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On November 9, 1916, it was announced through London that the Russian General Sakharov had been transferred from Galicia and was now in command of the allied forces in Dobrudja; that he had succeeded in pushing Mackensen's lines back from Hirsova on the Danube, where a gunboat flotilla was cooperating with him, and that Mackensen was now retreating through Topal, twelve miles farther south, and was only thirteen miles north of the Cernavoda-Constanza railroad.
In view of the political record of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and his present Prime Minister, the Roumanians may perhaps be excused for adopting an attitude of vigilant reserve; for their statesmen suspect that Bulgaria is only waiting until the Roumanian army has crossed the Carpathians in order to reoccupy the southern Dobrudja.
Already victorious in campaigns in Galicia and Serbia, Mackensen won new laurels in the Dobrudja. 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.
Here the Rumanians resisted furiously, and after an all-night fight they severely repulsed Mackensen's troops, taking eight German guns. However, this was only a temporary advantage. Some days later the German kaiser, in a telegram to his wife, announced that Mackensen had gained a decisive victory in Dobrudja.
Dobrudja forms a square tract of level country, about a hundred miles long and sixty broad, lying just south of the delta of the Danube and along the Black Sea coast. The larger part of it is marshy or low, sandy plain. Here the Danube splits into three branches, only one of which, the Sulina, is navigable.
Full details of these operations were never issued, but as day after day passed it became obvious that the Russo-Rumanian armies were indeed making a determined effort to regain the ground lost in Dobrudja.
And, lastly, the Rumanians complained that the action of the Supreme Council was creating a dangerous ferment in the Dobrudja, and even in Transylvania, where the Saxon minority, which had willingly accepted Rumanian sway, was beginning to agitate against it.
From across the river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds pulled by long-horned oxen, the Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs, poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the curses of the drivers rent the icy atmosphere.
So long as they had a footing here they remained a potential threat to the Teutons, which might awaken into active danger at the first favorable opportunity. To be ousted from this northern tip of Dobrudja would be even more serious to the Russo-Rumanians than the loss of Wallachia.
Within two days the Rumanians were no longer able to gain ground, though for some time longer they sorely pressed their enemies. Meanwhile, Mackensen in Dobrudja was showing extreme activity. The lull which followed the retirement of the Rumanians from Tutrakan was suddenly terminated on the 12th, when the Bulgarians and their allies attacked Lipnitza, fifteen miles east of Silistria.
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