lf with a series of harassing
attacks upon different points of the Allied position, and had made no
forward movement in force. The Army of the East, numbering nearly
three million men, and divided into fifteen army corps, had crossed
the German frontier immediately on the outbreak of the war, and at
the same moment that the Russian Armies of the North and South had
crossed the eastern Austro-German frontier, and the Italian army had
forced the passes of the Tyrol.

The whole of the French fleet of war-balloons had been attached to
the Army of the East with the intention, which had been realised
beyond the most sanguine expectations, of overrunning and subjugating
Central Europe in the shortest possible space of time. It had swept
like a destroying tempest through the Rhine Provinces, leaving
nothing in its track but the ruins of towns and fortresses, and wide
wastes of devastated fields and vineyards.

Before the walls of Munich it had effected a junction with the
Italian army, consisting of ten army corps, numbering two million
men. The ancient capital of Bavaria fell in three days under the
assault of the aerial fleet and the overwhelming numbers of the
attacking force. Then the Franco-Italian armies advanced down the
valley of the Danube and invested Vienna, which, in spite of the
heroic efforts of what had been left of the Austrian army after the
disastrous conflicts on the Eastern frontier, was stormed and sacked
after three days and nights of almost continuous fighting, and the
most appalling scenes of bloodshed and destruction, four days after
the surrender of the German Emperor to the Tsar had announced the
collapse of what had once been the Triple Alliance.

From Vienna the Franco-Italian armies continued their way down the
valley of the Danube, and at Budapest was joined by the northern
division of the Russian Army of the South, and from there the mighty
flood of destruction rolled south-eastward until it overflowed the
Balkan peninsula, sweeping everything before it as it went, until it
joined the force investing Constantinople.

The Turkish army, which had retreated before it, had concentrated
upon Gallipoli, where, in conjunction with the allied British and
Turkish Squadrons holding the Dardanelles, it prepared to advance to
the relief of Constantinople.

The final attack upon the Turkish capital had been purposely delayed
until the arrival of the French war-balloons, and as soon as these
appeared up