Treaty of Bucharest ends the Second Balkan War

On 10 August 1913 (28 July in the Julian calendar) the delegates of Romania, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria signed in Bucharest the peace treaty that ended the Second Balkan War. Bulgaria, which six weeks earlier had attacked its former allies, had to accept the victors’ terms. It gave up Southern Dobruja to Romania and almost the whole of Macedonia, for which it had fought in both Balkan wars, to Serbia and Greece. The British historian William Miller wrote that in a single month it had thrown away what it had worked for over 35 years.

The Bucharest conference

In the second half of July Bulgaria was surrounded. The Serbs and Greeks stood in Macedonia and on its old frontier, the Romanians about 20 km from Sofia, and the Turks had recovered Adrianople. The government of Vasil Radoslavov, which had replaced Stoyan Danev’s cabinet, had to sue for peace. Tsar Ferdinand asked King Carol I of Romania to mediate and agreed to give him the land between the Danube and the Black Sea, from Tutrakan to Balchik, which the Romanians had demanded from the start. On 30 July a peace conference met in Bucharest under the chairmanship of the Romanian prime minister Titu Maiorescu, and at noon the next day a five-day armistice came into force, extended on 4 August by a further four days. Serbia was represented by Nikola Pašić, Greece by Eleftherios Venizelos, and Bulgaria by the finance minister Dimitar Tonchev and the chief of staff, General Ivan Fichev (PL). Turkey took no part in the talks.

The longest dispute was over the Aegean coast, and above all over Kavala, a port at the centre of a tobacco-growing region, taken by the Greek fleet. During the First Balkan War Venizelos had been ready to leave it to the Bulgarians, but King Constantine and the army demanded Kavala for Greece. According to Miller, to the surprise of Austria-Hungary and Italy, they were backed by the King’s brother-in-law, Emperor Wilhelm II. Maiorescu told the Bulgarians that if they did not give way, the Romanian army would occupy Sofia. The Bulgarian delegates gave way.

The new frontiers

The first article of the treaty established peace and amity between the five monarchs from the day the ratifications were exchanged, which happened on 30 August. The new Romanian-Bulgarian frontier ran from the Danube above Tutrakan to the Black Sea south of Ekrene. Romania gained about 7,000 km² with the fortress of Silistra, and Bulgaria undertook within two years to dismantle the fortifications at Ruse, Shumen, in the country between them and within 20 km of Balchik, and to build no new ones there. The frontier with Serbia followed the watershed between the Vardar and the Struma, and that with Greece ran from the Belasica range to the mouth of the Mesta. Bulgaria also renounced all claims to Crete. The Bulgarian army was to begin demobilising the day after notification that peace had been signed, and the victors were to leave its territory within fifteen days of the demobilisation.

Serbia enlarged its territory from 48,300 to about 87,800 km², gaining Ohrid, Bitola, Štip and the eastern part of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, and its population grew by more than a million and a half. Greece, with Salonika, Kavala, Epirus and southern Macedonia, grew from 2.66 to 4.36 million inhabitants. Bulgaria was left with a scrap of Macedonia with Strumica, part of western Thrace and about 110 km of Aegean coast with the small port of Dedeagach, today’s Alexandroupolis (PL). According to Miller the two wars cost it almost 45,000 killed and more than 100,000 wounded.

Peace without consent

The news of peace was greeted with relief, although at first it seemed that two great powers would demand a revision of the treaty: Russia, which had backed Bulgaria in the dispute over Kavala, and Austria-Hungary, which disliked an enlarged Serbia. France and Germany, however, took the Greek side, and in the end all the powers accepted the Bucharest settlement. On 29 September Bulgaria signed a separate peace with Turkey in Constantinople and gave back Adrianople and Kırklareli (PL) (Lozengrad), the scene of its first great victory in 1912.

The American historians Frank Maloy Anderson and Amos Hershey wrote in 1918 that the frontiers drawn at Bucharest bore little relation to the nationality of the inhabitants, and that the punishment of Bulgaria was so severe that it could not accept the treaty as a permanent settlement. Romania gained the most in proportion to its sacrifices, Serbia came out of the wars almost twice its former size, and Sofia was governed by men who blamed Russia for the defeat. Two years later Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, hoping to recover Macedonia.