The country subsequently suffered a series of defeats and all its southern areas were occupied by the Central Powers ("see Romanian Campaign"). Ionescu followed Romanian authorities into refuge to the provisional capital of Iaşi, being hosted by C. Konya, a well-known pharmacist whose house was near the local university. Ionescu's house on Bucharest's Atena Street was ransacked and partly vandalized by German troops — Constantin Argetoianu recounted that this was accomplished "methodically", and constituted "an exception" to the German administration's "scrupulous respect for private property". According to Take Ionescu himself, his lodging had been destroyed on special orders from August von Mackensen in December 1916 (he also contrasted this action with his promise to protect the property of former German ambassador, Hilmar von dem Bussche-Haddenhausen, after he had left Bucharest earlier in the same year).