In the meanwhile, General Allenby was advancing by leaps and bounds; he had conquered the whole of Syria, and captured two Turkish armies, with many guns and immense booty. The expeditionary force in Mesopotamia was also pushing ahead rapidly. The Turkish Army was visibly dwindling away, and the deserters numbered several hundreds of thousands, so that it was obvious that Turkey was not in a position to resist the blow which General Milne was about to strike; he had indeed already seized the bridgehead at Ipsala and was about to cross the Maritza at other points. On October 29th, General Townshend, who had been taken prisoner by the Turks at Kut-el-Amara in 1916, was set free, and sent to the inter-Allied Naval Command at Mudros, bearing a request for an armistice. The Turkish Cabinet, which emanated from the notorious Committee of Union and Progress, had fallen, and was succeeded by another, constituted with the express object of concluding peace. Enver and Talaat, the two evil geniuses of Turkey, had fled with their most compromised satellites and large funds embezzled from the Government Treasury and from private persons. The Turkish proposals were considered, and as soon as the Turkish plenipotentiaries arrived, among whom was Raouff Bey, the Minister of Marine in the new Cabinet and a well-known Ententophil, negotiations were commenced between them and Admiral Calthorpe, Commander of the British Naval Forces in the Ægean, as representing the Allies. After a short discussion, the Armistice was concluded on October 30th, and came into force on the 31st. The order to advance from the Maritza was therefore suspended. The Allied fleets, commanded by Admiral Calthorpe, passed through the Dardanelles on November 10th, and anchored in the Bosphorus off the Sultan’s palace at Dolma Bagshe. It was the first time that a hostile fleet passed through the Straits and trained its guns on the Ottoman capital since the conquest in 1453. The previous day, General Sir Henry Wilson, Commander of the British XII Corps, had reached Constantinople, where he had been sent with a small Staff by General Franchet d’Espérey as his representative in Turkey. He was given command of all the Allied troops destined for the occupation of the city and of European Turkey (including the Asiatic shores of the Straits). These forces comprised the 28th British Division, the 122nd French and later an Italian regiment (the 61st) and a Greek battalion, besides some detachments of gendarmes. The points occupied were the city itself, Scutari, and various places on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Subsequently the occupation was extended to other areas. A few weeks later Sir George Milne removed to Constantinople with his whole Staff, and on February 8, 1919, General Franchet d’Espérey also arrived with the C.A.A. The further vicissitudes of the Allied occupation of Turkey belong to another chapter of history.