End of the battle of the Crna

On 11 December 1916 the battle of the Crna, the last act of the Allied autumn offensive in Macedonia, came to an end. That day the Serbs and the newly arrived second Russian brigade once again attacked Hill 1050 in the mountainous bend of the river, east of Bitola. As on the previous day, the attack decided nothing, and the highest summit remained in German and Bulgarian hands. According to the Austrian official history and Russian studies, it was on 11 December that the French commander-in-chief, General Joseph Joffre, finally gave up any further offensive. The British official history of operations in Macedonia (Cyril Falls) presents it as the decision of the commander of the Allied forces in the Balkans himself, General Maurice Sarrail, who resolved to break off the attacks and regroup his forces.

Three weeks after Bitola

Since the capture of Bitola on 19 November the Allies had been trying to push the enemy off the hills just north of the town, from which his artillery shelled the streets. In three weeks they advanced little. At the end of November the Serbs and the French 17th Colonial Division gained a little more ground in the Crna bend, but a counter-attack drove them off Hill 1050 in the Selečka Planina range, the most important point that remained in enemy hands. The Austrian official history writes that on 27 November Sarrail for the last time threw all his forces north of Bitola and in the bend into the attack, but the attacks of Serbian, French, Russian and British regiments broke against the German-Bulgarian line. On 3 December the Serbian Drina Division took the village of Grunište east of the river. On 10 and 11 December came the last attacks on Hill 1050. On the German side it was defended by, among others, a Guard rifle battalion, which went into action only in this December fighting.

Why the offensive was broken off

There were several reasons. The Serbs, who had borne the main burden of the fighting since September, had no strength left, and their supply in the mountains had become, as Falls writes, critical. In winter the roads turned to mud, and the railway from Salonika had been repaired only as far as Eksisu station. Above all, however, the offensive had lost its purpose. It was meant to help Romania, and Romania was already beaten: five days earlier the Central Powers had taken Bucharest. The German command would not let itself be drawn away from the Romanian front and treated Macedonia as a secondary theatre of war, limiting its help to the Bulgarians to a dozen or so battalions and batteries, which were enough to stop the offensive.

In addition, a threat from Greece was growing behind Sarrail’s back. After the fighting in Athens on 1 December, in which Greek troops fired on Entente sailors and soldiers, the Allies feared that the royalist army of King Constantine I would strike at their rear from Thessaly or join the Bulgarians. Falls stresses that in view of the Greek danger, and knowing that nothing more he could do would help Romania, Sarrail had no reason to go on attacking.

Regrouping for the winter

Over the following weeks Sarrail prepared the front for winter defence. The Italian division, relieved by the British, was first sent towards Veria to watch the Greek royalist troops, and then moved to the Crna bend. Both Russian brigades were assigned to the Serbian First and Third Armies, which allowed the Serbs to withdraw some of their soldiers for rest. The plain at Bitola was taken over entirely by French troops, and the 16th Colonial Division, newly arrived from France, was placed in reserve south-east of Florina. The headquarters of the French army was also moved to Florina, because it had not proved possible to push the enemy back far enough for Bitola to be out of range of his guns.

The battle brought the Allies an incomplete success. The Bulgarians lost not only their gains from the August thrust on Florina, but also, according to Falls, about a thousand square kilometres of Serbian territory, including Bitola, and only the dispatch of 18 German battalions saved them from defeat. Losses were very high. The British official history estimates Serbian losses from August to December at about 27,000 men and French losses at nearly 14,000, not counting the Russians and Italians, and the enemy’s losses even higher. Bulgaria was not knocked out of the war, and the offensive did not save Romania. The line on the hills north of Bitola held for almost two years, until September 1918.