End of the Battle of Kačanik

On 21 November 1915, in the snow-covered mountains on the southern edge of the Kosovo Field, the last offensive of the Serbian army in this campaign collapsed. For two days exhausted Serbian divisions had been attacking the Bulgarian positions at Kačanik and Gnjilane, in order to open the way to Skopje and on to the French on the Vardar. According to the Austrian official history, on 21 November, “after two days of bitter struggle”, they were repulsed. That same day Vojvoda Radomir Putnik ordered the armies to fall back behind the river Sitnica.

The last attack

Putnik had decided to break through to the south as early as 11 November, when the armies from the north began to fall back onto the Kosovo Field. Until then the Serbs on the southern edge of the basin had only been defending themselves. At the beginning of the month the divisions from Macedonia had repulsed the Bulgarians, but on 15 November some of them were routed at Gnjilane. Now the troops that had come from the north gathered in Kosovo. According to the Austrian official history, the Timok Army Group, together with the Bregalnica Division, a composite division and the cavalry division, was to open the Kačanik gorge and take the Žegovac range. To the east of it the Morava Divisions and the Vardar Division were to attack across the mountains towards Gnjilane. Most of these forces moved off on 19 November.

The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith watched the regiments leave the station at Priština. All day long they waited their turn in a snowstorm, and then travelled for several hours to the front in open wagons. The soldiers had only maize bread and a little raw cabbage to eat. From the trains they went straight into the mountains. At first the attack went well. The Serbs drove the Bulgarians from one ridge after another and, according to the Serbian staff, regained an important position on the Žegovac. The Bulgarians, however, quickly brought up reinforcements. The main forces of their 8th Division, which were marching through Kumanovo on Skopje, turned off towards Gnjilane. On 21 November the Serbs had to fall back. The Bulgarians, however, failed to advance a single step along the road from Skopje to Priština, and their attempt to outflank the gorge from the west, from Tetovo across the Šar Mountains towards Prizren, got stuck in the snow.

Behind the Sitnica

The attack was desperate from the start. Help from the south could no longer come. General Maurice Sarrail’s French had received orders from Paris to halt their offensive as early as 12 November, and on the morning of 21 November, the day of the defeat at Kačanik, they withdrew behind the Crna Reka. Earlier the Bulgarians had taken Prilep and closed the road to Bitola. According to the Austrian official history, while the units at Kačanik were still fighting, the Serbian supreme command had already given up the plan of breaking through to the French. From the north German and Austro-Hungarian troops were approaching, having taken Novi Pazar the day before, and from the east the Bulgarian First Army.

The order of 21 November told the armies to withdraw to the left bank of the Sitnica, a river flowing through the Kosovo Field to Mitrovica. According to Serbian studies, Putnik still wanted to concentrate all his forces there for a decisive battle. The withdrawal behind the river was completed on 24 November, but it then turned out that the army was too exhausted and the artillery had no ammunition left. A few days later the Serbian command and government decided that the army, the king and the government would go through the mountains of Montenegro and Albania to the Adriatic. The defeat at Kačanik destroyed the last chance for the Serbian army to join its allies on the Vardar.