In all there were at the beginning of 1916 a little less than 100,000 French troops, about as many British and a few thousand Serbs, altogether about 200,000 men to defend the entrenched camp, forming an arc of a circle of 120 kilometres, in addition to the advanced positions. There were 358 French and 350 British guns, but the heaviest French guns were only long 155 mm. and the heaviest British were of 6 in. General Sarrail had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the Orient. The British Army, in May, 1916, was commanded by Lieutenant-General George (now Sir George) Milne, under the superior command, although in a limited measure, of General Sarrail. The enemy forces amounted to about 280,000 men. The results of these operations, although disaster had been avoided, cannot be regarded as brilliant, nor were they of such character as to raise the prestige of General Sarrail with the Allies, nor of the Allies in general with the enemy States and those who were still neutral. A well-executed retreat without heavy losses in men or material may be a fine operation from a technical point of view, but it does not arouse enthusiasm. On the other hand, the relative conditions of the two armies amounted to a situation of stalemate from which it would not be easy to emerge. General Lord Kitchener, who had come to inspect the Macedonian Army in December 1915, had actually proposed the withdrawal of the expedition, which appeared to him as to many other experts a useless dispersion of forces, and the Governments were in doubt as to whether or not it were advisable to carry out this suggestion. But in the course of 1916 the Allies received a new reinforcement, in the shape of the revived Serbian Army, which was destined to exercise a considerable political and military influence on the future vicissitudes of the Oriental campaign.