Word: sarrail
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...novel's hero, Mark-Alem, is a member of an elite family within an imagined later-day Ottoman Empire. As a Quprili, he is given the special opportunity of working at the secret Palace of Dreams, known to all as the Tabir Sarrail. The palace functions as a "pillar of the state." Here the dreams of all of the citizens of the empire are brought and interpreted, in the hopes of finding within them a "signal [sent] to the earth" by Allah. Omens in the forms of dreams are sought because "the interpretation of that dream, fallen like a stray...
...Chief of the Imperial General Staff, saw it, the Macedonian expedition "had no military justification." Rent by bitter rivalries among the national contingents, the Salonika army for months did little except dig trenches, winning Georges Clemenceau's scorn as "the gardeners of Salonika." Commander in Chief Maurice Sarrail of France was a political general who spent far more time intriguing to unseat Greece's King Constantine (who was married to the Kaiser's sister) than in mounting offensives. Sarrail did have one triumph: by wheeling up the French fleet before Piraeus, he forced Constantine's abdication...
...show him what the French Army had done to Damascus. After touring the streets in a British staff car, Humbolt sacked Roget. The Arabs had neither forgotten nor forgiven the shelling of Damascus by the French in 1925. Now they recalled that the French Government removed General Maurice Sarrail for that atrocity-and that the city was shelled again the following year...
...Headquar- ters' instructions [i. e. Joffre's] dated Sept. 2 orders the [French] armies to retreat to the Seine and the withdrawal of two army corps from Nancy. Thus, evacuation of Nancy and Verdun. "General de Castelnau disobeys orders, resists on the Grand Couronne, saves Nancy. General Sarrail gives battle before Verdun despite orders to retreat. He saves Verdun. I take the offensive [with taxicabsj before Paris while General Headquarters are removed far to the rear at Chatillon. These were actions independent of the will of the commander-in-chief, carried out by commanders of the army corps...
With Paris safe, Generals Gallieni and Sarrail began a campaign to undermine Joffre's prestige which lasted some two years. As time passed and Joffre did not win the War, as rumors flew that he had not properly laid out the defenses of Verdun, and as the Allied offensive on the Somme failed at frightful cost, Joffre was "promoted" (retired) from the post of Commander-in-Chief to something created on the spot called "Adviser to the Government in Matters Concerning the Direction of the War." Finally this sop was replaced by the baton of Marshal. To "Papa" Joffre...