End of the fighting in Dobruja

On 5 January 1917 the last Russian units crossed the Danube at Văcăreni (PL) into Bessarabia, and Dobruja, apart from the Danube delta, was entirely in the hands of the Central Powers. The day before, as the Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu writes, German, Bulgarian and Turkish troops had entered Măcin. The Austrian official history (Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg) records that on 5 January “not a single Russian remained in Dobruja”. The British chronology of the war gives the end of the fighting in Dobruja a day later, under 6 January. Thus ended the campaign which had begun at the start of September 1916, when Bulgarian and German troops under Field Marshal August von Mackensen crossed the border of this Romanian province between the Danube and the Black Sea. In Romania, which reckoned time by the Julian calendar, 5 January was 23 December 1916.

The retreat from Dobruja

After the fall of Cernavodă at the end of October the front in Dobruja came to a halt north of the railway from Cernavodă to Constanța. Mackensen left here only the Bulgarian Third Army with the Turkish VI Corps and moved the rest of his forces to the Danube, from where he struck at Bucharest. On the other side stood large Russian forces, which had taken over the defence of the province from the bled-white Romanians. Kirițescu notes bitterly that the Russian commander, General Vladimir Sakharov, had four corps and several cavalry divisions at his disposal, yet did nothing to recover the lost ground.

When in December the whole front in Wallachia was falling back to the north-east, the Russians began to leave Dobruja as well. According to the Austrian official history the retreat began on 15 December, according to Kirițescu a day earlier. The Bulgarians followed close behind. On 17 December their cavalry entered Babadag, and on the night of 21–22 December the Russian Sixth Army abandoned its last position in the central part of the province. Its divisions crossed by pontoon bridges at Tulcea and Isaccea to the other bank of the Danube, into Bessarabia, and burned the bridge behind them. On 23 December the Bulgarians entered both towns. The Romanians still managed to take up their own pontoon bridge, built for refugees, and tow it to Galați.

The bridgehead at Măcin

All that remained in Dobruja were three Russian divisions, which dug in on the Măcin peninsula, in the north-western corner of the province. They held the wooded hills across the neck of the peninsula, from Greci to Văcăreni. Măcin covered from the east Brăila, a few kilometres away and linked to it by a pontoon bridge. The British war historian John Buchan believed that such a position, without good lines of retreat, could not be held for long. The Bulgarians assaulted it from 30 December, and on 3 January broke into the bridgehead. The Bulgarian 4th Division advanced along the causeway towards Brăila, and a mixed division pursued the Russians on the spit of land opposite Galați. On 4 January Măcin fell, and on 5 January, as the Germans and Bulgarians were entering Brăila, the last Russians disappeared from the spit.

The Russian military historian General Vinogradsky, quoted by Kirițescu, called the loss of Dobruja “unexpected”. In his view the situation did not require a retreat at all, since the weaker enemy was pressing sluggishly and, not controlling the Danube, could not cut the Russians off from the river. Buchan, on the other hand, judged that the retreat through an almost roadless country, in the depth of winter and with a broad river at the end, had been skilfully conducted and had cost no more than 6,000 men.

The Danube delta

Only the Danube delta, a maze of marshes and channels in which neither infantry nor artillery could be deployed, remained beyond the Bulgarians’ reach. According to Kirițescu the Russian command intended to abandon it, but Romanian naval officers persuaded the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, that it had to be held. Kolchak is said to have declared aboard the Romanian cruiser Elisabeta that he would hold the delta at any cost with ships and marines, even if Sakharov withdrew all his troops from Dobruja. A marine division sent from Russia occupied the bank from the mouth of the St George branch to the fork of the Chilia branch, and Sulina and Chilia became bases for the ships. The Central Powers fortified themselves opposite them on the hills near Tulcea and Isaccea. This sector of the front did not change again until the end of the war.

The balance

The Dobruja campaign was a painful defeat for Romania. It lost Turtucaia with its garrison, Silistra, its main port Constanța and the great railway bridge at Cernavodă. According to the Austrian official history, between 1 September and 25 October alone the Central Powers’ forces took 37,600 prisoners, 170 guns and as many machine guns in Dobruja. Mackensen gained a secure flank and a short line of defence along the Danube. As early as the first days of January a military bridge across the Danube was built at Hârșova, and the Austro-Hungarian Danube Flotilla laid a minefield at Isaccea against Russian ships. The Bulgarian 4th and 12th Divisions remained in Dobruja to guard the river.

The calm was not complete. Buchan describes how on the morning of 23 January, in fog and severe frost, a Bulgarian detachment crossed the frozen marshes and forced a branch of the Danube north of Tulcea, but was routed. Dobruja remained under the occupation of the Central Powers until the end of the war. Bulgaria hoped to annex the whole province, which later became a source of disputes with its allies.