
began renewing his operations, the Russo-Rumanian forces were not in a
position to hold him back.

After a vigorous artillery preparation, which destroyed the
Russo-Rumanian trenches in several places, Mackensen began a series of
assaults which presently compelled the Russo-Rumanian forces to
retire in the center and on the right wing. On the 21st the Germans
reported that they had captured Tuzla and the heights northwest of
Toprosari, as well as the heights near Mulciova, and that they had
taken prisoner some three thousand Russians. This success now began to
threaten the railroad line from Cernavoda to Constanza. This line had
been Mackensen's objective from the beginning. On the 23d a dispatch
from Bucharest announced that the Rumanian lines had retired again and
were barely south of this railroad. Having captured Toprosari and
Cobadin, the Bulgarians advanced on Constanza, and on the 22d they
succeeded in entering this important seaport, though the Rumanians
were able to remove the stores there under the fire of the Russian
warships.

[Illustration: General von Mackensen and his staff in Rumania. Already
victorious in campaigns in Galicia and Serbia, Mackensen won new
laurels in the Dobrudja. His troops pushed on to Bucharest, which fell
December 6, 1916.]

On the same date Mackensen began an attack on Medgidia, up the
railroad about twenty-five miles from Constanza, and succeeded in
taking it. He also took Rasova, in spite of the fierce resistance
which the Rumanians made at this point. In these operations Mackensen
reported that he had taken seven thousand prisoners and twelve guns.
Next he attacked Cernavoda, where the great bridge crossed the Danube,
and on the morning of the 25th the defenders were compelled to retire
across the structure, afterward blowing it up. Thus the railroad was
now in the hands of Mackensen. The Russians and the Rumanians had been
driven across the river or up along its bank. But it would be no small
matter for the enemy to follow them. With the aid of so effective a
barrier as this broad river it now seemed possible that the Rumanians
might decrease their forces very considerably on this front, still
succeed in holding Mackensen back, and turn their full attention to
Falkenhayn in the north. Of course, there still remained the northern
section of Dobrudja, passi