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If we had been able to say that they had such things as motor transport, or steam wagons, he would have cheerfully allowed us to send it. After Lule Burgas the ox-transport had to do the impossible. It was impossible for it to maintain the food and the ammunition supply of the army at the front, which I suppose must have numbered 250,000 to 300,000 men.
All the world knows now, and the Bulgarian staff must have known at the time, that for a week after Lüle Burgas the utter demoralization of the Turkish retreat left the way open to Constantinople. Why did not General Demetrief go on? Why did that army which had proceeded thus far with such impetuous and irresistible momentum suddenly turn snail?
The seat of war between Bulgaria and Turkey, aside from the continued siege of Adrianople, was by this success transferred to the Tchatalja lines, along which the opposing armies lay stretched during the week succeeding the Lule Burgas victory.
In the Lule dialect I find fo, water; foyavolto, a river; foysi, a lake; as in Persian, ab is water; abi frat, the river Euphrates; abdan, a lake. Must we admit that llamas, which were used in the Andes to draw the plough and as beasts of burden, but not for riding, were already common on the north and east of Quito?
Here was a country which only thirty-five years earlier had been an unknown and despised province of Turkey in Europe now overwhelming the armies of the Ottoman Empire in the great victories of Kirk Kilisse, Lule Burgas, and Chorlu. In a few weeks the irresistible troops of King Ferdinand had reached the Chataldja line of fortifications.
In fact, the Bulgarians gave way, and thus enabled Nazim Pasha to report to Constantinople some success in this direction. In the meantime, however, General Savoff hurled his great strength against the Turks' weakened left wing, which he crushed in at Lule Burgas.
In that the soldier was assisted by the perfect discipline of the nation, which allowed a cheerful obedience to the most exacting demands and absolute secrecy. But it seemed to me that at the stage when the battle of Lule Burgas had been fought and won, there was a very serious mistake. I have reasons for thinking that that was not the original plan of the soldiers.
It was three weeks after Lüle Burgas before Demetrief was ready to attack; three weeks, in which the cholera scare had abated, the panic in Constantinople had come and gone, reenforcements had arrived and been organized into a kind of order, while they built fortifications. The Turkish cruisers supported both of Nazim Pasha's flanks with the fire of heavier guns than the Bulgars possessed.
Adrianople lay across the straight line of transportation by railroad and highway to the peninsula. All munitions for Demetrief's army had to go around it in the miserable, antiquated ox-carts. It was the rock splitting the flood of the Bulgarian advance. While the world was hearing rumors of the city's fall, the truth was that it was not really invested until a month after Lüle Burgas was fought.
There was great enterprise shown in this second line of advance and it was responsible for all the great victories won. Taking Kirk Kilisse by surprise the Bulgarian forces kept the Turkish vanguard on the run until Lule Burgas, where the Turkish main army made a stand and the decisive battle of the campaign was fought.
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