Bulgarians take Niš

On 5 November 1915 Bulgarian troops entered Niš, Serbia’s wartime capital since the summer of 1914. A few days earlier the Serbian government had left the town. According to the Austrian official history, Niš, abandoned by the Serbs, was occupied by the Bulgarian 9th Infantry Division and part of the 8th Division of the First Army under General Kliment Boyadzhiev, which was subordinated to Field Marshal August von Mackensen. Bulgarian sources, which give dates according to the Julian calendar, state 23 October, which is likewise 5 November. The Western press of the time and some studies, including the British history of the war published by Nelson and Serbian works on the history of the town, speak of 6 or 7 November.

Storming the fortress

The Bulgarians had been advancing on Niš for three weeks. After the declaration of war on Serbia their First Army was long unable to break through the defences in the mountains above the Timok and at Pirot, held by the Second Army of Vojvoda Stepa Stepanović. Only at the end of October did the Serbs begin to fall back, and the Bulgarians descended the valley of the Nišava towards the town. Niš was surrounded by a ring of forts, and in the centre stood the old fortress by the river. According to the Austrian official history, on 4 November the Serbs, after heavy fighting, gave up the works on the northern and eastern approaches to the fortress. Bulgarian studies state that the line of defence was broken that day at about 4 p.m. by a bayonet charge of the 4th Pleven Infantry Regiment of the 9th Division. On the morning of 5 November the Bulgarians entered the town without a fight.

The spoils were not great, because the Serbs had removed or destroyed what they could. According to some studies, 42 old fortress guns, several thousand rifles, stocks of food and ammunition and about 5,000 prisoners fell into Bulgarian hands in the town and the forts. The commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian army, General Nikola Zhekov, informed the Prime Minister, Vasil Radoslavov, that after fierce and bloody fighting the fortress had been taken and the Bulgarian flag was flying over it “for ever”. For the Bulgarians, who regarded the Morava valley as land disputed with Serbia, the capture of Niš was a great success. The Serbian troops fell back to the west and south, towards Prokuplje and Leskovac.

The road to Constantinople

On the same day the right wing of the Bulgarian First Army made contact at Krivi Vir with the German Eleventh Army, which was coming down the Morava valley from the north. The front of the Central Powers in Serbia closed into a single line. For the Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, this meant that the most important aim of the campaign had been achieved. The Austrian official history notes that on 5 November the first ships carrying ammunition arrived at the Bulgarian Danube ports of Svishtov and Ruse. Through Bulgaria it could reach Turkey, which was defending itself at Gallipoli.

Niš was also a railway junction. Here the line from Belgrade branched south, to Salonika, and east, through Pirot to Sofia and on to Constantinople. With its capture the whole of this route came into the hands of the Central Powers, although the destroyed bridges and track still had to be repaired. The first Balkan Train (PL), which was to replace the pre-war Orient Express, left Berlin for Constantinople on 15 January 1916. In the same month the German Emperor Wilhelm II met Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria at Niš. The town became the centre of the Bulgarian zone of occupation in Serbia and remained in Bulgarian hands until October 1918.