Russia and Italy declare war on Bulgaria

On 19 October 1915 Russia and Italy joined the states fighting Bulgaria. That day the manifesto of Emperor Nicholas II declaring war on Bulgaria was published in Petrograd, and the government in Rome announced that Italy was at war with it. Five days had passed since Bulgaria declared war on Serbia. Earlier, Britain, Montenegro and France had declared themselves at war with Bulgaria. Now all the great powers of the Entente stood against Bulgaria.

The tsar’s manifesto

The manifesto was dated 5 October in the Julian calendar, which Russia then used, that is, 18 October in the Gregorian calendar. The tsar signed it at Stavka, the headquarters in Mogilev, where since September he had personally commanded the army. The next day, 6 (19) October, the text appeared in the official collection of laws and decrees. That is why most chronicles give the date as 19 October.

It was one of the most personal documents of this war. “Treacherously prepared since the beginning of the war, and yet seemingly impossible, Bulgaria’s betrayal of the Slav cause has been accomplished,” the tsar proclaimed. “Bulgarian troops have attacked Our faithful ally Serbia, bleeding in the struggle with a stronger enemy.” Russia and her allies, the manifesto went on, had warned “the government of Ferdinand of Coburg” against this fatal step, and the fulfilment of the Bulgarians’ long-held aspirations, the annexation of Macedonia, had been assured to them by another road, consistent with the interests of the Slav world. But “secret, selfish calculations suggested by the Germans and fratricidal hostility towards the Serbs” had prevailed. The manifesto did not call Ferdinand tsar, only “Ferdinand of Coburg”, recalling his German origins, and it laid the blame for the war on his government.

The ending sounded the strongest. Bulgaria, “of one faith with Us, only recently liberated from Turkish bondage by the brotherly love and blood of the Russian people”, had openly taken the side of “the enemies of the faith of Christ, of the Slav world and of Russia”. “With bitterness will the Russian people receive the betrayal of Bulgaria, so close to it until the last days,” the tsar concluded, “and with a heavy heart it bares the sword against her, leaving the fate of the betrayers of the Slav world to the just punishment of God.”

Disappointed brotherhood

For the Russians the war with Bulgaria was more than just another declaration. Less than forty years earlier Russia had fought a war with Turkey, after which Bulgaria regained its statehood. In Sofia stood a monument to Tsar Alexander II, whom the Bulgarians called the Tsar Liberator, and in 1912 construction was completed there of the great cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky, built in memory of the Russian soldiers who fell in that war. As early as the beginning of October, after the Russian ultimatum, Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria.

The Russian press wrote of the Bulgarians with bitterness. In the following days the well-known publicist Mikhail Menshikov wrote in Novoye Vremya of Russia’s “fourth enemy”. He recalled that, according to the Bulgarians themselves, the liberation of two million of their countrymen had cost Russia 200,000 lives and huge sums of money, and he added that the Russians had made a bitter mistake in expecting eternal gratitude from a small Slav nation. The most eloquent gesture was made by a Bulgarian in Russian service, General Radko Dimitriev, hero of the Balkan Wars, who in 1914–1915 had commanded the Russian Third Army. According to the British Nelson’s History of the War, he sent his Bulgarian orders back to Tsar Ferdinand and renounced his Bulgarian nationality. The British Annual Register, for its part, observed that many Bulgarians went reluctantly to war against the Russians, their old friends and benefactors.

The French Revue des Deux Mondes judged that the manifesto spoke with great force, but that not a single copy of it would reach Bulgaria, so it had been written above all for Russia herself and for the world. For Russia could not easily reach Bulgaria. Between the two countries lay neutral Romania, which had no intention of letting Russian troops through, and the Russian army was still recovering from the great retreat of the summer. The allies heard assurances that Russia would send troops as soon as she could. For the time being she could act only at sea. On 27 October the Russian Black Sea Fleet bombarded the Bulgarian port of Varna.

Italy

This was the third time that year that Italy had declared war. In May she had declared it on Austria-Hungary, in August on Turkey. She was still not, however, at war with Germany. The French president Raymond Poincaré had noted wryly just beforehand that Italy had decided to declare war on Bulgaria but still did not want to challenge Germany, because her enemy remained the Austrians.

Rome had not previously been in the front rank. When on 4 October the ministers of Russia, France and Britain presented their demands to the Bulgarian prime minister, the Italian minister had not yet received instructions and did not join his colleagues. Now Italy came down clearly on Serbia’s side. The government of Antonio Salandra, with Sidney Sonnino as foreign minister, was in no hurry, however, to send troops to Salonika. The press close to the government wrote that Italy would best help Serbia by attacking on her own front, and just then the third battle began on the Isonzo. In London David Lloyd George replied in the House of Commons that day that the way in which Italy could most effectively help Serbia was a matter for discussion among the allies.

At the beginning of December Sonnino defended the decision to go to war with Bulgaria in parliament, where the socialists opposed any extension of the war. Italian troops appeared in the Balkans in December, but not in Macedonia: they went to Albania, where they helped evacuate the remnants of the Serbian army. An Italian division did not reach Salonika until the summer of 1916.