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General Joffre had so arranged his forces that the most spectacular and the easiest part fell to the British, and it was accomplished with perfection of detail. But the honors of the battles of the Marne lay with General Sarrail's army and with the "Iron Division of Toul."
At the end of February Sarrail had told his commanders that he intended attacking all along the line at Salonika in the first week of April as his contribution to the comprehensive Allied advance. But local operations in March, which succeeded in linking up the Italians east of Avlona with Sarrail's left, did not lead up to the expected climax.
A month later she landed an army on the Albanian coast, at Avlona and elsewhere, but, while this facilitated the escape of many of the Serbian refugees, it was too late to have any effect on the military situation. Throughout the latter part of November, 1915, after the battle between General Sarrail's army at Mt.
Considering the tremendous difficulties he had had to contend with, in the face of the immense strength of his enemy, General Sarrail's retreat by no means diminished his reputation as a military leader.
General Sarrail's army, fighting a losing game, showed marvelous stubbornness and gameness, but even so, it could not resist being pushed south of Fort Troyon, itself unable to support the battering it might expect to receive when the German siege guns should be brought into place. At every point but one the Germans had a right to deem the day successful.
Here they joined General Sarrail's army, rested and refreshed, and frantic for revenge on the Germans and Bulgars. Several thousands of the Greek troops, following the leadership of Venizelos, deserted the king and joined the allies. Meanwhile, in Athens one prime minister after another tried to steer the ship of state. The people of Greece were in a turmoil.
No doubt they were in superior numbers, for Sarrail's offensive in Macedonia had grown extremely formidable and the Bulgarians had been compelled to rush down reenforcements from the Dobrudja front. At any rate, Mackensen was forced to retreat until he established his re-formed lines from Oltina, on the Danube, to a point southwest of Toprosari, thence to the Black Sea coast, south of Tuzla.
Sarrail's objective was Monastir, an eccentric route to Sofia or the Danube, and the British troops along the Struma were not cast for the part of an advance towards Rumania. Bulgaria, moreover, was not yet Rumania's enemy, and had shown signs of remaining neutral.
Sakharov had been forced to withdraw from the Dobrudja, and all that was left of Rumania was its Moldavian province, less than one-third of the kingdom, with its capital near the Russian frontier at Jassy. Sarrail's campaign in the south provided inadequate compensation.
Possibly it was not Sarrail's object to attempt any real advance over in this section; merely to keep the enemy engaged there and prevent his rendering too much aid to the harried Bulgarian right wing. His main offensive, if he really had contemplated a real advance, had evidently been planned for the Monastir route into Serbia.
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