Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

140 HISTORY OF THE WAR.

being forced down the Nishava valley from Pirot -by the Bulgarian centre. On the north Obrenovatz had fallen, and the line of the Save was clear for the invader.

Events now moved fast. The Allies were fighting their own battle in the south, which we shall presently consider. They were cut off from the Serbians altogether, though twenty miles north of them a Serbian detachment was falling back before the Bulgarian advance on Veles. In the week be-

Oct. 18 ginning Monday, the 18th, the chief

- effort was made by Teodorov’s Army of the South. Veles, or Kuprulu, fell on the zoth,

Oct. 20 and on the 22nd, late in the afternoon,

2 the Bulgarians entered Uskub, the nodal "point of all the routes of Southern Serbia. This was a swift advance, for the simple reason that there was nothing to stop it. All the considerable Serbian armies were in the north, and the Allies from Salonika were too late to do more than check the extreme left of the Bulgarian movement. Had they been earlier on the scene the long narrow gorge through which the railway runs north of Vrania would have given them a strong position in which to hold the enemy.

The loss of Uskub was a misfortune of the first magnitude. It cut off all communication between the Vardar and Morava valleys. It blocked the routes to Prilep and Monastir in the south, and the access to Kossovo and Novi Bazar in the north by the Katchanik Pass. The outlook for Serbia was black indeed, and she made a last despairing appeal to the Allies for aid. Throughout the land a mass of fugitives of every age and condition was fleeing dis-