False report of Boris's abdication

The British chronology of the war records under 1 November 1918 that Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria abdicated. That did not happen. Boris, who less than a month earlier had come to the throne after the abdication of his father, Ferdinand I, reigned until his death in 1943. The chronology simply repeats a false report that went round the press of the Entente countries at the turn of October and November.

Dispatches from Copenhagen and Zurich

On 2 November American newspapers, among them the Boston American, the Janesville Daily Gazette and the Rushville Daily Republican, reported on their front pages that Tsar Boris had abdicated and Bulgaria had been proclaimed a republic. The source was a dispatch from the British Exchange Telegraph agency, which cited news from Berlin passed on via Copenhagen. According to it, the republican movement was led by the peasant leader Aleksandar Stamboliyski. The Associated Press, also from Copenhagen, wrote that a peasant government under his leadership had been formed in Tarnovo, the old capital of the Bulgarian tsars. Another dispatch, sent from Zurich to the London Central News agency, added that Stamboliyski commanded a republican army of 40,000 men. The report came alongside news of the disintegration of Austria-Hungary and of revolution in Vienna and Budapest, so it seemed credible.

Where it came from

The rumour had a real basis. At the end of September, after the defeat at Dobro Pole, mutinous soldiers seized army headquarters at Kyustendil. The government released Stamboliyski from prison to calm the army, but he joined the mutineers. On 27 September a republic was proclaimed at Radomir with a provisional government that Stamboliyski was to head, and several thousand soldiers marched on Sofia. The rebellion was crushed outside the capital on 30 September, and on 2 October government troops retook Radomir. The next day Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his son. Echoes of these events, reworked by rumours circulating in Berlin, Copenhagen and Zurich, turned into news of the fall of the monarchy.

In reality, after the rebellion was put down Stamboliyski was in hiding, and there was no republic and no peasant army in Bulgaria. The country was still governed by the cabinet of Aleksandar Malinov, which had signed the Armistice of Salonica. Stamboliyski returned to politics after an amnesty in December 1918, joined the government in January 1919 and became prime minister in October 1919. The monarchy of Boris III was the only one among the defeated Central Powers to survive for long.