Within one hour of that amazing charge the battle of Kumanovo was lost and won. The Turkish General’s last hope must have disappeared when a well-aimed refale from a group of Servian howitzers threw the massed squadrons of Ali Mechmet Pasha into hopeless confusion. Hundreds of riderless horses scoured the plain, and through them, ever pressing forward, surged the grey lines of Servia’s indomitable infantry. The Turks were not merely driven back, they were routed, a rabble of unarmed men fled across the plain to Uskub and spread panic in the town; no attempt was made to man the forts, a general sauve qui peut took place; a well-equipped and numerous army melted away in headlong flight.
By noon Uskub had ceased to be a Turkish town, its name was, once more, Skoplje.
During the afternoon I came across some regiments, which had fought on the extreme right, forming up about five miles north of the town. The men grinned with pride and satisfaction as they showed the blood-stains on their bayonets; they had come far for this, but knew no fatigue. Though so fierce in battle and filled with blood-lust, they were curiously gentle in their ways with the wounded of both sides and their prisoners; one felt that one was with a lot of big, strong children who would bear almost anything up to a certain point, but that beyond that point it was most inadvisable to go.
All sorts of wild stories were being circulated. It was said that a man, dressed in white and riding a white horse, had led the charge—many had seen the apparition, and had recognized Czar Lazar.
A strange meeting took place that evening. The Consuls of the Great Powers in Uskub had remained in the panic-stricken town. When the last vestige of Turkish authority had left, they sallied forth in carriages to meet the conquering host, bringing with them the keys of the town. On reaching the Servian outpost line they were forced to alight, and, after being blindfolded, to proceed on foot to the headquarters of the Crown Prince, a distance of 1½ miles. The scene was not without a certain irony. On the one hand, a young Balkan Prince, elated with victory, surrounded by his Staff; on the other, the representatives of Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy blindfolded, muddy and dishevelled by a long tramp in goloshes through black, sticky mud. Fine feathers make fine birds, national prestige has, after all, something to do with gold lace.
The conqueror received these unexpected envoys graciously and accepted the keys, but he slept that night among his soldiers on the ground that they had won.
Few triumphs have found a more appropriate setting. To the south the plain terminated in an arc of hills already dimmed by gathering twilight; spanning the arc the River Vardar shone like a band of silver; between the river and the hills lay Skoplje, the minarets of its numerous mosques served as reminders of the conquered Turk; commanding both the valley and the town a fortress stood, its old grey walls had sheltered Dushan, the greatest of all the Servian Tsars. These were the fruits of victory—and the tokens of revenge.
I rode back to our bivouac with the Russian Military Attaché, and quoted to him the words of Goethe after Valmy; we were indeed entering on a new world in the Balkans. My companion put his thoughts into far more concrete form:[4] “C’est la liquidation de l’Autriche” was his comment on the situation. The wish was father to the thought, a frequent source of error in Russian calculations; Servia’s victory was, undoubtedly, a discomfiture for the Ball Platz,[5] but the final liquidation of Austria-Hungary was not yet accomplished. That consummation was reserved for a later date, and for a more universal tragedy.
Our road led across the battlefield. On every side were traces of the struggle, corpses of men, dead and dying horses. Near the railway we found a Turkish gun team of which five of the horses had been killed or wounded by a shell, the sixth horse, a big solemn-looking grey, was standing uninjured by his fallen comrades, an image of dumb distress. A Servian soldier, charged with the collection of loose horses, appeared upon the scene, and, after putting the wounded animals out of their pain, turned to the grey, which had been standing quietly watching the man at work. Obviously, the next step was departure, but here a difficulty arose. The solitary survivor of the gun team was loth to leave, and the look in his honest, wistful eyes was infinitely pathetic. A colloquy ensued between the representative of the Russian Empire and the Servian peasant. Both were Slavs, and, in consequence, horse lovers; both agreed that this horse deserved and desired death; there and then an act of extravagance, almost impossible in any other army, was perpetrated, and the gun team was reunited in some equine Nirvana known only to Slavs and Arabs. “Another victim of the war,” I remarked to my companion, as we continued on our road. He evidently considered this observation as typical of my British lack of imagination, and proceeded to recite a poem describing the fall of snowflakes. Russians can witness human suffering with indifference, but are curiously sentimental in regard to nature, animals and flowers; nearly all Slavs possess a dangerous charm, the charm of men with generous impulses uncontrolled by guiding principles; their speech is splendid and inspiring, their actions uncertain, since they are ever at the mercy of lurking passions and events.