CHAPTER XVI

THE WAR BETWEEN THE BALKAN ALLIES

On Sunday night, June 29th, without any declaration of war or even warning, General Savoff ordered a general attack all along the Greek and Servian lines. There was no direct provocation on the part of Bulgaria's allies.

The responsibility for precipitating the war which brought about the humiliation of Bulgaria can be directly fixed. Two general orders, dated from the military headquarters at Sofia on June 29th, have been published. They set forth an amazing and devilish scheme, which stands out as a most cold and bloody calculation, even among all the horrors of Balkan history. General Savoff stated positively that this energetic action was not the commencement of a war. It was merely for the purpose of occupying as much territory as possible in the contested regions before the intervention of the Powers. It had a two-fold object: to cut the communications between the Greeks and Servians at Veles (Küprülü) on the Vardar, and to throw an army suddenly into Salonika. The fighting began in the night-time. The Bulgarians naturally were able to advance into a number of important positions.

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When the news became known at Salonika on the morning of the 30th, General Hassapsieff, on the ground that he was a diplomatic agent, was allowed to leave. Before his departure he gave an order to his forces to resist, if they were attacked, as he would return with the Bulgarian army in twenty-four hours.

Early in the afternoon the Greeks sent an ultimatum ordering the Bulgarians in Salonika to surrender by six o'clock. Their refusal led to all-night street fighting. Barricaded in St. Sophia and several other buildings, they were able to defend themselves until the Greeks turned artillery upon their places of refuge. Not many were killed on either side. Salonika was calm again the next day. One thousand three hundred Bulgarian soldiers and a number of prominent Bulgarian residents of Salonika, under conditions of exceptional cruelty and barbarism, were sent to Crete. The Greek forces in Salonika, among whom were some twenty thousand from America, were hurried to the outposts for the defence of the city.

There was no diplomatic action following the treachery of the Bulgarians towards their allies. The Greek Foreign Minister stated that Greece considered the Bulgarian attack an act of war, and that the Greek army had been ordered to advance immediately to retake the positions which the Bulgarians had captured. Nor did Servia show any disposition to treat with Bulgaria. No official communications reached Sofia from a Great Power. There had been a miscalculation. Bulgaria was {332} compelled, as a consequence of her ill-considered act, to face a new war. There was no withdrawal possible.

From a purely military point of view, it seems hard to believe that the Bulgarians really thought that their night attack would bring about war. Their army had borne the brunt of the campaign against the Turks, and had suffered terribly during the winter spent in the trenches before Tchatalja. They were not in a good strategic position, for the army was spread out over a long line, and the character of the country made concentration difficult. Adequate railway communication with the bases of supplies was lacking. The Greeks and Servians, on the other hand, held not only the railway from Salonika to Nish through the valley of the Vardar, but even were it successfully cut, had communication by railway with their bases at Salonika, Monastir, Mitrovitza, Uskub, and Nish.

General Ivanoff, in command of the second Bulgarian army, was charged with confronting the whole of the Greek forces, in a line passing from the Ægean Sea to Demir-Hissar on the Vardar, between Serres and Salonika. When we realize that General Ivanoff had less than fifty thousand men, a portion of whom were recruits from the region of Serres, and that he had to guard against an attack on his right flank from the Servians, we cannot help wondering what the Bulgarian general staff had counted upon in provoking their allies to battle. Did they expect that the Greeks and Servians would be intimidated by the night attack of June 29th, and would {333} agree to continue the project of a conference at Petrograd? Or did they think that the Greek army was of so little value that they could brush it aside, and enter Salonika, just as the Greeks had been able to enter in November? Whatever hypothesis we adopt, it shows contempt for their opponents and belief in their own star. The proof of the fact that the Bulgarians never dreamed of anything but the success of their "bluff," or, if there was resistance, of an easy victory, is found in the few troops at the disposal of General Ivanoff, and in the choice of Doiran, so near the front of battle, as the base of supplies. At Doiran everything that the second army needed in provisions and munitions of war was stored. From the financial standpoint alone, Bulgaria could not afford to risk the loss of these supplies.

On July 2d, the Greek army, under the command of Crown Prince Constantine, took the offensive against the Bulgarians, who had occupied on the previous day the crest of Beshikdag, from the mouth of the Struma to the plateau of Lahana, across the road from Salonika to Serres, and the heights north of Lake Ardzan, commanding the left bank of the Vardar. The positions were strong. If the Greek army had been of the calibre that the Bulgarians evidently expected, or if General Ivanoff had had sufficient forces to hold the positions against the Greek attack, there would undoubtedly have been _pourparlers_, and a probable cessation of hostilities just as the Bulgarians counted upon.

But the Greeks soon proved that they were as brave and as determined as their opponents. Their {334} artillery fire was excellent. There was no wavering before the deadly resistance of the entrenched Bulgarians. After five days of struggle, in which both sides showed equal courage, the forces of General Ivanoff yielded to superior numbers. The Bulgarians were compelled to retreat, on July 6th, in two columns, towards Demir-Hissar and Strumitza. The retreat was effected in good order, and the Greeks, though in possession of mobile artillery, could not surround either column. Victory had been purchased at a terrible price. The Greek losses in five days were greater than during the whole war with Turkey. They admitted ten thousand _hors du combat_. The Greeks had received their first serious baptism of fire, and had demonstrated that they could fight. The Turks had never given them the opportunity to wipe out the disgrace of 1897.

It is a tribute to the quickness of decision of the Crown Prince Constantine and his general staff, and to the spirit of his soldiers, that this severe trial of five days of continuous fighting and fearful loss of life was not followed by a respite. The Greek headquarters were moved to Doiran on the 7th. It was decided to maintain the offensive as long as the army had strength to march and men to fill the gaps made by the fall of thousands every day. The Bulgarians, although they contested desperately every step, were kept on the move. On the right, the Greeks pushed through to Serres, joining there, on July 11th, the advance-guard of the detachments which the Greek fleet had landed at Kavalla on the 9th.

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The advance of the Greek armies was along the Vardar, the Struma, and the Mesta. On the Vardar, the Bulgarian abandonment of Demir-Hissar, on the 10th, enabled the Greeks to repair the railway, and establish communication with the Servian army. The right wing, advancing by the Mesta, occupied Drama. On July 19th, the Bulgarian resistance was concentrated at Nevrokop. When it broke here, the Greek right wing was able to send its outposts to the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains, on the Bulgarian frontier.

The Greeks began to speak of the invasion of Bulgaria, and of making peace at Sofia. But the bulk of their forces met an invincible resistance at Simitli. From the 23d to the 26th, they attacked the Bulgarian positions, and believed that the advantage was theirs. But on the 27th the Bulgarians began a counter-attack against both wings of the Greek army at once. On the 29th, the Greeks began to plan their retreat. On the 30th, they realized that the retreat was no longer possible. The Bulgarians were on both their flanks. It was then that the armistice saved them.

While the Greek army was gaining its victories in the _hinterland_ of Macedonia, the ports of the Ægean coast, Kavalla, Makri, Porto-Lagos, and Dedeagatch were occupied without resistance by the Greek fleet. Detachments withdrawn from Epirus were brought to these ports. Some went to Serres and Drama. Others garrisoned the ports, and occupied Xanthi and other nearby inland towns.

The Bulgarians may have had some reason to {336} discount the value of the Greek army. For it had not yet been tried. But the Servians had shown from the very first day of the war with Turkey that they possessed high military qualities. The courage of their troops was coupled with agility. They had had more experience than the Bulgarians and Greeks in quick marches, and in breaking up their forces into numerous columns. There is probably no army in Europe to-day which can equal the Servians in mobility. It is incredible that the Bulgarians could have hoped to surprise the Servians, and find a weak place anywhere along their lines. On the defensive, in localities which they had come to know intimately by nine months in the field, it would have taken a larger force than the Bulgarians could muster to get the better of soldiers such as the Servians had proved themselves to be.

Whether it was by scorn for the Greeks, or by appreciation of the Servian concentration, the Bulgarians had planned to confront the Servians with four of their five armies. We have already seen that General Ivanoff had the second army alone to oppose to the Greeks, and that even a few battalions of his troops were needed on the Servian flank.

The engagements between the Bulgarians and the Servians had two distinct fields of action, one in Macedonia, and the other on the Bulgaro-Servian frontier.

In Macedonia, the Bulgarians experienced the same surprise in regard to the Servians as in regard to the Greeks. Their sudden attack of June 30th did not strike terror to the hearts of their opponents. {337} Instead of gaining for them a favourable diplomatic position, they found that the Servians did not even suggest a parley. On July 1st, the Servians started a counter-attack, and kept a steady offensive against their former allies for eight days. Gradually the Bulgarians, along the Bregalnitza, gave ground, retreating from position to position, always with their face towards the enemy. The battle, after the first day, was for the Bulgarians a defensive action all along the line.

On July 4th, General Dimitrieff assumed the functions of generalissimo of the Bulgarian forces. He tried his best to check the Servian offensive. But the aggressive spirit had gone out of the Bulgarian army. Lulé Burgas could not be repeated. It was incapable of more than a stubborn resistance to the Servian advance. By July 8th, the Servians were masters of the approaches to Istip, and had cleared the Bulgarians out of the territory which led down into the valley of the Vardar. Then they stopped. From this time on to the signing of the armistice, the Macedonian Servian army was content with the victories of the first week.

Along the Servian-Bulgarian frontier, the Bulgarian army had some initial success. But General Kutincheff did not dispose of enough men to make possible a successful aggressive movement towards Nish. From the very first, when the Macedonian army failed to advance, the Bulgarian plans for an invasion of Servia fell to the ground. They had based everything upon an advance in Macedonia to the Vardar. So the forward movement wavered. {338} The Servians, now sure of Rumanian co-operation, advanced in turn towards Widin. General Kutincheff was compelled to fall back on Sofia by the Rumanian invasion. Widin was invested by the Servians on July 23d.

Rumania had watched with alarm the rise of the military power of Bulgaria. She could not intervene in the first Balkan war on the side of the Turks. The civilized world would not have countenanced such a move, nor would it have had the support of Rumanian public opinion. Whatever the menace of Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkan Peninsula, Rumania had to wait until peace had been signed between the allies and the Turks. But, as we have already seen, during the first negotiations at London, her Minister to Great Britain had been instructed to treat with Bulgaria for a cession of territory from the Danube at Silistria to the Black Sea, in order that Rumania might have the strategic frontier which the Congress of Berlin ought to have given her, when the Dobrudja was awarded to her, without her consent, in exchange for Bessarabia. As Rumania had helped to free Bulgaria in 1877-78, and had never received any reward for her great sacrifices, while the Bulgarians had done little to win their own independence, the demand of a rectification of frontier was historically reasonable. Since Rumania had so admirably developed the Dobrudja, and had constructed the port of Constanza, it was justified from the economic standpoint. For the possession of Silivria, and a change of frontier on the Dobrudja, was the only means by which Rumania {339} could hope to defend her southern frontier from attack.

At first, the Bulgarians bitterly opposed any compensation to Rumania. They discounted the importance of her neutrality, for they knew that she could not act against them as long as they were at war with Turkey. They denounced the demands of Rumania, perfectly reasonable as they were, as "blackmail." They were too blinded with the dazzling glory of their unexpected victories against the Turks to realize how essential the friendship of Rumania--at least, the neutrality of Rumania--was to their schemes for taking all Macedonia to themselves. When, in April, they signed with very ill grace the cession of Silivria, as a compromise, and refused to yield the small strip of territory from Silivria to Kavarna on the Black Sea, the Bulgarians made a fatal political mistake. It was madness enough to go into the second Balkan war in the belief that they could frighten, or, if that failed, overwhelm the Servians and Greeks. What shall we call the failure to take into their political calculations the possibility of a Rumanian intervention? Even if there were not the question of the frontier in the Dobrudja, would not Rumanian intervention still be justified by the consideration of preserving the balance of power in the Balkans? By intervening, Rumania would be acting, in her small corner of the world, just as the larger nations of Europe had acted time and again since the sixteenth century.

The Rumanian mobilization commenced on July {340} 3d. On July 10th, Rumania declared war, and crossed the Danube. The Bulgarians decided that they would not oppose the Rumanian invasion. How could they? Already their armies were on the defensive, and hard pressed, by Greeks and Servians. There is a limit to what a few hundred thousand men could do. It is possible, though not probable, that the Bulgarian armies might have gained the upper hand in the end against their former allies in Macedonia. But with Rumania bringing into the field a fresh army, larger than that of any other Balkan States, Bulgaria's case was hopeless. The Rumanians advanced without opposition, and began to march upon Sofia. They occupied, on July 15th, the seaport of Varna, from which the Bulgarian fleet had withdrawn to Sebastopol.

It would have been easy for the Rumanians to have occupied Sofia, and waited there for the Servian and Greek armies to arrive. The humiliation of Bulgaria could have been made complete. Why, then, the armistice of July 30th? Why the assembling hastily of a peace conference at Bukarest? Political and financial, as well as military, considerations dictated the wisdom of granting to Bulgaria an armistice.

Greece and Servia were exhausted financially, and their armies could gain little more than glory by continuing the war. The Greek army, in fact, was in a critical position, and ran the risk of being surrounded and crushed by the Bulgarians. The Servians had not shown much hurry to come to the aid of the Greeks. The truth of the matter is that, {341} after the battle of the Bregalnitza, which ended on July 10th, the Servians began to get very nervous about the successes of their Greek allies. They knew well the Greek character, and feared that too easy victories over the Bulgarians might necessitate a third war with Greece over Monastir. So, on July 11th, with the ostensible reason that such a measure was necessary to protect their rear against the Albanians, the Servian general staff withdrew from the front a number of the best regiments, and placed them in a position where they could act, if the Greeks tried to seize Monastir. On the other hand, Rumania gave both Greece and Servia to understand that she had entered the war, not from any altruistic desire to help them, but for her own interests. To see Bulgaria too greatly humiliated and weakened was decidedly no more to the interest of Rumania than to see her triumphant.

As for Montenegro, she had entered the second Balkan war to give loyal support to Servia, from whom she expected in return a generous spirit in dividing the _sandjak_ of Novi Bazar. Her co-operation, however, as I am able to state from having been in Cettinje when the decision was taken to send ten thousand men against Bulgaria, was not made the subject of any bargain. So, when Servia thought best to sign the armistice, Montenegro was in thorough accord.

After a month of fighting, in which the losses had been far greater than during the war with Turkey, and the treatment of non-combatants by all the armies horrible beyond description, the scene of {342} battle shifted from the blood-stained mountains and valleys of Macedonia to the council chamber at Bukarest. Rumania was to preside over a Balkan Congress of Berlin!

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