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 Staff and the unblushing peculation of its subordinates and contractors clogged the wheels of the military machine.
One result of it was seen in the bad bread supplied to the troops.