Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
The position of the Bulgarian army on the lines of Chatalja, with
Adrianople in the hands of the enemy, was this: that it took practically
their whole transport facilities to keep the army supplied with food,
and there was no possibility of keeping the army properly supplied with
ammunition. So if the Bulgarian generals had really designed to carry
the lines of Chatalja without first attacking Adrianople, they
miscalculated seriously. But I do not think they did; I think it was a
plan forced upon them by political authority, feeling that the war must
be pushed to a conclusion somehow. Why the Bulgarians did not take
Adrianople quickly in the first place is to be explained simply by the
fact that they could not. But if their train of sappers had been of the
same kind of stuff as their field artillery, they could have taken
Adrianople in the first week of the war. The Bulgarians, however, had no
effective siege train. A Press photographer at Mustapha Pasha was very
much annoyed because photographs he had taken of guns passing through
the town were not allowed to be sent through to his paper. He sent a
humorous message to his editor, that he could not send photographs of
guns, "it being a military secret that the Bulgarians had any guns." But
the reason the Bulgarians did not want photographs taken was that these
guns were practically useless for the purpose for which they were
intended.
In short, whilst Adrianople stood it was impossible to keep 250,000 men
in the field at Chatalja with the guns and ammunition necessary for
their work. Therefore the taking of Adrianople should have followed the
Battle of Lule Burgas.
A reservation is perhaps necessary. If after Lule Burgas the victorious
Bulgarians had been able to push on at once, the fleeing Turks might
have been followed to the very walls of Constantinople. If even the
flower of the force to the extent of 50,000 men had gone on with all the
guns, ammunition, and food possible, the enterprise would probably have
succeeded. But one may judge that that too was impossible, in view of
the transport position. There was a long pause. Then an attempt was made
to do deliberately against an entrenched army what it was thought
impossible to do against a fleeing rabble. Reasons of humanity were
given to me to explain the hesitation to assault Adrianople. The
Bulgarians shrank from the great expenditure of men necessary, from the
sacrifice of the Christian population involved. Such reasons would be
admirable if truthful; but they are not war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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