with the aid of civil labour, were made defensible by the first weeks of the new year. The line selected ran from the Vardar mouth, round by Doganzi and Daudli to the neighbourhood of Langaza, whence it passed along the barrier of lakes to the head of the gulf of Orfano 80 m. of frontage for a force of nine divisions. 1 Of this frontage, however, nearly 45 m. was guarded by lake and swamp; and, taking into account the presence of large bodies of Greek troops in the Seres-Rupel region to the right front and in the Vodena-Florina region to the left front, Sarrail considered that danger was practically confined to the central sector between Lake Langaza and the Vardar, in the event the position was ever attacked.
During this period (Jan.-Feb. 1916), the Bulgarians were reinforced by the German XI. Army (von Gallwitz) consisting or the IV. Res. Corps (loist and icyrd Divs.) and the Alpine Corps, and by their own ist Army, all these forces aligning themselves along the Greek border from Lake Ohrida to the point at which the Struma enters Bulgarian territory. The ist Bulgarian Army, with flank guards at Dibra and Elbasan in Albania, had two divisions 2 on the front S. of Monastir- Duditsa; the XI. German Army, with ij Bulgarian Divisions attached, held the Vardar valley between Duditsa and the Belashitsa Planina, and Todorov's II. Bulgarian Army of three divisions that ranged from Strumitsa to Petrich, with detach- ments further E. at Nevrekop (Mesta valley). But in March Falkenhayn began to withdraw all the German formations save the loist Div., which continued in the Balkans and was gradually reduced to a cadre. On his side Sarrail made some slight demonstrations towards Doiran and towards Vodena, but otherwise no move occurred. Early in March 1916, however, in the crisis produced by the attack on Verdun, Joffre telegraphed orders to Sarrail to advance in order to fix the enemy's forces on his front. On the other hand General Mahon, on asking for instructions, was forbidden to move until authorized by the British Government. 3 The relief offensive, therefore, was limited to a skirmishing advance by the French, which began on March 13, and gradually brought the French 5ist Div. to the N. of Kilkish, and the 12 2nd to the N. of Lake Amatovo, the is6th between them (March 31).
During April 1916, while French cavalry moved out W. of the Vardar towards Vodena and the 17th Colonial Div. came up behind the centre, the British in their turn began to move up to Kilkish, authority to participate " in an operation of a demonstrative character " having been given by the War Office about April 10 (Joffre to Sarrail, April 20). Lastly, the Ser- bian Army, reconstituted and partially reequipped at Corfu, was beginning to land at Salonika, and by June i 118,000 combatants and non-combatants were present, completing their equipment and organization in the Chalcidic peninsula. These methodical proceedings, however, did not satisfy Joffre, whose instructions to Sarrail from March onwards were to prepare for an offensive in earnest. To Sarrail's demand for reinforcements for such an offensive, the French commander- in-chief replied that the French Army of the E. must prepare to attack at the moment fixed by himself, even without the British. In explanation, he hinted that when that moment came, not only would British objections be removed, and all five British divisions be equipped for mountain warfare (making Sarrail's total force, with the Serbians, 300,000 strong to the enemy's 260,000), but Rumania and Greece would be in the field as his Allies. Thus for the first time since the Serbian retreat the Salonika force was assigned to a positive purpose. It will appear in the sequel how much of reality and how much of illusion was contained in the scheme, which, in sum, was to attack at a date chosen in relation to other theatres and especially Rumania, with Sofia as the objective.
1 The withdrawal from Helles freed further French troops, from whom a serviceable brigade was made up and combined with a brigade from France to form the 1 7th Colonial Division.
2 The Bulgarian division had twice the infantry strength of a French or German division.
' Sarrail's orders were issued by G.Q.G. without consultation with the British government or Lord Kitchener. (Sarrail, p. 83.)
Meantime, an important incident had taken place on the Struma frontier. In accordance with their declared policy of standing aside and leaving a " lists " for the combatants, the Greeks had disarmed and evacuated their fort of Dova Tepe, situated on the watershed between the Vardar and Struma basins and commanding a knot of communications. In the course of his gradual advance to the frontier, Sarrail put a detachment into this fort on May 10. But further to the right, outside his reach, lay a still more important fort, that of Rupel defile. This fort was not merely disarmed but actually handed over to the Bulgarians by the local Greek general, with or without authority from Athens (May 26).
Events had moved. Though the German forces (except the cadre of the loist Div.) had by this time been withdrawn from the Balkan front, the Greeks had apparently overcome their repugnance to a purely Bulgarian inroad, to the extent of actually facilitating it. The Allies' right was, potentially, turned, and if the occurrence were any indication of proba- bilities of the future, their rear also was endangered. Action was taken promptly by Sarrail. A mobile group of all arms was moved into the Struma region, and with the agreement of Gen. Milne (who in May succeeded Mahon in command of the British) and of the Entente Governments, the Greek authori- ties at Salonika were deprived of power by the proclamation of a state of siege (June 3). A day or two later London and Paris also acted. An economic blockade of the Greek coast was declared, and on the i8th Sarrail was ordered to send a brigade by sea to Athens. King Constantine accepted the ulti- matum of the Allies (June 21), and Zaimis returned to power on the basis of friendly neutrality. A little later the Rupel incident had its last and most important sequel in the Venezelist coup d'ilat of Aug. 30.
Militarily the seizure of Rupel, carried out at the suggestion of Falkenhayn, seems to have had no truly offensive intention. The Central Powers had abandoned the idea of invading Greece once for all about the end of March, and the Bulgarians acted with the idea of guarding their left, and securing connexion with any Turkish forces which might be sent to their aid by the Constantinople-Seres railway, though in view of the situation in Armenia such a reinforcement was unlikely. As for Sarrail, so also for his opponents, the Balkan front was already involved in a larger game.
As has been noted above, the idea of an Allied offensive from Salonika in cooperation with a Rumanian intervention came under discussion as early as mid- April; at that time Joffre seems to have thought that this intervention might come in a few weeks, for he overruled Sarrail's objections to commencing operations in the hot weather, and fixed the month of June for the begin- ning of the offensive. Under these instructions Sarrail formed his first plan (May 2) which was, in brief, to employ the Serbs on the left wing for the attack of Monastir (frontally and by envelopment), and for pressure on the Cerna bend and the passes further E. towards the Vardar; to place a French division on the Vardar and the railway; to have three British divisions, with a fourth on their right rear, so placed as to execute a demonstrative attack on the strongest part of the enemy's front, viz. Vardar- Doiran; and to attack with three French divisions from Popovo Surlovo-Dova Tepe and Poroy north- wards through the Belashitsa Planina, while the French Struma mobile group demonstrated towards the Demir Hisar angle of the Struma, and the fifth British division with cavalry watched the lower Struma front. In case the semi-offensive, semi-de- monstrative, operations should develop into a real advance, the Serbs were to take Veles and Shtip, the British Radovishta- Strumitsa, and the French Jumaya as their objectives. The armies would thus condense their front as they advanced, the route Monastir-Veles marking the extreme left of the Serbian movement, and that of the upper Struma, famous in the war of 1913, taking the French into positions on the Bulgarian line of retreat. But the negotiations of the Allies with Rumania, and their internal discussions relative to their Salonika operations and their policy in Greece, dragged on. On June 6 Gen. Milne was
