and thenceforward
the Bulgarians are seldom mentioned, and the contest is prosecuted by
the 'allies,' or the 'Russo-Roumanian' army. At first the Roumanian
soldiers receive scant regard at the hands of the chroniclers: indeed,
on one or two occasions they are referred to with marked contempt.
Writing from Giurgevo on June 5 (that was before the Russians had
crossed the Danube at Simnitza), one of the correspondents
says:--'Whilst eating and talking, I heard one or two curious incidents
that occurred here when the Cossacks first came. In the course of
reconnoitring the country, five Cossacks, with an under-officer, came
upon a post of twenty Roumanian soldiers, likewise under the command of
an under-officer. The five Cossacks immediately arrested the twenty
Roumanians, brought them in to headquarters, and reported them to
General Skobeleff as prisoners of some unknown army. The Cossacks were
not quite sure, apparently, whether they were Turks or not, so they
thought that they had better bring them in, an operation to which the
Roumanians, although vastly superior in numbers, consented with not a
little murmuring.'[180]

This anecdote, it must be understood, was told by a party of Russian
officers, and is unworthy of critical examination, but it shows in what
estimation they held the men who were afterwards to be their
indispensable helpmates, and in a sense their leaders and preservers.
Other writers represented the Roumanian soldiers in a more favourable
light from the beginning of the war. Their coolness under fire has
already been mentioned, and the same correspondent, in describing the
defensive operations at Kalafat, says: 'I was struck with the admirable
conduct at this time of the Roumanian gunners, who never flinched in the
slightest degree under the trying ordeal.'[181] After their defeats
before Plevna and elsewhere, the Russians, too, began to estimate their
allies at something nearer their real value.

'The Russian authorities,' writes the same correspondent in the month of
August, 'are greatly pleased with the appearance and apparent efficiency
of the Roumanian artillery. Indeed, the Roumanian troops are everywhere
now spoken of with a consideration not previously evinced.'[182]

No more talk now of five Russians running in twenty Roumanians; and we
shall hear quite a different story presently. And not alone had the
soldiers risen in Muscovite esteem, but the Russians were beginning to
understand that th