lgrade-Nish-Saloniki
railroad, and thus cut off the true line of Serbian retreat, that
upon Saloniki.

Very early in the campaign the Bulgars seized Uskub, thus
interposing a wedge between the small Anglo-French force at Saloniki
and the Serbs about Nish to the north of Uskub. Meantime a desperate
concentration was taking place at Saloniki, and an Anglo-French
force, commanded by Sarrail, was being pushed up the Saloniki
railroad toward Uskub to open a road to the Serbs to join their
allies. The operation suggested that successfully conducted in
Flanders in the opening months of the war, which enabled the Belgian
army to escape from Antwerp and join their allies in Flanders.

But this operation failed. The French came north to the outskirts of
Veles, twenty miles from Uskub, just too late to save the Serbians,
who now fled west to Monastir and south to Montenegro and Albania.
As a fighting force the Serbs were eliminated, the wrecks of their
armies barely escaping to the Adriatic and Aegean coasts at Durazzo
and Saloniki. Bulgarian troops forced the Katchanik gorges and took
Prisrend, and German and Austrian forces entered the ill-omened
Plain of Kossovo and overran the ancient Sanjak of Novibazar.

Before the storm that was now moving south, the French and British
retreated upon Saloniki, and presently began to construct about this
Greek city lines and defenses recalling those Wellington built at
Torres Vedras before Lisbon to restrain the flood of Napoleonic
invasion in the Iberian peninsula. The conquest of the Balkan
peninsula, save for Greece, was now as complete as Napoleon's own
success in Spain had been more than a century before.

In due course of time an Austrian army repeated the operations of
the Germans, this time succeeding in reducing the strongholds of
Montenegro, which had defied the Turk through long centuries. Mount
Lovetcen, the peak which looks down upon Cattaro and commands the
inner bay, was at last taken, Scutari followed, northern Albania was
overrun, Nicholas followed Peter into exile. All Macedonia was taken
and the Allies forced out of Serbia, which had become an entirely
conquered country. To complete the conquest of the Near East there
was needed nothing but a successful siege of Saloniki, but this
required preparation and the rebuilding of destroyed railroads, and
so the Allies found respite in this Aegean port for a brief time.

Such was Germany's third campaign. Her victory enabled