Bulgaria announces general mobilisation

Late in the evening of 22 September 1915, or 9 September by the Julian calendar, Tsar Ferdinand and Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov signed the decree for the general mobilisation of the Bulgarian army. It carried out the government’s decision of the previous day. The reason given was the need to secure the country against “possible surprises”. The first day of mobilisation was set as 24 September (11 September Old Style). Because the decree was signed late, the orders reached the local authorities only the next day. The American consul in Salonika wrote that the Bulgarian mobilisation was announced on 23 September. A British chronology of the war states that the mobilisation was to begin on 25 September.

“Armed neutrality”

Radoslavov gave assurances that Bulgaria was adopting a stance of “armed neutrality” and that its neighbours had no reason to feel threatened. The mobilisation, he said, was not directed against Serbia. On the same day the government announced the terms of the agreement with Turkey, which gave Bulgaria the valley of the Maritsa. For many observers the coincidence of dates was telling. Bulgaria did not admit that two weeks earlier it had bound itself by alliance to Germany and undertaken to attack Serbia.

The scale of the mobilisation betrayed its purpose. The military convention with Germany and Austria-Hungary required Bulgaria to field five divisions, yet the whole army was called up: eleven infantry divisions and a cavalry division, together with auxiliary units and the levée en masse. According to Bulgarian figures, more than 600,000 men were to be put under arms, about one eighth of the country’s population.

The neighbours’ reaction

The Serbs had long been watching the Bulgarian preparations and kept roughly half their army on the border with Bulgaria. The Serbian command wanted to strike before the Bulgarians completed their mobilisation and concentration, and asked its allies for consent and support. The Entente refused, because it still hoped that Sofia could be drawn away from the war.

Greece was the most alarmed. Under the 1913 alliance it was bound to come to Serbia’s aid if Serbia were attacked by Bulgaria. Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos regarded the Bulgarian mobilisation as a harbinger of war, and the very next day Greece announced its own. The Entente ministers in Sofia went on trying for another two weeks to persuade the Bulgarians to change course. At the beginning of October Russia demanded that Bulgaria break with the Central Powers, and when the reply proved evasive, it broke off diplomatic relations with it. Over the following days the other Entente states followed suit.