When we arrived at the village we found that the cars, which had gone on in advance, were standing in two feet of water. The chauffeurs and the staff had gone into a cottage to dry their clothes, and in the meantime, a stream which ran across the road had expanded into a lake. The cottage was also surrounded by the flood, and the doctors and nurses were carried out by the gallant chauffeurs, who then waded up to their knees and rescued the cars. We found camping-ground for the column in an Arnaut (Albanian) village, and we ourselves slept in the cars upon the road; the snow was too deep for tent pitching. CHAPTER XXXI We left next morning, at nine, for Prishtina. Progress was very slow, the road being more than ever blocked with columns and refugees. The cold all day was bad enough, and but for straw-covered stirrups and my wonderful rubber canvas boots, worn over three pairs of stockings, I must have had frozen feet, but between 4 and 10 p.m. the cold was intense. Amongst many memorable days, that day stands conspicuous, for at dusk we began to cross the historic battlefield of Kossovo. Upon this desolate plain, which extends southwards to Skoplye, was fought, in 1389, the Waterloo of Serbia, the battle of Kossovo Polye (the field of blackbirds). Upon this plain, the Serbs had suffered, at the hands of the Turks, a defeat which robbed them of nationhood during nearly 500 years; a defeat which must have been the harder to bear because it came after 200 years of flourishing empire; this empire had begun with the Nemanya dynasty, under Stephen, in 1196, and had reached its zenith under another famous Stephen--Stephen Dushan--who died mysteriously in 1355. It was only in 1878, and, strangely enough, through the Treaty of Berlin, that the Serbs regained their independence. This Kossovo battle, more than any other in Balkan history, seems to have gripped the imagination of both Turks and Serbians, conquerors and defeated. Poets relate that the Turkish Amurath the First, though a Sultan, and presumably accustomed to such pastimes, was enjoying a honeymoon when he received news that the Serbs and Albanians had routed his legions, in the fastnesses of the Black Mountain; he, therefore, bade a hurried farewell to his bride, and, as there were no cars or aeroplanes in those days, he galloped to Kossovo, accompanied, it is said, by so many men "that a horseman could not ride from one wing of his army to the other in a fortnight. The plain of Kossovo was one mass of steel; horse stood against horse, man against man; the spears formed a thick forest; the banners obscured the sun; there was no space for a drop of water to fall between them."