Bulgarians leave Dobruja

The British chronology of the war records under 3 December 1918 that the last Bulgarian troops left Dobruja. The land between the lower Danube and the Black Sea had been occupied since the autumn of 1916, when German, Bulgarian and Turkish troops under August von Mackensen entered it from the south. At the beginning of January 1917 the last Russians withdrew across the Danube. Under the Treaty of Bucharest of May 1918 Bulgaria regained southern Dobruja, lost to Romania in 1913, and received a strip of land further north, while the rest of the region, up to the Danube delta, came under the joint rule of the four Central Powers. The Bulgarians, who had hoped for the whole of Dobruja, regarded this as a defeat.

Armistice and dispute

The Armistice of Salonica of 29 September required Bulgaria to evacuate the occupied lands of Greece and Serbia at once, but said nothing explicitly about Dobruja. According to the text quoted in Cyril Falls’s British official history, three divisions of the demobilised Bulgarian army could remain under arms, two of which were to defend the country’s eastern border, that is, Dobruja itself. The Romanians stressed from the outset that for them this was Romanian land. The Prime Minister, Alexandru Marghiloman, noted at the end of October that the Bulgarian army held all of southern Dobruja, and in the north, beyond the line of Constanța, where the Germans were still stationed, had nine battalions with cavalry and artillery.

After Romania re-entered the war on 10 November, small Romanian detachments crossed from Galați and from near Reni into northern Dobruja. The Germans were leaving, but the Bulgarians were in no hurry to withdraw. According to Romanian studies, the French general Henri Berthelot, commander of the Army of the Danube, complained on 20 November that the Bulgarian troops in Dobruja were behaving “as if they were its masters”. The British feared clashes between Romanians and Bulgarians. According to Falls, on 23 November the 12th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, from the British 26th Division, was sent by ship down the Danube to Cernavodă to keep the peace in the region.

The Romanians return

According to Romanian historians, in the last ten days of November the Bulgarian troops began withdrawing towards the 1913 border. Behind them Romanian gendarmerie detachments and the first officials crossed the Danube. By the turn of November and December a Romanian prefect, D. N. Negulescu, was already in office in Constanța. He announced to the inhabitants the restoration of Romanian administration, and a solemn service was held in the cathedral. The engineer in charge of the port services soon afterwards described the scale of the damage to the port after two years of occupation.

The date in the British chronology marks the end of the Bulgarian military presence rather than the full assumption of power by the Romanians. In southern Dobruja, inhabited mostly by Bulgarians and Turks, Romanian authority returned gradually and with difficulty. According to a Romanian officer’s report of 16 December, officials in Bazardzhik were met with open hostility. The British 26th Division soon occupied the ports of Dobruja and was also stationed in its southern part. At the beginning of January 1919 armed inhabitants of Tutrakan kept the Romanian authorities out for several days, and the British had to be called in to help. As late as January 1919 Marghiloman recorded complaints heard in Bucharest that the British were removing Romanian officials from southern Dobruja and saying that its administration belonged to the Bulgarians, since the region was going to fall to them anyway.

On 20 April 1919 the British handed southern Dobruja over to Italian troops. The 1913 border was confirmed by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, signed by Bulgaria on 27 November 1919. Southern Dobruja remained part of Romania until 1940, when under the Treaty of Craiova it returned to Bulgaria.