Allies take Bitola

On 19 November 1916 Allied troops entered Bitola, then known in Europe as Monastir. The Bulgarians and Germans had abandoned the town during the night, and the French war communiqué stated that units of the Army of the Orient had entered it at eight in the morning. The British official history of the Macedonian campaign writes that in the morning French and Serbian cavalry rode into the town, with French and Russian infantry close behind. The sources describe the exact course of that morning differently, however, because each of the Allies wanted to be first in Bitola. All sides agree on the date of 19 November, including Serbian and Bulgarian studies. By the Julian calendar, used in Serbia and Bulgaria, it was 6 November.

Who got in first

The Italian historian Luigi Villari, author of a history of the Macedonian campaign, writes that a platoon of French cavalry rode into the town first, followed by the rest of the Franco-Russian column, which since October had stood in the trenches at Kenali, on the plain south of the town. According to Russian studies, the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Special Infantry Regiment from General Mikhail Diterikhs’s brigade burst into Bitola hard on the heels of the retreating enemy. The Russian weekly Iskry reported that at eight in the morning a Russian infantry regiment and French and Serbian cavalry entered the town. The British journalist Gordon Gordon-Smith, who accompanied the Serbian army, described the moment differently. According to him, the Allies entered Bitola at noon, and the Serbs were unwilling to leave this triumph to the French alone. Troopers of the Serbian 4th Cavalry Regiment swam their horses across the Crna and burst into the town from the north, dripping with water, at the very moment when French regiments were marching in from the south with bands playing and colours unfurled.

The anniversary mattered. On 19 November 1912, during the First Balkan War, the Serbs had taken Bitola from the Turks, and the French communiqué of 1916 stressed that the town had been taken on the fourth anniversary of that victory to the day. In the interwar period Bitola celebrated two liberations on the same day. The Bulgarians had entered the town at the beginning of December 1915 and held it for almost a year. Before the war Bitola had about 60,000 inhabitants: Turks, Orthodox and Muslim Slavs, Greeks, Albanians and Jews. The Bulgarian census of 1917 recorded only about 36,000.

A town without defenders

Bitola fell because the defence to the east of it had been lost. In the bend of the Crna the Serbs and French Zouaves were driving the Bulgarians and Germans from hill to hill, and on 18 November the Serbian Danube Division took Hill 1378, the highest point in the area. From these heights guns could shell not only the town but also the only line of retreat, over the bridge at Novak. The commander of the German army group, General Otto von Below, therefore decided to give up Bitola, despite the objections of the Bulgarian commander-in-chief, General Nikola Zhekov. Reuters reported from Salonika that before the enemy left, great fires could be seen over the town and heavy explosions heard. The Bulgarians and Germans were destroying depots, bridges and the railway track from Kenali.

Joy and disappointment

For the Serbs, who a year earlier had crossed the mountains of Albania and rebuilt their army on Corfu, Bitola was the first recovered scrap of their homeland and, according to Gordon-Smith, the second-largest town of the kingdom. London reported that a provisional Serbian capital would be established in Bitola at once, and the Paris Le Temps stressed the enormous moral importance of the victory. According to Russian studies, two days later the Serbian heir to the throne, Prince Regent Alexander, arrived in the town and thanked the Russian soldiers in particular. The same studies quote an order of General Maurice Sarrail, who wrote to the Russians that in the Greek mountains, as on the Serbian plain, their legendary courage had never failed them. The town was divided into French, Russian, Italian and Serbian sectors.

Not everyone was pleased. Villari writes bitterly that the Italian “Cagliari” Brigade, which had arrived in Salonika in August and for several days had been fighting its way through snowstorms across the Baba range west of the town, was unable to take part in its capture. The French column that was to advance parallel to the Italians onto the hills north-west of Bitola had turned into the town instead, and the Italians had to follow it so as not to expose their flank. When they entered Bitola soon afterwards, a shell that burst near the Italian consulate wounded their commander, General Carlo Petitti di Roreto, and killed the corps’ chief engineer.

The front just beyond the town

The victory proved incomplete. The enemy fell back only a few kilometres and dug in on the hills north of Bitola, from where his artillery dominated the town. The British official history considered that a swift blow by fresh troops might then have reached as far as Prilep, but there were no such troops, and the railway from Salonika was cut. Gordon-Smith observed that the capture of Bitola, though politically important, was of little tactical and even less strategic significance. Over the following weeks the fighting for the hills beyond the town went on, and Bitola, lying right by the front line, was shelled almost daily from then on. The Bulgarians did not abandon the surrounding hills until September 1918.