The battle of Lyule Burgas–Buni Hisar (Turkish: Lu¨leburgaz-Pinarhisar) was the largest battle in terms of numbers of partici- pants of the Balkan Wars, and the largest land battle in Europe between the Franco- Prussian War and World War I.
The Bulgarian Third Army seized the Ottoman Fortress of Lozengrad (Turkish: Kirkilise) on October 23, 1912. After several days of rest, the Bulgarian Third Army together with the more westerly positioned Bulgarian First Army resumed their advance on October 27 as the Ottomans brought up into Thrace additional forces from Constan- tinople. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian Second Army screened the Ottoman fortress of Adrianople.
On October 29, the aggressive commander of the Bulgarian Third Army, General Radko Dimitriev (1859–1918), attacked the
Ottomans along a 20-mile front between the Thracian villages of Lyule Burgas on the southern end and Buni Hisar to the north. The Ottomans temporarily deflected the Bulgarian attacks. General Vasil Kutinchev’s First Army appeared around Lyule Burgas (1858–1941) on October 30. The addition of the First Army gave the Bulgarians around 110,000 men against Abdullah Pasha’s (1846–1937) 130,000 Ottomans. The First Army turned the Ottoman flank. By Octo- ber 31, the Ottoman left flank collapsed. The Ottoman forces then fled the battlefield toward Constantinople. Only the Chataldzha fortifications remained between the Bulgar- ians and the Ottoman capital.
General Dimitriev deserves credit for this victory. Had the Bulgarians begun an imme- diate pursuit, they might have destroyed the Ottoman forces. Bulgarian casualties and exhaustion prevented this. The Bulgarians lost 20,162 men including 2,534 dead. Most were in the more heavily engaged Third Army. The Ottomans lost around 22,000 men and at least 45 guns.
Richard C. Hall
See also: Balkan War, First, 1912–1913; Bul- garia in the Balkan Wars; Chataldzha, Battle of, 1912; Dimitriev, Radko (1859–1918); Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Wars
Further Reading
Erickson, Edward J. Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.
Hall, Richard C. The Balkan Wars, 1912– 1913: Prelude to the First World War. London: Routledge, 2000.
Vachkov, Alexander. The Balkan War 1912– 1913. Sofia: Anzhela, 2005.
M
Macedonia
Although Macedonia is a small nation that recently seceded from Yugoslavia, it was in ancient times a huge empire that was home to Alexander the Great, one of the greatest warriors the world has known.
The first known residents of Macedonia were Neolithic peoples who settled in the northern part of the country around 6200 BC. About 3,000 years later, Greek- speaking shepherd tribes settled in the mountain regions and then on the plains between the Aliakmon and Axios Rivers. The people of the region came to be known as Macedonians after around 700 BC, at which time much of the region was in the hands of the Greeks, who considered the indigenous peoples barbaric. The Greek control of much of the area forced the Macedonians, under Amynas III, to focus on unifying the plain and upland regions. Amynas’s son Philip II ruled in the fourth century BC and was instrumental in expand- ing Macedonia northward. In 338 BC, he conquered Greece and established a huge empire that was expanded further by his son, Alexander the Great, after Philip was murdered in 336.
Alexander the Great expanded the empire to cover Persia and Egypt and as far as northern India. His reign was a time of great cultural and artistic growth, but he died with- out a clear heir. Without a smooth succession, the empire dissolved into a number of small kingdoms that were divided by warfare for about 20 years, when Alexander’s European
regent, Antipater, gained control. Antipater and his son Cassander managed to control Macedonia and Greece until about 297 BC, but when Cassander died, Macedonia fell into confusion and conflict once more. The Antigonids won control of the region in 277 BC but were ousted by the Romans in 197 BC. The Romans, who made Macedonia a province in 148 BC, retained control until the Roman Empire came to an end at the close of the fourth century AD. At that time, Macedonia became part of the Byzantine Empire and fell prey to a series of invasions by Goths, Huns, Vandals, and Bulgars. Large numbers of Slavs from other parts of eastern Europe settled in Macedonia during the sixth century.
The next significant epoch of Macedonian history lasted from 1371 to 1912, which marked the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had gained control by defeating challenges from Serbia, Bulgaria, and other countries. The period of Ottoman control was not smooth. There was extensive unrest because of tensions between Christians and Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia all claimed Macedonia, which complicated the conflict over the region. In 1903, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organi- zation (VMRO), led the so-called Ilinden (St. Elijah’s Day) revolt against Ottoman rule. It was soon crushed. In an effort to end Ottoman rule in Macedonia, the Bulgarians and Serbs, with the support of Russia, con- cluded an alliance in March 1912. In a secret codicil to the alliance, they agreed to a
partition of Macedonia, but left a disputed section, the “contested zone,” to Russian arbi- tration. Greece and Montenegro joined the Balkan League later that year.
In the first of the Balkan Wars (1912– 1913), Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia wrested control of the region from the Turks, but they then fell into disagreement among themselves. The Second Balkan War (1913) was fought among those three nations and resulted in the division of the region among them with most of the territory taken by Greece and Serbia. During World War I, Bulgaria occupied the region. Bulgaria’s defeat at the end of the war returned most of Macedonia to Greek and Serbian rule.
After World War I, Macedonia was reab- sorbed into Serbia, which was part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and which became known as Yugoslavia in 1929. The union was short-lived. During World War II, Yugoslavia was broken up and distributed among Italy, Germany, and Hungary with most of Yugoslav Macedonia again occupied by Bulgaria between 1941 and 1944. Internal fighting among the Yugo- slav peoples at that time saw most of the Macedonian support going to partisan leader Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980). In 1944, the partisans met and agreed that Yugoslav Macedonia would become part of a future Yugoslav federation. When Tito formed his new nation, he recognized the Macedonians as a distinct ethnic group, supported the cre- ation of an independent Macedonian church, and even printed a standard grammar for the Macedonian language.
Macedonia remained a republic within Yugoslavia, a Communist state, until the early 1990s. In 1990, the republic’s government claimed that Serbia, Yugosla- via’s dominant republic, planned to annex Macedonia. The Macedonians were already dissatisfied with the Yugoslav federation
following Tito’s 1980 death, and tensions grew. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia gave up power in 1990, and in Macedonia, the League of Communists of Macedonia was defeated in multiparty elec- tions. Yugoslavia’s constituent republics jockeyed for increased autonomy. In June 1991, Macedonia dropped the word “Socialist” from its official name. Afraid that the secession of Croatia and Slovenia would increase Serbia’s power, the repub- lic’s population voted overwhelmingly in support of secession in a September 8, 1991, referendum, although Albanians and Serbs who lived in the republic boycotted the vote. There was some tension between Serbia and Macedonia, but the violence seen in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina after those republics left the federation did not materialize in Macedonia. Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia in November 1991.
Although secession did not bring with it violence, Macedonian independence did cause some serious problems. The most notable of those problems was the initial refusal of the international community— driven by Greece—to recognize the new nation. Greece insisted that the name Mac- edonia was Greek and that the new nation had articles in its new 1991 Constitution that suggested it had territorial ambitions regarding the Greek province of the same name. Athens also objected to Skopje’s use of the Star of Vergina, which had been Alexander the Great’s emblem, on its flag. Greece blocked recognition by the European Community (now the European Union) and refused to negotiate with Macedonia, even after the government amended the Macedo- nian Constitution to claim that it had no interest in territorial expansion into Greece.
The lack of recognition created economic difficulties. Greece blockaded Macedonia,