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 her to send munitions to Constantinople, and insured the failure of the allied attack at the Dardanelles. Only a few weeks later the allied armies evacuated the Gallipoli Peninsula; thus testifying to the decisive character of the German operation. Still later Turkish reenforcements, doubtless drawing upon German sources for munitions, defeated another British expedition almost under the walls of Bagdad and drove it in retreat down the Tigris, ultimately surrounding it at Kut-el-Amara, a hundred miles to the south. Again, there came immediately forecasts of another Turkish thrust at Suez, under German direction, a first attack having failed in the previous winter. Whether Germany actually obtained any considerable stock of provisions or foodstuffs may be doubted by her succor, but it is clear that her campaign had enabled her to make use of many thousands of Turkish troops, who were waiting only for arms, it had given her control of the Bulgarian army, a small but efficient force, and it had provided an eventual means of attacking the British Empire by land, once the advance upon Egypt could be organized.