Entente offers Serbia territorial gains

On the evening of 15 August 1915 the envoys of Russia, Great Britain and France in Niš, where the Serbian government had been based since the beginning of the war, handed Prime Minister Nikola Pašić a note signed on behalf of their governments. In it the Entente powers listed specifically, for the first time, what Serbia would receive after a victorious war if it accepted their position on Macedonia. The fourth ally, Italy, did not take part in this step. The Italian envoy, Baron Nicola Squitti, did not yet have instructions, and the government in Rome was arguing with its allies over the content of the document. We know the course of events from his telegrams, later published in the collection of Italian diplomatic documents.

Macedonia for Bulgaria

The note was the price of Bulgaria. On 3 August the envoys of the four powers had made a new offer in Sofia: if Bulgaria entered the war against Turkey, after victory it would receive eastern Thrace up to the Enos–Midia line, as well as part of Serbian Macedonia. Athens was informed of this the same day, and Niš on 4 August. The government of Vasil Radoslavov was in no hurry to reply, all the more so since a few days later German banks opened their coffers to it again. For Serbia, which had won Macedonia in the Balkan Wars and in 1913 had fought for it precisely against Bulgaria, the demand was a heavy blow. Pašić asked the allies for explanations and guarantees.

Over the following days the envoys and foreign ministers agreed on a reply. In May Edward Grey had assured the Serbs in general terms of Bosnia and Herzegovina and broad access to the sea. Now the French minister Théophile Delcassé proposed adding Syrmia, the Russian minister Sergey Sazonov also Bačka, and in one version Slavonia appeared as well. The head of Italian diplomacy, Sidney Sonnino, objected. He argued that this was about the minimum the powers could guarantee, not about the borders of a future Greater Serbia. Nor would he agree to anything that went beyond the provisions of the Treaty of London. The final text was drafted by Grey.

What was promised

According to the note, in the event of a victorious war and on condition that Serbia accepted the powers’ position on Macedonia, Serbia was to receive:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina;
• Syrmia up to the line of the Drava and the Danube, with Zemun opposite Belgrade, and Bačka;
• the Adriatic coast from Cape Planka, north-west of Split, to a point 10 kilometres south of Cavtat, with Dubrovnik, the Pelješac peninsula and the islands, among them Brač, Šolta and Čiovo;
• Slavonia, if its fate were decided by the allies after the war.

The coast further south, as far as the Drin river, was to be divided with Montenegro when peace was concluded. The coast from the Drin to the Vjosa was assigned to an independent state of central Albania. The fate of Croatia with the coast from the Bay of Volosko to the border of Dalmatia, including Rijeka, was to be settled only by the peace treaty. The Serbian coast and islands were to be neutralised, that is, deprived of fortifications and naval bases. This was a reservation written into the agreement with Italy, which did not want a strong fleet on the other side of the Adriatic.

The note was therefore largely a disclosure to Serbia of what the allies had decided in London in April. The Italians agreed to it reluctantly and only with regard to Serbia.

“There will be no Serbia”

According to accounts that Squitti collected the next day from the three envoys, the usually calm and cool Pašić lost his self-control while reading the document. He is said to have declared that agreeing to what was demanded of Serbia had already been very difficult, and now it had become quite impossible: “There will be no Serbia before we accept such conditions.” He was most hurt by two points: the creation of an independent central Albania, which cut Serbia off from a common border with Greece, and the neutralisation of the coast granted to Serbia. That same evening the prime minister left for consultations with King Peter I and the regent, Crown Prince Alexander. On 16 August the Serbian Skupština met. Jovan Jovanović, who normally stood in for Pašić at the foreign ministry, told the Italian envoy that Serbia was left either to perish with arms in hand or to conclude a separate peace with Austria-Hungary.

Sonnino was indignant that the three allies had acted without him and had left in the text sentences to which he had not agreed. Grey explained that this was an oversight caused by haste, because the reply had to reach Pašić before the session of the Skupština. On 17 August Squitti handed Pašić the Italian version of the note, without the sentence on Slavonia. The British envoy, meanwhile, on Grey’s instructions, was to reassure the Serbs that the question of Croatia remained open.

Serbia replied only on 1 September. It agreed to some of the concessions in Macedonia, but set far-reaching conditions, among them the annexation of Croatia with Rijeka and part of the Banat. The Entente never won over Bulgaria. At the beginning of September Sofia signed an alliance with the Central Powers, and in the autumn it attacked Serbia together with them.