Early in 1917, the Venizelist state took also control of Thessaly, after clashes against the royal army of Constantine. The division of the country lasted for 9 months. On 15 June 1917 an Allied ultimatum forced King Constantine to abdicate in favour of his second-born son, Alexander, and, with the rest of his family, leave the country for Switzerland. Venizelos returned to Athens, as head of a superficially reunified Greece, and led it to victory alongside the Allies in World War I, but also in its entanglement in the subsequent Asia Minor Campaign. As such, the immediate aims of the "National Defence" were met. But the revolution was also an expression of the wide rift between the quasi-Republican, progressive Venizelists and the conservative Royalists/Anti-Venizelists, and its outbreak marks also the beginning of the Greek National Schism which would leave a troublesome legacy to the country, as it continued in various forms up to the 1970s. A popular song of the era celebrating the movement was performed by the musical Estudiantina of Smyrna named "Tis aminis ta pedià" (the lads of the Defence) or "the Macedon". The song was performed also in the film "Rebetiko" of Costas Ferris in orchestration of Stavros Xarchakos.