The army in the south had been defeated and was in full retreat. Hundreds of wounded men and stragglers confirmed the rumours of disaster; they were its human symbols, their broken and dejected mien banished all optimistic doubts. An exodus ensued; an exodus as unpremeditated as it was unreasoning. The fugitives did not consider why they fled, nor whither they would go: they were unnerved by months of strain and almost daily bombing: an uncontrollable impulse forced them to leave the stricken town. A motley crowd, on foot and horseback, in every sort of vehicle, in every stage of misery and despair, streamed past the lime trees of the Chaussée Kisileff and surged up the Great North Road. The season was far advanced. Out of the north-east came an eager wind and snow began to fall, large flakes fell softly but persistently from a surcharged, leaden sky, and lay upon the country-side like a widespreading shroud; a shroud for many little children, their innocence had not availed to save them; cunning and selfishness are better safeguards than youth and innocence in time of war. I caught up what might be called the rearguard of this lamentable procession two miles to the south of a little Wallachian town, which lay close to the frontier of Moldavia and General Alexieff’s shortest line. Motor cars, country carts and wagons stood four abreast across the road in a long column stretching northwards, whose immobility impeded further progress, however slow; the gathering darkness and exhaustion had set a period to this tragic flight. On foot, I reached the Headquarters of Count Keller, the commander of a Russian Cavalry Corps; the General had just finished dinner when I entered, and, perhaps for this reason, his outlook on the situation was less gloomy than otherwise it might have been. Count Keller was not devoid of human feeling, the welter of suffering outside his lodging would have touched a heart of stone; but, as a soldier, he was filled with indignation against the Rumanian Government, for having permitted thousands of civilians to use the only highway in this region, and thereby to block, for two whole days, the forward movement of his corps. The obvious retort was that his presence there was useless: he had arrived two months too late. On the following day, the refugees from Wallachia crossed the Sereth into Moldavia, and found security behind a screen composed of Russian troops. About half a million Russian soldiers had arrived in the Northern Principality and more were yet to come. Wild, uncouth Cossacks swarmed in every village, their first thoughts plunder and the satisfaction of gross appetites; some tried to sell their splendid horses for alcohol in any form.