Greece announces mobilisation

On 23 September 1915, or 10 September by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, King Constantine I signed the decree for the general mobilisation of the Greek army. Twenty-four classes of reservists were called up. It was a response to the general mobilisation in Bulgaria and at the same time the greatest success so far of Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who for a month had been trying to induce the King to honour the alliance with Serbia. The Italian minister in Athens reported to Rome that night that the Prime Minister had obtained the decree from the King “without difficulty”.

The date of 23 September is given by the British official history of the Macedonian campaign and by the history of Greece’s part in the war published by the Greek General Staff. According to Venizelos’s own account, quoted by the British author G. F. Abbott, the mobilisation order had, however, already been prepared on the evening of 21 September, after the Prime Minister’s conversation with the King at Tatoi, when Venizelos asked the Entente for 150,000 troops. The Italian minister’s dispatches from those days indicate that on 21 September the King agreed to mobilisation only conditionally, in case the Bulgarian mobilisation was confirmed, and that the decree itself was obtained two days later. Venizelos’s biographer Vincent Seligman places the stormy conversation with the King on the day news arrived of the general mobilisation of the Bulgarians. According to this account, Constantine kept repeating: “I do not want to fight. The Germans will beat us”, but he signed the decree.

Two different mobilisations

One document concealed two different policies. For the King, mobilisation was merely armed neutrality, a necessary safeguard against what Bulgaria was doing. Constantine told the Prime Minister that he would go no further. He feared that Austria-Hungary and Germany would throw huge forces into the Balkans, according to his information as many as 800,000 men, and he did not want to break with the Central Powers. Venizelos, on the other hand, wanted war if Bulgaria attacked Serbia. He counted on the promise of Entente troops persuading the King. Through the French minister he asked that the powers at least declare that they would send 150,000 men as soon as they could. He also pointed out that the treasury was empty and that there was money to maintain the mobilised army for only a few days. He threatened that without help he would resign, and his place would be taken by a government friendly to Germany, which would gladly give Greece money.

The army on the move

The mobilisation went ahead with many difficulties. In Macedonia and Epirus, annexed to Greece during the Balkan Wars, there was a lack of roads, transport and even military records. Reservists reported late, and the army did not have enough officers to staff all its units. In the end five corps and 15 infantry divisions were mobilised. Only III, IV and V Corps reached Macedonia, however, while the divisions of I and II Corps mostly remained in Old Greece. According to the Greek General Staff, even after mobilisation Greece could field about 160,000 men against the Bulgarians, while the Bulgarians had about 300,000. The Italian minister noted that the mobilisation was proceeding efficiently, but without any enthusiasm on the part of the population, most of whom wanted only peace.

The Greek army was to remain under arms for many months, but it did not go to war on Serbia’s side. As early as the beginning of October the King forced Venizelos to resign for the second time in a year, and the governments that followed held to neutrality. The mobilised divisions stood in Macedonia while Entente troops landed next to them, and in the autumn Serbia fell under the blows of the Central Powers and Bulgaria. Demobilisation began only in June 1916, under pressure from the Entente, which did not trust the royal army.