France declares war on Bulgaria

On 16 October 1915 France declared that it was in a state of war with Bulgaria. According to the British Annual Register, the state of war applied from six in the morning. That day President Raymond Poincaré noted in his diary: “Since the representatives of the Allies have left Sofia without obtaining even the shadow of a promise, and Bulgaria has declared war on Serbia, we now consider that a state of war exists between France and Bulgaria. Great Britain has anticipated us in this.” Indeed, the British had declared a state of war the previous evening.

France used the same formula as London. It did not send Sofia a separate declaration with a list of grievances, but simply declared a state of war resulting from the Bulgarian attack on Serbia, an ally of the Entente. The French minister in Sofia, Panafieu, had asked for his passports in the first days of October, after the Russian ultimatum. According to Poincaré, the government decided at the time that it would take no steps against Bulgaria on its own, but would merely recall its minister.

A government in crisis

According to the British official history of naval operations, the joint declaration of the allies was delayed precisely because of the crisis in France. Three days earlier Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé had resigned, and his ministry was temporarily run by Prime Minister René Viviani. The government was criticised for the failure of its diplomacy in the Balkans, and in the press and in parliament there was dispute over whether it was worth sending troops to help Serbia at all, instead of concentrating all forces on the Western Front. In a stormy debate in the Chamber of Deputies Viviani defended the Salonika expedition and gave assurances that France would not act there alone, since Britain and Russia had promised help. The cabinet survived, but, as the Revue des Deux Mondes wrote, it had been saved rather than strengthened.

Bulgaria had its own grievances against France. According to Poincaré, Tsar Ferdinand complained in a private letter that in 1913 France had supported giving Kavala to Greece, and at the beginning of 1914 had not allowed Bulgaria to raise a loan in Paris. The Bulgarians had then taken it from German banks. Poincaré considered these complaints a pretext.

The Army of the Orient

France already had soldiers in the Balkans. Since 5 October units of the French 156th Division had been coming ashore at Salonika, and on 12 October General Maurice Sarrail, commander of the Army of the Orient, arrived there. He at once sent an infantry regiment and an artillery battalion up the Vardar valley to cover the railway between the Greek border and Strumica station. The day before the state of war was declared, War Minister Alexandre Millerand telegraphed to Sarrail that in the present state of diplomatic relations there could be no question of an offensive against Bulgaria or of taking part in the fighting in northern Serbia. The French were to hold Salonika as a base, protect the railway line to Skopje and cover the right flank of the Serbian army.

The state of war changed this situation only formally. The French were still few in number, and the British had no permission from London to march into Serbia. The first clash between French soldiers and Bulgarians took place a few days later in the Vardar valley. The allies did not, however, manage to stop the Bulgarians, who were advancing rapidly into Serbian Macedonia.