kharest, expressed his wish to help the Roumanian army, but insisted
that it must be placed under the commander-in-chief of the Russian
forces, the Grand Duke Nicholas. To this Prince Charles demurred, and
the Roumanian troops at first took no active part in the campaign.
Undoubtedly their non-arrival served to mar the plans of the Russian
Staff[134].

[Footnote 134: _Reminiscences of the King of Roumania_, edited by S.
Whitman (1899), pp. 269, 274.] Delays multiplied from the outset. The
Russians, not having naval superiority in the Black Sea which helped to
gain them their speedy triumph in the campaign of 1828, could only
strike through Roumania and across the Danube and the difficult passes
of the middle Balkans. Further, as the Roumanian railways had but single
lines, the movement of men and stores to the Danube was very slow.
Numbers of the troops, after camping on its marshy banks (for the river
was then in flood), fell ill of malarial fever; above all, the
carelessness of the Russian Staff and the unblushing peculation of its
subordinates and contractors clogged the wheels of the military machine.
One result of it was seen in the bad bread supplied to the troops. A
Roumanian officer, when dining with the Grand Duke Nicholas, ventured to
compare the ration bread of the Russians with the far better bread
supplied to his own men at cheaper rates. The Grand Duke looked at the
two specimens and then--talked of something else[135]. Nothing could be
done until the flood subsided and large bodies of troops were ready to
threaten the Turkish line of defence at several points[136]. The Ottoman
position by no means lacked elements of strength. The first of these was
the Danube itself. The task of crossing a great river in front of an
active foe is one of the most dangerous of all military operations. Any
serious miscalculation of the strength, the position, or the mobility of
the enemy's forces may lead to an irreparable disaster; and until the
bridges used for the crossing are defended by _tetes de pont_ the
position of the column that has passed over is precarious.

[Footnote 135: Farcy, _La Guerre sur le Danube_, p. 73. For other
malpractices see Colonel F.A. Wellesley's _With the Russians in Peace
and War_, chs. xi. xii.]

[Footnote 136: _Punch_ hit off the situation by thus parodying the
well-known line of Horace: "Russicus expectat dum defluat amnis."]

The Danube is especially hard to cross, because its northern