So this is where President Slobodan Milsoevic led them - to this long, dusty road to ruin, this trail of tears from Prizren and Pristina across the border at Merdare, into the towns of southern Serbia where they are held back by police, prevented from parading their destitution on the streets of Belgrade.
They are the shame of Yugoslavia; tens of thousands of Serb refugees, burning their homes in Kosovo because they know they will not return in their lifetime, then migrating to the north, to Serbia proper, where they are not wanted. International aid agencies estimate that more than 30,000 have fled already, fearing the retribution of their ethnic Albanian neighbours. Judging by the numbers seen leaving Kosovo over the past week, they may number twice that many.
They were backed up on the road at Lebane yesterday, where two months ago Serb forces separated Albanian men from women and children. British troops stopped the refugees while a Yugoslav armoured vehicle towed a clapped-out T-54 tank from the underbrush and on to the highway. The tank had a homemade skull and crossbones flag flying from its antenna.
No one among the crowd of Yugoslav and British soldiers paid any heed to the Serb civilians, who waited in the sun in tractor-pulled trailers piled high with jerricans of fuel and water, bedding and moth-eaten furniture. Two Serb peasant women in kerchiefs and long dresses sat on the family sofa on the back of a wagon, staring south towards the fields of Kosovo Polje.
It was the fault of the politicians, they said. And "the politicians" meant Mr Milosevic.
The Serb mass exoduses of the 1990s - from Krajina and Slavonia in Croatia, from Bosnia and now from Kosovo - have been the unvarying consequence of Mr Milosevic's attempts to drive other ethnic minorities from Serb areas in former Yugoslavia.
Hundreds of thousands of these earlier refugees live in poverty in Serbia now; jobless, often criminals or squatters. But the present migration touches a deeper chord in the Serb psyche, reviving memories of the exodus from Kosovo in 1690, when Serbs were led out of the province by Patriarch Arsenije after a failed rebellion against the Turks.
The refugee column yesterday was 30 miles long, intermingled with Yugoslav army and gypsies. As stories of Serb atrocities against Albanians continue to emerge, no one will feel sorry for them. Official Yugoslav media do not even mention the fleeing Serbs, other than to exhort them to stay in Kosovo.
The Serb Orthodox Church - which opposes Mr Milosevic - is also begging them to stay, and Patriarch Pavle says he will leave Belgrade to live permanently in Kosovo to give them courage. At checkpoints just inside Serbia and again leaving the southern city of Nis, police - for once - showed no interest in foreign journalists because they were too busy stopping hundreds of refugee vehicles from moving on towards Belgrade.
Among the epic caravan on the highway yesterday were thousands of gypsies crowded on to medieval-looking horse-drawn wagons, the descendants of Indians who migrated to the Balkans in the 11th century. Gypsy musicians accompanied Serb soldiers into battle in the first World War.
The gypsies were included in the Yugoslav delegation to the Rambouillet talks. Most damning for their own future in Kosovo, gypsies helped Serb forces carry out "ethnic cleansing", setting fire to empty houses and participating in the looting. Now they too fear revenge.