Armistice of Belgrade

At 11.15 p.m. on 13 November 1918 in Belgrade, representatives of the Allies and of the Hungarian government signed a military convention known as the Armistice of Belgrade. It was signed on behalf of the Allies by the French General Paul Henrys, commander of the Army of the Orient, and by the chief of staff of the Serbian army, Vojvoda Živojin Mišić. For Hungary it was signed by Béla Linder, minister of war until 9 November and then minister without portfolio in the government of Mihály Károlyi. The British chronology of the war records the event under 15 November, but Serbian and Hungarian studies agree that the agreement was signed late in the evening of 13 November.

The talks came about because the new Hungarian government refused to accept that it was bound by the Armistice of Villa Giusti, concluded on 3 November still in the emperor’s name. Meanwhile the Serbian army, which had returned to Belgrade on 1 November, was preparing to cross the Sava and the Danube. Károlyi, prime minister since 31 October, hoped that his anti-war record and good relations in France would allow him to negotiate mild terms and that Hungary would be treated as a neutral country rather than a defeated one. On the evening of 7 November he was received in Belgrade by the commander of the Allied forces in the Balkans, General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey, the same man who at the end of September had accepted Bulgaria’s surrender. The Frenchman made it clear to the delegation that he regarded Hungary as a defeated state and presented eighteen conditions. Károlyi replied that he could not accept them without a guarantee of the integrity of Hungarian territory, with the exception of Croatia, and with the general’s consent sent a telegram to the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau. Paris replied on 9 November that the general was to discuss military matters only. On 11 November the Hungarian National Council accepted the terms, and Linder left for Belgrade.

The convention set a demarcation line behind which the Hungarian forces had to withdraw. It ran from the upper Szamos through Bistrița to the Maros, along it to its confluence with the Tisza, and from there through Subotica, Baja and Pécs to the Drava. South and east of it, that is in the Banat, Bačka and part of Transylvania, the Allies could station their troops, and the Hungarians were left only the civil administration and the police. The Hungarian army was to be reduced to six infantry and two cavalry divisions. Hungary had to place horses, rolling stock, ships and river monitors at the Allies’ disposal, point out the mines in the Danube, release Allied prisoners and break off all ties with Germany, whose troops were to leave the country by 18 November. The Allies could also occupy any point in the country. In return they undertook not to interfere in Hungary’s internal administration.

The terms were received in Budapest as a humiliation. Károlyi’s government, which had begun by disbanding the army, no longer had the means to defend itself, and the Hungarians, who had counted on the magnanimity of the victors in the spirit of Wilson’s principles, were bitterly disappointed. In the very next days the Serbs, citing the convention, occupied Pécs, on 15 November Temesvár, and by 21 November the whole of the Banat as far as the Maros. In the following months the Czechoslovaks and Romanians, backed by Paris, also advanced beyond the line of 13 November, and French demands for further concessions in March 1919 led to the fall of Károlyi and the creation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The final borders were set in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon.