Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

130 HISTORY OF THE WAR.

The one desperate chance was that the Allies at Salonika might be able to turn the Bulgarian: flank, and protect the railway at any rate as far asUskub. That would have allowed of a stand on the line of the Ibar and the Upper Morava. The Serbians were confident that this would happen. Indeed, in the early days of October they looked for Allied assistance even on their northern front. At Nish the town was decorated, and the school children waited outside the station with bouquets to present to the coming reinforcements. But the Allies could not come. They were too few and too far away.

The Serbian campaign therefore falls into two sections wholly distinct and unrelated. The first is the expulsion from their native land of the Serbian army. The second is the contest of the Allied army of Salonika against the Bulgarian left wing for the hundred miles of line northward from the port, and their ultimate retirement to an enceinte on the sea. The stand of the Serbians, it may fairly be said, was in no material sense aided by the Franco-British operations. They fought their hopeless battle alone, and in that fact is found the failure of the Allied strategical plan.

Let us consider briefly von Mackensen’s immediate objective. It was both strategically and tactically simple. The motive was to win a way to Constantinople, and two routes were possible—the Danube and the Ottoman railway. To secure the first it was necessary to cross the river on the front from Belgrade to Orsova close to the Rumanian frontier, and to master that narrow neck of North-