The effects of German assistance to Turkey soon made themselves apparent. Field Marshal von der Goltz, commanding a reënforced and reinvigorated Ottoman army, supported by German artillery, compelled General Townshend to abandon hope of occupying Bagdad and to fall back toward Basra. By December 5, 1915, Townshend’s army was besieged in Kut-el-Amara; and although the Turks failed to take the town by storm, they did not fail to beat off every Russian and British force sent to the relief of the beleaguered troops. About the same time, December 10, evacuation of the Dardanelles was begun, and the last of the British troops were withdrawn during the first week of January, 1916. On April 29, Townshend’s famished garrison surrendered. Shortly thereafter the offensive of the Grand Duke Nicholas in Turkish Armenia was brought to a standstill. During July and August a second Ottoman attack was launched against the Suez Canal; and although it was unsuccessful, the expedition reminded the British that Egypt was by no means immune from danger. By the end of the year 1916 Turkey, with German assistance, had completely cleared her soil of enemy troops, except for a retreating Russian army in northern Anatolia and a defeated British expedition at the head of the Persian Gulf.[19] As for Germany, she “was unopposed in her mastery of that whole vast region of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia which goes by the name of the Near East.... She now enjoyed uninterrupted and unmenaced communication and commerce with Constantinople not only, but far away, over the great arteries of Asiatic Turkey [the Bagdad and Hedjaz railways], with Damascus, Jerusalem, and Mecca, and with Bagdad likewise.... If military exploits had been as conclusive as they had been spectacular, Germany would have won the Great War in 1916 and imposed a _Pax Germanica_ upon the world.... With the adherence of Turkey and Bulgaria to the Teutonic Alliance, and the triumphs of those states, a Germanized _Mittel-Europa_ could be said to stretch from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, from the Baltic to the Red Sea, from Lithuania and Ukrainia to Picardy and Champagne. It was the greatest achievement in empire-building on the continent of Europe since the days of Napoleon Bonaparte.”[20]