The Story of the Great War, Volume 1: Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume 1: Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers
World War, 1914-1918
As the First Balkan War drew to a finish, when King Ferdinand's grip
had hardly closed on the golden prize of that war, Adrianople, which
the Serbs helped their Bulgar brothers to conquer, and whose Turkish
commander and his staff, as fate decreed, were actually captured by
the Serbs and handed over by them to the Bulgarians, Ferdinand
turned his army westward to attack the Serbs, leaving Adrianople and
Thracia, rich territory which the Bulgars had just reconquered at
such cost of blood and which was confirmed to Bulgaria by the Treaty
of London, to fall back unprotected into the hands of the Turks.
On the night of June 29, 1913, without any declaration of war, the
Bulgarian army suddenly attacked the Serbians and Greeks all along
the line, over 250 miles in length. Apparently General Savoff, the
Bulgarian commander, had taken the initiative upon himself, for all
that night and the next day the Government in Sofia kept sending
telegrams ordering the operations to cease.
All through July the fighting continued, and the battles were far
more bloody than those that had been fought with the Turks in the
first war. In the south the Bulgarians were decidedly beaten, but
this was because they had counted on holding the Greeks back with
only 70,000 men.
The main fighting was on the Bregalnitza River, between the Serbians
and the Bulgarians. Here the Bulgarians also suffered a reverse. And
the Serbians were suffering losses that they could less afford than
the Bulgarians. Whether the Bulgarians might eventually have won
out, as their lines were contracted and the Greeks were drawn away
from their base at Saloniki, was a military question that was not to
be decided. For at this juncture Rumania took unexpected action. She
suddenly on July 10 began an invasion of Bulgaria from the north,
and by the end of the month her cavalry screens were within twenty
miles of the Bulgarian capital. The Turks, too, had recrossed the
frontier and were once more in possession of Adrianople, which the
small Bulgarian garrison surrendered without resistance. Literally
the armies of all her neighbors were invading Bulgaria. Further
resistance was useless. On July 31, after just one month of
fighting, an armistice was signed, and representatives from all the
belligerents met in Bucharest to negotiate terms of peace. On August
10 the Treaty of Bucharest was finally signed.
As a result of the Second Balkan War Bulgaria was left in a much
worse position than she was in after the first war. First of all she
had to give a slice of her Danubian territory to Rumania, as her
price for entering the war. Then she had to return part of Thrace,
including Adrianople, to the Turks. Serbia retained southeastern
Macedonia, and Greece kept Saloniki and its hinterland for fifty
miles inward, including Kavala, the natural economic outlet for
Bulgaria on the Aegean.
PART III--DIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR
CHAPTER XX
ASSASSINATION OF FRANZ FERDINAND--AUSTRIA'S ULTIMATUM
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