von Cramon, the German military commissioner at Austrian
headquarters, " behind the scenes, at the two general head-
quarters, the clouds were gathering of that conflict which in
the end brought about the reverses of 1916." Although on Nov.
6 it had been agreed that operations were to be pushed with all
energy towards Salonika, Falkenhayn almost immediately began
to check the further south-westward advance of German troops,
and though Conrad succeeded in bringing the German command
to renewed cooperation, this was obviously to be limited to a
minimum, both on account of supply difficulties in the Balkans
and of the pressing requirements of the two main theatres
in particular those of the forthcoming attack on Verdun, of
which only a few men in the German headquarters and none
in the Austrian had the secret. Falkenhayn's view was that
the Bulgarians alone should undertake the campaign in southern
Serbia. But, whatever the attitude of Greece towards Germany,
it was so hostile towards Bulgaria that to cross the frontier in
pursuit of Sarrail without a large proportion of German troops
being included in the advance was politically impossible. Aus-
tria herself was absorbed in Montenegrin-Albanian enterprises,
and could give no direct assistance in the advance to Salonika
that her general staff advocated. Moreover, Conrad had his
secret as well as Falkenhayn he was planning to carry out his
offensive of Asiago, with or without the aid of Germany.
At the end of 1915 therefore, though the Central Powers
had succeeded in their purpose Serbia being conquered and
the railway to Constantinople reopened whereas the Entente
had failed, the outlook was no clearer for the former than for
the latter. The pursuit was accordingly suspended at the
frontier, partly perhaps in the hope that the Entente would
itself take the initiative in closing down the operations. If
they did not do so Falkenhayn was determined that eventually
1 The first act of the Skoulpudis ministry had been to announce
that any of the Allied forces in Serbia which retreated into Greece
would be disarmed and interned. A prompt note from the British
and French Governments closed this incident, but the indication
of policy was unmistakable. About the same time Skouloudis noti-
fied the Bulgarian Government that it would not permit the latter's
troops to cross the frontier.
the Bulgarians alone should remain on this front. They were,
by the terms of the military agreement, unavailable for any other,
and if they succeeded in containing even a smaller force of
Entente troops that was not so limited, something was gained for
nothing. On the other hand this idea implied a defensive position
short of the Greek frontier, as a purely Bulgarian advance into
Greece was impossible. Thus, at the beginning of 1915, the
opposing forces stood roughly 20 m. apart, each limited against
its own will to a strict defensive by political conditions and each
regarded by its own superior authorities as a " commitment."
At the end of the year two incidents occurred to illustrate
the complexities of the Salonika front. On Dec. 30, though
Bulgarian and German forces were forbidden to cross the
frontier, German aircraft, by order, bombed the city of Salonika
itself, where nine out of ten of their possible victims were neutrals
and the tenth an agent of their own side. Sarrail promptly
retaliated by arresting the German, Austrian and Bulgarian
consuls, hitherto left unmolested. Another air raid took place
on Feb. i 1916, to which the Allies replied by bombing the
village of Petrich, just within the Bulgarian frontier, but as the
village contained Greek and Serbian as well as Bulgarian in-
habitants, a complaint was made, and Sarrail received orders
not to repeat such raids. A few days before this another in-
cident showed that the personal estrangements of Joffre and
Sarrail were still operative. The army of the Orient had been
brought under Joffre's command 2 early in December, and Joffre
had taken the opportunity to send out Castelnau to report on
Sarrail's management of the situation. Castelnau, however,
pronounced himself satisfied with what he saw, and only issued
a few instructions as to details. Nevertheless, in various ways
the friends and the enemies of Sarrail alike busied themselves
with accusations and counter-accusations, out of which a regular
affaire was growing up to complicate an already confused situa-
tion. Relations between Sarrail and Mahon on the other hand
were excellent, and although each was independent of the other,
and the British general was himself under the command of
General Sir C. Monro, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean,
no important divergencies of policy developed during the phase
of passive .defence in the precincts of Salonika.
With the Greeks, naturally, all possible causes of friction
existed. Army commanders operating under war conditions
are not prone to sacrifice realities to appearances, and what
seemed to them plain military common sense was, from the point
of view of the Greeks, high-handed conduct to be resisted by
all safe means of obstruction. Amongst the major questions
at issue were the disarmament of the coast defences of Salonika,
the use of the Salonika-Doiran railway for the British con-
tingent, the feeding of the Greek forces E. of Salonika who were
dependent for supply upon railways seized by the Allies, and the
continuance or non-continuance of the Greek garrison in Salonika
city. Minor questions of an administrative character were
naturally innumerable. Most of the energy of the staffs in
Salonika and the legations at Athens was devoted to finding
solutions for conflicts which the equivocal position of the Allies
made inevitable. 3 During these conflicts the Salonika lines,
' Joffre was Commandant en Chef of the " North-Eastern group of
Armies," no other formations having been contemplated before the
war. On being sent to the E. Sarrail was appointed Commandant
en Chef also. But, in Dec., Briand placed Sarrail's forces under
Joffre's supreme command
8 On Jan. 12 1916 the bridge of Demir Hissar on the Struma was
blown up by a special force sent out by Sarrail in the presence of the
Greek forces stationed there a high-handed act which could only
be excused or justified by the necessity of preventing the Bulgarians
and Germans from deploying heavy artillery against the N.E. part
of Salonika in case of siege. On Jan. 28 1916 another problem re-
ceived an enforced solution, after negotiations had failed to find an
" elegant " one. Anglo-French forces by a coup de main occupied the
Greek coast-defence batteries on the Gulf of Salonika. These inci-
dents naturally intensified the hostility of the Greek officers and
officials to the Allied occupation, or at least gave them tangible
grievances. In particular, the feeding of the Greek forces isolated
by the cutting of the Struma railways caused difficulties, and from
it, in part at any rate, arose the critical question of demobilizing the
Greek Army in the Spring of 1916.
348
SALONIKA CAMPAIGNS
with the aid of civil labour, were made defensible by the first
weeks of the new year. The line selected ran from the Vardar
mouth, round by Doganzi and Daudli to the neighbourhood of
Langaza, whence it passed along the barrier of lakes to the
head of the gulf of Orfano 80 m. of frontage for a force of nine
divisions. 1 Of this frontage, however, nearly 45 m. was guarded
by lake and swamp; and, taking into account the presence of
large bodies of Greek troops in the Seres-Rupel region to the
right front and in the Vodena-Florina region to the left front,
Sarrail considered that danger was practically confined to the
central sector between Lake Langaza and the Vardar, in the
event the position was ever attacked.
During this period (Jan.-Feb. 1916), the Bulgarians were
reinforced by the German XI. Army (von Gallwitz) consisting
or the IV. Res. Corps (loist and icyrd Divs.) and the Alpine
Corps, and by their own ist Army, all these forces aligning
themselves along the Greek border from Lake Ohrida to the
point at which the Struma enters Bulgarian territory. The
ist Bulgarian Army, with flank guards at Dibra and Elbasan in
Albania, had two divisions 2 on the front S. of Monastir-
Duditsa; the XI. German Army, with ij Bulgarian Divisions
attached, held the Vardar valley between Duditsa and the
Belashitsa Planina, and Todorov's II. Bulgarian Army of three
divisions that ranged from Strumitsa to Petrich, with detach-
ments further E. at Nevrekop (Mesta valley). But in March
Falkenhayn began to withdraw all the German formations
save the loist Div., which continued in the Balkans and was
gradually reduced to a cadre. On his side Sarrail made some
slight demonstrations towards Doiran and towards Vodena, but
otherwise no move occurred. Early in March 1916, however,
in the crisis produced by the attack on Verdun, Joffre telegraphed
orders to Sarrail to advance in order to fix the enemy's forces
on his front. On the other hand General Mahon, on asking
for instructions, was forbidden to move until authorized by the
British Government. 3 The relief offensive, therefore, was limited
to a skirmishing advance by the French, which began on March
13, and gradually brought the French 5ist Div. to the N. of
Kilkish, and the 12 2nd to the N. of Lake Amatovo, the is6th
between them (March 31).
During April 1916, while French cavalry moved out W. of
the Vardar towards Vodena and the 17th Colonial Div. came
up behind the centre, the British in their turn began to move
up to Kilkish, authority to participate " in an operation of a
demonstrative character " having been given by the War Office
about April 10 (Joffre to Sarrail, April 20). Lastly, the Ser-
bian Army, reconstituted and partially reequipped at Corfu,
was beginning to land at Salonika, and by June i 118,000
combatants and non-combatants were present, completing
their equipment and organization in the Chalcidic peninsula.
These methodical proceedings, however, did not satisfy Joffre,
whose instructions to Sarrail from March onwards were to
prepare for an offensive in earnest. To Sarrail's demand
for reinforcements for such an offensive, the French commander-
in-chief replied that the French Army of the E. must prepare
to attack at the moment fixed by himself, even without the
British. In explanation, he hinted that when that moment
came, not only would British objections be removed, and all
five British divisions be equipped for mountain warfare (making
Sarrail's total force, with the Serbians, 300,000 strong to the
enemy's 260,000), but Rumania and Greece would be in the
field as his Allies. Thus for the first time since the Serbian
retreat the Salonika force was assigned to a positive purpose.
It will appear in the sequel how much of reality and how much
of illusion was contained in the scheme, which, in sum, was to
attack at a date chosen in relation to other theatres and especially
Rumania, with Sofia as the objective.
1 The withdrawal from Helles freed further French troops, from
whom a serviceable brigade was made up and combined with a
brigade from France to form the 1 7th Colonial Division.
2 The Bulgarian division had twice the infantry strength of a
French or German division.
' Sarrail's orders were issued by G.Q.G. without consultation with
the British government or Lord Kitchener. (Sarrail, p. 83.)
Meantime, an important incident had taken place on the
Struma frontier. In accordance with their declared policy of
standing aside and leaving a " lists " for the combatants, the
Greeks had disarmed and evacuated their fort of Dova Tepe,
situated on the watershed between the Vardar and Struma
basins and commanding a knot of communications. In the
course of his gradual advance to the frontier, Sarrail put a
detachment into this fort on May 10. But further to the right,
outside his reach, lay a still more important fort, that of Rupel
defile. This fort was not merely disarmed but actually handed
over to the Bulgarians by the local Greek general, with or without
authority from Athens (May 26).
Events had moved. Though the German forces (except the
cadre of the loist Div.) had by this time been withdrawn from
the Balkan front, the Greeks had apparently overcome their
repugnance to a purely Bulgarian inroad, to the extent of
actually facilitating it. The Allies' right was, potentially,
turned, and if the occurrence were any indication of proba-
bilities of the future, their rear also was endangered. Action
was taken promptly by Sarrail. A mobile group of all arms was
moved into the Struma region, and with the agreement of
Gen. Milne (who in May succeeded Mahon in command of
the British) and of the Entente Governments, the Greek authori-
ties at Salonika were deprived of power by the proclamation
of a state of siege (June 3). A day or two later London and
Paris also acted. An economic blockade of the Greek coast
was declared, and on the i8th Sarrail was ordered to send a
brigade by sea to Athens. King Constantine accepted the ulti-
matum of the Allies (June 21), and Zaimis returned to power
on the basis of friendly neutrality. A little later the Rupel
incident had its last and most important sequel in the Venezelist
coup d'ilat of Aug. 30.
Militarily the seizure of Rupel, carried out at the suggestion
of Falkenhayn, seems to have had no truly offensive intention.
The Central Powers had abandoned the idea of invading Greece
once for all about the end of March, and the Bulgarians acted
with the idea of guarding their left, and securing connexion with
any Turkish forces which might be sent to their aid by the
Constantinople-Seres railway, though in view of the situation
in Armenia such a reinforcement was unlikely. As for Sarrail,
so also for his opponents, the Balkan front was already involved
in a larger game.
As has been noted above, the idea of an Allied offensive from
Salonika in cooperation with a Rumanian intervention came under
discussion as early as mid- April; at that time Joffre seems to
have thought that this intervention might come in a few weeks,
for he overruled Sarrail's objections to commencing operations
in the hot weather, and fixed the month of June for the begin-
ning of the offensive. Under these instructions Sarrail formed
his first plan (May 2) which was, in brief, to employ the Serbs
on the left wing for the attack of Monastir (frontally and by
envelopment), and for pressure on the Cerna bend and the
passes further E. towards the Vardar; to place a French division
on the Vardar and the railway; to have three British divisions,
with a fourth on their right rear, so placed as to execute a
demonstrative attack on the strongest part of the enemy's
front, viz. Vardar- Doiran; and to attack with three French
divisions from Popovo Surlovo-Dova Tepe and Poroy north-
wards through the Belashitsa Planina, while the French Struma
mobile group demonstrated towards the Demir Hisar angle of
the Struma, and the fifth British division with cavalry watched
the lower Struma front. In case the semi-offensive, semi-de-
monstrative, operations should develop into a real advance, the
Serbs were to take Veles and Shtip, the British Radovishta-
Strumitsa, and the French Jumaya as their objectives. The
armies would thus condense their front as they advanced, the
route Monastir-Veles marking the extreme left of the Serbian
movement, and that of the upper Struma, famous in the war of
1913, taking the French into positions on the Bulgarian line of
retreat. But the negotiations of the Allies with Rumania, and
their internal discussions relative to their Salonika operations and
their policy in Greece, dragged on. On June 6 Gen. Milne was
SALONIKA CAMPAIGNS
349
informed by the British Government that he was not to engage
in offensive operations, and was only to consider himself under
Sarrail's orders in respect of the defence of the entrenched
camp. He informed Sarrail accordingly, and suggested that
the British should take over the Struma front, to which Sarrail
agreed. The Serbs were now preparing to take up the front
from Vodena to Lyumnitsa, with their centre of gravity on
the right, the French held from Lyumnitsa to the Poroy road,
and the British to the right of that road from Loznitsa to Orlyak.
On the 1 2th Sarrail was ordered not to take any action that
would involve the British in operations unconcerned with the
defence of Salonika itself, and to limit himself to threatening
the Bulgarians by a deployment close up to the frontier; and
on the I4th he was notified that the French Government had
agreed to the British proposal to postpone the offensive.
A few days later, on the 25th, he was informed that though
the instructions of the i4th held good in general, events might
rapidly make it necessary for him to attack, though with a
limited objective, and using the French and the Serbians only;
and on July 15 he was told that the British Government had
agreed that if Rumania intervened all British troops equipped
for mountain warfare should participate in Sarrail's offensive,
and instructed to prepare to " pin the Bulgarians on the Greek
frontier and put them out of action so far as serious operations
against Rumania were concerned." Three days later, on July
17, G.Q.G. informed the French commander that the Entente-
Rumanian military convention would probably be signed on the
basis of (a) an offensive from Salonika on Aug. i, to cover the
final preparations of the Rumanians and their initial operations
against Transylvania; (b) a Russo-Rumanian offensive begin-
ning on Aug. 8, and directed against Bulgaria; and finally (c)
a combined advance of the Russo-Rumanian Army and the
Salonika forces with a view to uniting and crushing the Bul-
garian Army in the field. A few days later a formula agreed
upon between the various Allies constituted Sarrail commander-
in-chief of the French, British, and Serbian Armies, as also of
the Italian and Russian contingents, 1 Gen. Cordonnier being
appointed to command the Armee franqaise d' Orient as a con-
stituent part of the Allied Army.
Sarrail's new plan was to dispose Milne's available forces
on the front Dova Tepe (exclusive)-Lake Ardzan (exclusive)
or to the Vardar if possible, to reduce Cordonnier's troops E.
of Dova Tepe and Milne's on the Struma front 2 to a minimum,
and with Cordonnier's Army to attack on the front Vardar-
Doiran, while the Serbs from above Vodena made their main
attack on Huma and subsidiary advances towards the Cerna
bend and possibly Monastir. This plan was approved by Joffre,
who added that the British Army would receive instructions
from the War Office not to limit itself to defensive or demon-
strative action. But these instructions, from Gen. Robertson
to Gen. Milne, introduced an important limitation in their
general approval. Milne was " not to try to take the enemy's
positions until an adequate equipment of heavy artillery and
other conditions gave a reasonable expectation of success,"
and the offensive was " not to be taken till Rumania definitely
came into the field," an event of which Sir W. Robertson, like
Sarrail, had his doubts. Presently came the first hitch in the
military convention negotiations. Rumania was not to move
till Aug. 14, and Sarrail was to act ten days before that date.
But on Aug. 3, the eve of the offensive, the convention was still
unsigned, Rumania having expressed the intention of not declar-
ing war on Bulgaria unless large Russian forces were added
to her Danube Army; in these circumstances Sarrail's mission
1 In the case of the Italian Division the powers of the commander-
in-chief were specially limited. The Russians were, however, unre-
servedly at the disposal of the French. In general the formula from
which Sarrail derived his authority was somewhat similar to that
which was agreed upon later in the case of Nivelle. It was far from
being a real international command such as that of Foch in 1918.
2 The prevalence in that region of malaria, discovered by expe-
rience, had caused Sarrail to abandon the earlier project of deliver-
ing a principal attack with three French Divisions on the Belashitsa
front in the summer months.
was reduced to " harassing " the Bulgarian Armies on his front,
without ulterior purpose, from a date to be determined later
(telegrams from Joffre to Sarrail Aug. 3 and 6). Finally, the
convention was signed on Aug. 17, without any engagements
on Rumania's part to declare war on Bulgaria. On that very
day the Bulgarians began to push forward. Proposals for
shortening and improving their line by pushing it forward on
the one hand from the Monastir frontier towards Ostrovo, and
on the other from Rupel to the angle of the Struma, had, in the
spring, been put before Falkenhayn by Mackensen (who still
commanded, under somewhat indeterminate conditions, the
forces of the Central Powers in Bulgaria and Macedonia).
Falkenhayn had declined at the time owing to the risk of bring-
ing Greece into the ranks of the enemy. Now, however, it
seemed safe to ignore this danger, and desirable to forestall the
relief offensive that would doubtless accompany Rumania's
intervention, 3 and on Aug. 17 a series of encounter-combats
began between Sarrail's various groups, advancing for their
deployment on the frontier, and the wing elements of the
enemy. In the centre, the i7th Colonial Division, the British
assisting to some extent, 4 took, lost and retook Dodzelli (Aug.
17-8). But on the left the French cavalry group, already
mentioned, which was operating E. of the Struma bend, was
driven in by a serious Bulgarian movement from Rupel and
through the mountains from the Nevrekop region, and, had it
not been that the Bulgarians used part of their forces in taking
possession of the coveted coastal strip of Kavalla, the Struma
line itself might have been forced. As it was both the French
cavalry group and the British force further down the river were
able to establish a sufficiently strong defence of the river. On
the other flank the Bulgarian attack encountered the Serbians
in the process of concentrating forward.
The new Serbian Army, commanded by the Prince Regent
Alexander, with Boyovich as his assistant, was organized in
three weak " Armies," the I. Army under Mishich, the II.
under Stepanovich, and the III. under Yurichich-Sturm, who
was shortly afterwards succeeded by Col. Vasich; of these the
I. was in touch with the left of the French i22nd Div. about
Lyumnitsa, the II: on .its left, and the III. formed the left wing,
advancing methodically and by short stages towards Banitsa.
On the 1 7th advanced elements of the Danube Div. (III. Army)
were driven out of Fiorina, and on the i8th a hasty counter-
attack on that point failed. The Bulgarian Army developed
considerable strength (6th and 8th Divs. I. Army) and on the
igth, the Danube Div., attacking again, was flung back a con-
siderable distance to beyond Banitsa. Meantime the II. Army,
working up in the Moglena district, repulsed such attacks as
were made on it, and continued its deployment in front of the
Moglena mountains, the left directed on Kaimakchalan, and
the I. Army, between the II. and the French left at Lyumnitsa,
remained undisturbed.
8 A new military convention between the four Central Powers
had provided that, in case Rumania declared war on Austria, Bul-
garia and Turkey would do so against her.
4 On the 1 8th the French divisional commander asked for British
aid to secure his flanks and enable him to hold what he had won.
But, Rumania having refused to declare war against Bulgaria, Milne,
having regard to War Office reservations, declined and appealed to
Sarrail to refrain from putting him, as a soldier, in the impossible
position of being an inactive witness of enterprises that had no chance
of success without his assistance. Sarrail, however, says that Milne
had promised, before the movement on Doiran began on Aug. 10,
that although he was not authorized to take the offensive, he would
not leave the French with their flanks in the air. Taking these two
pieces of evidence together, the only conclusion possible is that the
formula defining Sarrail's authority as commander-in-chief was too
limited to be of much practical value in ensuring military unity,
yet too extended if the Governments desired to preserve their
control of policy. Too much was left to interpretation, and the
commander-in-chief was obviously exposed to the temptation of
planning his operations so as to create the case for the promised
assistance. Indeed Joffre's directions of July 15 contained a per-