GENERAL FRANCHET D’ESPÉREY DECORATING GENERALS MILNE AND MOMBELLI.
To face p. 250.
Nor must the Greeks be forgotten. With all the defects of their Army, many detachments fought valiantly, especially the Serres Division, which, fighting under the British, distinguished itself at the battle of Doiran and suffered severe losses. The French and Serbian cavalry, once the breach had been made, were in the vanguard of the pursuit, and pushed forward by forced marches which have few equals in the annals of the war.
3. The perfect co-operation between armies of different nationalities, a co-operation which Sarrail had never been able to achieve. This was one of General Franchet d’Espérey’s main successes. There were, in fact, the Central Franco-Serbian Group, composed of 6 Serbian Divisions and 2 French; the I Group of Divisions, with 1 French, 2 Greek, and for a short time 1 British Division; the A.F.O., comprising 5 French, 1 Italian, and 1 Greek Division; the British Army with 3, and afterwards 4 British, 5 Greek Divisions, and one French Regiment. Nevertheless everything functioned regularly as if it had been a perfectly homogeneous force.
4. The faulty dispositions of the enemy. Although, as we have seen, the latter were stronger in effectives than the Allied forces, they had failed to create reserves. In Bulgaria there were only three regiments available, and the Germans had withdrawn all their battalions from the Balkan front, except three, to which a few others were added during the offensive. In Serbia and Roumania, the German and Austrian garrisons were numerous, but they were composed of units whence nearly all the younger soldiers had been withdrawn. The enemy thus had only small area reserves, and no army reserves. When the central sector was broken through the enemy Command tried to stem the advancing tide by concentrating regiments withdrawn from distant sectors, such, for instance, as the 14th, which was notorious for its mutinies; but it was then too late. Only in the Doiran sector, where some of the best regiments were collected, was it possible to hold up the British and Greeks for a few days, and also in the Cerna loop, where the German Command made its influence more directly felt, and there the resistance was more vigorous.
5. The Bulgarian demoralization. The Bulgarians had for some time been fed up with the war. They believed that they had obtained definitely everything to which they aspired, and they did not see why they should continue to fight simply to please the Germans. They, like the Serbs, were drawn by an irresistible desire towards their homes, but the Serbs in order to do this had to fight, while the Bulgarians saw that the only way to achieve their object was to make peace. The Allied victories in France, although the Command tried to suppress all news of them, ended by becoming known to the masses and produced a depressing effect. The overbearing attitude of the Germans, who treated Bulgaria almost as a conquered country and not as an ally, and especially the requisitions of foodstuffs in Bulgaria to be sent to Germany, provoked serious discontent. Then there was the question of Dobrugia, which aroused much disaffection. The Bulgarians hoped that, after the defeat of Roumania, the whole of that province would have been ceded to them, instead of only the southern district, as was provided for in the treaty of alliance with Germany. The latter did not wish to hand over the whole province, because she intended to keep control over the Cernavoda-Constanza railway, and also because Turkey objected to that line being in the hands of the Bulgarians. Actually they were granted the southern district (the part ceded to Roumania by the peace of 1913), while the rest was administered by Turkey, an arrangement against which the Bulgarian Government, and finally even the Commander-in-Chief, General Gekoff, protested vigorously, putting the blame on the German General Staff. There was discontent also over the question of Adrianople. Signs of demoralization appeared in the numerous mutinies and the ever more frequent desertions. The fact of having forcibly applied conscription to the inhabitants of the occupied territories, although it helped to strengthen the Army with fresh effectives, weakened it in its moral unity, because the inhabitants of the province of Nish were true Serbs and hated the Bulgarians, and those of Macedonia, if they had more sympathy for the Bulgarians than for the Serbs, did not wish to fight for either. The Allied Commands were fairly well informed of this state of feeling, and appreciated it at its proper value. The pro-German Radoslavoff Cabinet had resigned in June, and the Malinoff Cabinet, by which it had been succeeded, was disposed to seek to come to some agreement with the Entente.
6. Finally, there was the hope on the part of the Bulgarians, who now realized that German power was shaken, of obtaining favourable conditions from the Entente by means of a separate peace. If they could no longer dream of the creation of that big Bulgaria which had been promised to them by Germany, they hoped at least to preserve some part of their conquests, to keep the territories gained from Turkey, and perhaps to receive substantial financial assistance. The Entente had promised nothing of all this, but its semi-official propaganda gave the Bulgarians to understand that the sooner they surrendered the better would their treatment be.
The immediate consequences of the Bulgarian capitulation were of great importance. This was the first decisive blow struck at the Central Powers. Until September 15th the main line of the enemy resistance from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, from the Stelvio to the mouth of the Piave, from the mouth of the Semeni to that of the Struma, was intact. In France the Germans had had to fall back before the Anglo-Franco-American attacks, but the famous Hindenburg line was not yet broken, and their Armies had been beaten, but not vanquished; on the Piave the Austrians had been seriously defeated in their June attack, but they had lost very little ground, and their Army was still in full efficiency. It was on the Macedonian front that the first fatal breach was made. The Central Powers not only had one ally the less, but they were threatened from behind, and had to consider the necessity of creating a new front on their eastern gateway, which until then had been defended by the Bulgarians. Turkey, moreover, already staggering under the sledge-hammer blows delivered by General Allenby in Palestine and Syria, now no longer possessed any line of communication by land with Germany and Austria.
CHAPTER XVI
FINAL OPERATIONS
The armistice with Bulgaria marked the final collapse of German influence in that country. The Tzar Ferdinand abdicated and went into exile, and was succeeded by his son Boris. The capitulation created a profound impression in Germany. The Press published violent invectives against the “treacherous” ally, there was a panic on the stock exchange, and on September 30th the Imperial Chancellor, von Hertling, resigned, and was succeeded by Prince Max of Baden. Marshal von Hindenburg, in a letter addressed to the latter on October 5th, admitted that the collapse of the Macedonian front was one of the causes which excluded all hope—as far as man can judge, of forcing the enemy to make peace. Some German papers demanded that Bulgaria should be driven back into the fold by force. But the necessary force was now wanting. There was nothing for it but to reconstitute a new front in Serbia and Roumania, and this the Germans and Austrians tried to do.