It seemed, then, that Russia had no very formidable task before her.  Early in May seven army corps began to move towards that great river.  They included 180 battalions of infantry, 200 squadrons of cavalry, and 800 guns—­in all about 200,000 men.  Their cannon were inferior to those of the Turks, but this seemed a small matter in view of the superior numbers which Russia seemed about to place in the field.  The mobilisation of her huge army, however, went on slowly, and produced by no means the numbers that were officially reported.  Our military attache at the Russian headquarters, Colonel Wellesley, reported this fact to the British Government; and, on this being found out, incurred disagreeable slights from the Russian authorities[132].

[Footnote 132:  With the Russians in War and Peace, by Colonel F.A.  Wellesley (1905), ch. xvii.]

Meanwhile Russia had secured the co-operation of Roumania by a convention signed on April 16, whereby the latter State granted a free passage through that Principality, and promised friendly treatment to the Muscovite troops.  The Czar in return pledged himself to “maintain and defend the actual integrity of Roumania[133].”  The sequel will show how this promise was fulfilled.  For the present it seemed that the interests of the Principality were fully secured.  Accordingly Prince Charles (elder brother of the Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, whose candidature for the Crown of Spain made so much stir in 1870) took the further step of abrogating the suzerainty of the Sultan over Roumania (June 3).

[Footnote 133:  Hertslet, vol. iv. p. 2577.]

Even before the declaration of independence Roumania had ventured on a few acts of war against Turkey; but the co-operation of her army, comprising 50,000 regulars and 70,000 National Guards, with that of Russia proved to be a knotty question.  The Emperor Alexander II., on reaching the Russian headquarters at Plojeschti, to the north of Bukharest, expressed his wish to help the Roumanian army, but insisted that it must be placed under the commander-in-chief of the Russian forces, the Grand Duke Nicholas.  To this Prince Charles demurred, and the Roumanian troops at first took no active part in the campaign.  Undoubtedly their non-arrival served to mar the plans of the Russian Staff[134].

[Footnote 134:  Reminiscences of the King of Roumania, edited by S. Whitman (1899), pp. 269, 274.] Delays multiplied from the outset.  The Russians, not having naval superiority in the Black Sea which helped to gain them their speedy triumph in the campaign of 1828, could only strike through Roumania and across the Danube and the difficult passes of the middle Balkans.  Further, as the Roumanian railways had but single lines, the movement of men and stores to the Danube was very slow.  Numbers of the troops, after camping on its marshy banks (for the river was then in flood), fell ill of malarial fever; above all, the carelessness of the Russian