Fresh troops are hourly leaving Sofia and Philippopolis for the front.
AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS—THE FIRST SHOT IN THE SERVO-BULGARIAN CAMPAIGN. ]
At the moment of closing this despatch, news comes of an important action near Dragoman, with reported defeat of the Servians with heavy losses.
There is to be no more fighting. The brilliant and most sanguinary engagement at Dragoman, which I reported in progress last night, in the course of which the Bulgarians, who were completely successful, drove the enemy back from all their positions on the heights above the pass: an incessant artillery duel, maintained ever since the commencement of hostilities between the heavy Servian batteries before Negotin and the Bulgarian forces garrisoning Widelin, and a very successful unopposed advance along the Vranja road as far as the Morava river by a Bulgarian force, composed of three brigades from Sofia, from Trn, and from Radomir, make up all there is to report of the campaign. For when hostilities were about to be opened this morning near Kumareno, which was evidently held by a large Servian force, an officer bearing a white towel, with a pink fringe, tied to a hedge stake, as a flag of truce, rode out from the Servian lines and demanded a _pourparler_. It then transpired that the Servians found themselves in a terrible quandary, and were at their wits’ end what to do.
Late last night a large Austrian force had, without warning, crossed the Save into Belgrade, which city they had taken so completely by surprise that it was not until the morning that the populace was made aware of the presence of the strangers in their midst by the sight of the troops bivouacking in the squares, and the officers quietly breakfasting outside the principal cafés. An Austrian force, said the parlementaire, had also crossed the Danube to Semendria, and there were rumours that another force had crossed the same river at Orsova. In these circumstances, with their capital cut off from them, and their young king and government in a manner locked up, the Servian generals considered they had no alternative but to demand a suspension of hostilities, at least for forty-eight hours. An armistice was therefore granted, much to the Bulgarian leaders’ annoyance and disgust.