The Second Balkan War (29 June – 10 August 1913) was a conflict fought between the Tsardom of Bulgaria and its former Balkan League allies, Serbia and Greece, who were later joined by Romania and the Ottoman Empire.

The war began when Bulgaria, unhappy with the division of territory after the First Balkan War, launched attacks on Serbian and Greek forces, who repelled the offensive and pushed into Bulgarian territory. With most of Bulgaria’s army committed in the south, Romania intervened from the north. The Ottoman Empire also took advantage of the situation to recover territories lost the previous year.

As Bulgaria suffered military setbacks on multiple fronts and Romanian forces advanced towards its capital, Sofia, it requested an armistice. The war ended with the Treaty of Bucharest, which compelled Bulgaria to cede significant territory: Southern Dobruja to Romania, parts of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Adrianople (Edirne) to the Ottoman Empire under the separate Treaty of Constantinople.

The war altered the political balance in the Balkans and intensified regional tensions. Serbia expanded its territory and influence, heightening its rivalry with Austria-Hungary. Bulgaria, weakened by defeat and territorial losses, would later align with the Central Powers in the First World War.

Background

During the First Balkan War, which began in October 1912, the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece) succeeded in driving out the Ottoman Empire from its European provinces (Albania, Macedonia, Sandžak and Thrace), leaving the Ottomans with only East Thrace. The Treaty of London, signed on 30 May 1913, which ended the war, acknowledged the Balkan states' gains west of the Enos–Midia line, drawn from Midia (Kıyıköy) on the Black Sea coast to Enos (Enez) on the Aegean Sea coast, on an uti possidetis basis, and created an independent Albania.

However, the relations between the victorious Balkan allies quickly soured over the division of the land, specifically in Macedonia. During the pre-war negotiations that resulted in the Balkan League's establishment, a secret agreement on 13 March 1912 was signed by Serbia and Bulgaria, which determined their future boundaries, effectively sharing northern Macedonia. In case of a post-war disagreement, the area to the north of the Kriva Palanka–Ohrid line (with both cities going to the Bulgarians) had been designated as a "disputed zone" under Russian arbitration, with the area to the south of this line assigned to Bulgaria. During the war, the Serbs succeeded in capturing an area far south of the agreed border, down to the Bitola–Gevgelija line (both in Serbian hands). At the same time, the Greeks advanced north, occupying Thessaloniki shortly before the Bulgarians arrived and establishing a common Greek border with Serbia.

thumb|The Serbian-Bulgarian pre-war division of Macedonia, including the contested area

When Bulgarian delegates in London bluntly warned the Serbs that they must not expect Bulgarian support on their Adriatic claims, the Serbs angrily replied that that was a blatant withdrawal from the prewar agreement of mutual understanding according to the Kriva Palanka-Adriatic line of expansion. The Bulgarians insisted that the Vardar Macedonian part of the agreement remained active, and the Serbs were still obliged to surrender the area as agreed. The Serbs responded by accusing the Bulgarians of maximalism, pointing out that if they lost both northern Albania and Vardar Macedonia, their participation in the common war would have been virtually for nothing.

When Bulgaria called upon Serbia to honour the pre-war agreement over northern Macedonia, the Serbs, displeased at the Great Powers' requiring them to give up their gains in north Albania, adamantly refused to evacuate any more territory. The developments ended the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance and made a future war between the two countries inevitable. Soon, minor clashes broke out along the borders of the occupation zones with the Bulgarians against the Serbs and the Greeks. Responding to the perceived Bulgarian threat, Serbia started negotiations with Greece, which also had reasons to be concerned about Bulgarian intentions.

thumb|right|250px|The territorial gains of the Balkan states after the First Balkan War and the line of expansion according to the pre-war secret agreement between Serbia and Bulgaria

On 19 May/1 June 1913, two days after the signing of the Treaty of London and just 28 days before the Bulgarian attack, Greece and Serbia signed a secret defensive alliance, confirming the current demarcation line between the two occupation zones as their mutual border and concluding an alliance in case of an attack from Bulgaria or from Austria-Hungary. With this agreement, Serbia succeeded in making Greece a part of its dispute over northern Macedonia, since Greece had guaranteed Serbia's current (and disputed) occupation zone in Macedonia. In an attempt to halt the Serbo-Greek rapprochement, Bulgarian Prime Minister Geshov signed a protocol with Greece on 21 May, agreeing on a permanent boundary between their respective forces, effectively accepting Greek control over southern Macedonia. However, his later dismissal ended the diplomatic targeting of Serbia.

Another point of friction arose: Bulgaria's refusal to cede the fortress of Silistra to Romania. When Romania demanded its cession after the First Balkan War, Bulgaria's foreign minister offered instead some minor border changes, which excluded Silistra, and assurances for the rights of the Kutzovlachs in Macedonia. Romania threatened to occupy Bulgarian territory by force, but a Russian proposal for arbitration prevented hostilities. In the resulting Protocol of St. Petersburg of 9 May 1913, Bulgaria agreed to give up Silistra. The resulting agreement was a compromise between the Romanian demands for the city, two triangles at the Bulgaria–Romania border and Balchik and the land between it and Romania and the Bulgarian refusal to accept any cession of its territory. However, the fact that Russia failed to protect the territorial integrity of Bulgaria made the Bulgarians uncertain of the reliability of the expected Russian arbitration of the dispute with Serbia. The Bulgarian behaviour also had a long-term impact on Russo-Bulgarian relations. The uncompromising Bulgarian position to review the prewar agreement with Serbia during a second Russian initiative for arbitration finally led Russia to cancel its alliance with Bulgaria.

Preparation

Bulgarian war plans

thumb|upright|[[Ferdinand I of Bulgaria]]

In 1912, Bulgaria's national aspirations, as expressed by Tsar Ferdinand and the military leadership, exceeded the provisions of the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, considered even then as maximalistic, since it included both Eastern and Western Thrace and all Macedonia with Thessaloniki, Edirne and Constantinople. Early evidence of the lack of realistic thinking in Bulgarian leadership was that although Russia had sent clear warnings expressed for the first time on 5 November 1912 (well before the First Battle of Çatalca) that if the Bulgarian army occupied Constantinople they would attack it, they continued their attempts to take the city.

Although the Bulgarian army succeeded in capturing Edirne in the Battle of Adrianople (1913), Tsar Ferdinand's ambition in crowning himself Emperor in Constantinople also proved unrealistic when the Bulgarian army failed to capture the city in the First Battle of Çatalca. Even worse, the concentration on capturing Thrace and Constantinople ultimately caused the loss of most of Macedonia, including Thessaloniki, and that could not be accepted, leading the Bulgarian military leadership around Tsar Ferdinand to decide upon a war against its former allies. With the Ottomans unwilling to accept the loss of Thrace in the east, and an enraged Romania (in the north), the decision to open war against Greece (to the south) and Serbia (to the west) was a rather adventurous one, since in May the Ottoman Empire had urgently requested a German mission to reorganize the Ottoman army. By mid-June, Bulgaria became aware of the agreement between Serbia and Greece in case of a Bulgarian attack. On 27 June, Montenegro announced that it would side with Serbia in the event of a Serbian–Bulgarian war. On 5 February, Romania settled her differences over Transylvania with Austria-Hungary, signing a military alliance, and on 28 June, officially warned Bulgaria that it would not remain neutral in a new Balkan war. Russia's Foreign Minister Sazonov's exact words to Bulgaria's new Prime Minister Stoyan Danev were "Do not expect anything from us, and forget the existence of any of our agreements from 1902 until the present". Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was already angry with Bulgaria because the latter refused to honour its recently signed agreement with Romania over Silistra, which resulted from Russian arbitration. Then Serbia and Greece proposed that each of the three countries reduce its army by one-fourth as a first step to facilitate a peaceful solution, but Bulgaria rejected it.

thumb|upright|[[Carol I of Romania]]

Bulgaria was already on the track to war since a new cabinet had been formed in Bulgaria where the pacifist Geshov was replaced by the hardliner and head of a Russophile party, Danev, as premier. There is some evidence that to overcome Tsar Ferdinand's reservations over a new war against Serbia and Greece, certain personalities in Sofia threatened to overthrow him. In any case, on 16 June, the Bulgarian high command, under the direct control of Tsar Ferdinand and without notifying the government, ordered Bulgarian troops to start a surprise attack simultaneously against both the Serbian and Greek positions without declaring war and to dismiss any orders contradicting the attack order. The next day the government pressured the General Staff to order the army to cease hostilities, which caused confusion and loss of initiative and failed to remedy the state of undeclared war. In response to the government pressure, Tsar Ferdinand dismissed General Savov and replaced him with General Dimitriev as commander-in-chief.

thumb|left|upright|[[Nicholas I of Montenegro]]

Bulgaria intended to defeat the Serbs and Greeks and to occupy areas as large as possible before the Great Powers interfered to end the hostilities. To provide superiority in arms, the entire Bulgarian army was committed to these operations. No provisions were made in case of an (officially declared) Romanian intervention or an Ottoman counterattack, strangely assuming that Russia would assure that no attack would come from those directions, even though on 9 June Russia had angrily repudiated its Bulgarian alliance and shifted its diplomacy towards Romania (Russia already had named Romania's King Carol an honorary Russian field marshal, as a clear warning in changing its policy towards Sofia in December 1912). which was more than the equivalent of two nine-battalion divisions, the standard divisional structure in most armies, as was also the case with the Greek and Serbian militaries in 1913. Consequently, although the Bulgarian army had 599,878 men mobilized at the beginning of the First Balkan War, there were only nine organizational divisions, giving a divisional strength closer to an Army Corps than to a Division. Tactical necessities during and after the First Balkan War modified this original structure: a new 10th division was formed using two brigades from the 1st and 6th divisions, and an additional three independent brigades were formed from recruits. Nevertheless, the heavy structure generally remained. By contrast, the Greek Army of Macedonia also had nine divisions, but the total number of men under arms was only 118,000. Another decisive factor affecting the real strength of the divisions between the opposing armies was the distribution of artillery. The nine-division-strong Greek Army had 176 guns, and the ten-division-strong Serbian army had 230. The Bulgarians had 1,116, a ratio of 6:1 against the Greeks and 5:1 against the Serbian army.

There is a dispute over the strength of the Bulgarian army during the Second Balkan War. At the outbreak of the First Balkan War, Bulgaria mobilized a total of 599,878 men (366,209 in the Active Army; 53,927 in the supplementing units; 53,983 in the National Militia; 94,526 from the 1912 and 1913 levies; 14,204 volunteers; 14,424 in the border guards). The non-recoverable casualties during the First Balkan War were 33,000 men (14,000 killed and 19,000 died of disease). To replace these casualties, Bulgaria conscripted 60,000 men between the two wars, mainly from the newly occupied areas, using 21,000 of them to form the Seres, Drama and Odrin (Edirne) independent brigades. It is known that there were no demobilized men. According to the Bulgarian command, the army had 7,693 officers and 492,528 soldiers in its ranks on 16 June (including the three brigades mentioned above). This gives a difference of 99,657 men in strength between the two wars. In comparison, subtracting the actual number of casualties, including wounded and adding the newly conscripted men produces no less than 576,878 men. The army was experiencing shortages of war materials and had only 378,998 rifles at its disposal.

thumb|left|Photo of a Greek (left) and Bulgarian (right) sentry at the port of Thessaloniki during the period of joint occupation before the outbreak of the war.

The 1st and 3rd armies (under generals Vasil Kutinchev and Radko Dimitriev respectively) were deployed along the old Serbian-Bulgarian borders, with the 5th Army under general Stefan Toshev around Kyustendil, and the 4th Army under General Stiliyan Kovachev in the Kočani–Radoviš area. The 2nd Army under general Nikola Ivanov was detailed against the Greek army.

The army of the Kingdom of Serbia accounted for 348,000 men (out of which 252,000 were combatants)

Start of the war

thumb|250px|right|Initial Bulgarian plan of operations

The primary Bulgarian attack was planned against the Serbs with their 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th Armies, while the 2nd army was tasked with an attack toward Greek positions around Thessaloniki. However, in the crucial opening days of the war, only the 4th Army and 2nd Army were ordered to advance. This allowed the Serbs to concentrate their forces against the attacking Bulgarians and hold their advance. The Bulgarians were outnumbered on the Greek front, and the low-level fighting soon turned into a Greek attack all along the line on 19 June. The Bulgarian forces were forced to withdraw from their positions north of Thessaloniki (except the isolated battalion stationed in the city itself, which was quickly overrun) to defensive positions between Kilkis and Struma river. The plan to rapidly destroy the Serbian army in central Macedonia by concentrated attack turned out to be unrealistic, with the Bulgarian army starting to retreat even before Romanian intervention, and the Greek advance necessitated the disengagement of forces to defend Sofia.

Bulgarian offensive against Greece

The Bulgarian 2nd army in southern Macedonia, commanded by General Ivanov, held a line from Dojran Lake southeast to Kilkis, Lachanas, Serres and then across the Pangaion Hills to the Aegean Sea. The army had been in place since May and was considered a veteran force, having fought at the siege of Edirne in the First Balkan War. Though General Ivanov, possibly to avoid any responsibility for his crushing defeat, claimed after the war that his army consisted of only 36,000 men and that a number of his units were weakened, a detailed analysis concerning his units contradicted him. Ivanov's 2nd army consisted of the 3rd division minus one brigade with four regiments of four battalions (a total of 16 battalions plus the divisional artillery), the I/X brigade with the 16th and 25th regiments (total of eight battalions plus artillery), the Drama Brigade with the 69th, 75th and 7th regiments (total of 12 battalions), the Seres Brigade with 67th and 68th regiments (total of 8 battalions), the 11th division with the 55th, 56th and 57th regiments (total of 12 battalions plus the divisional artillery), the 5th Border Battalion, the 10th Independent Battalion and the 10th Cavalry Regiment of seven mounted and seven infantry companies. In total, Ivanov's force comprised 232 companies in 58 infantry battalions, a cavalry regiment (14 companies) with 175 artillery guns, numbering between 80,000 (official Bulgarian source) and 108,000 (official Greek source according to the official Bulgarian history of the war before 1932). All modern historians agree that Ivanov underestimated the number of his soldiers, but the Greek army still had a numerical superiority. A large part of Ivanov's forces, and especially the Drama Brigade and the Seres Brigade, were composed of completely untrained local recruits. in a line extending from the Gulf of Orphanos to the Gevgelija area. Since the Greek headquarters did not know where the Bulgarian attack would occur, the Bulgarians would have temporary local superiority in the location chosen for the attack.

On 26 June, the Bulgarian army received orders to destroy the opposing Greek forces and to advance towards Thessaloniki. The Greeks stopped them, and by 29 June, an order for a general counterattack was issued. At Kilkis, the Bulgarians had constructed strong defences, including captured Ottoman guns which dominated the plain below. The Greek 4th, 2nd, and 5th divisions attacked across the plain in rushes supported by artillery. The Greek Army suffered heavy casualties but carried the trenches by the next day. On the Bulgarian left, the Greek 7th Division captured Serres and the 1st and 6th divisions captured Lachanas. The defeat of the 2nd army by the Greeks was the most serious military disaster suffered by the Bulgarians in the Second Balkan War. Bulgarian sources give 6,971 casualties, over 6,000 prisoners, and over 130 artillery pieces captured by the Greeks, who suffered 8,700 casualties. On 28 June, the retreating Bulgarian army and irregulars burned down the major city of Serres (a predominantly Greek town surrounded by both Bulgarianto the north and westand Greekto the east and southvillages), and the towns of Nigrita, Doxato and Demir Hisar, ostensibly as a retaliation for the burning of the Bulgarian town of Kilkis by the Greeks, which had taken place after the named battle, as well as the destruction of multiple Bulgarian villages in the region. On the Bulgarian right, Greek Evzones captured Gevgelija and the heights of Matsikovo. Consequentially, the Bulgarian line of retreat through Dojran was threatened, and Ivanov's army began a desperate retreat, threatening at times to become a rout. Reinforcements from the 14th division came too late, joining the retreat towards Strumica and the Bulgarian border. The Greeks captured Dojran on 5 July but were unable to cut off the Bulgarian retreat through Struma Pass. On 11 July, the Greeks came in contact with the Serbs and then pushed up the Struma River. Meanwhile, the Greek forces, with the support of their navy, landed in Kavala and then penetrated inland to western Thrace. On 19 July, the Greeks captured Nevrokop, and on 25 July, in another amphibious operation, entered Dedeagac (today Alexandroupoli), thus cutting off the Bulgarians completely from the Aegean sea.

Serbian front

thumb|Serbian troops with [[Wireless telegraphy|wireless field telegraph station during the Second Balkan War, in June 1913.]]

The 4th Bulgarian army held the most important position in the attempted conquest of Serbian Macedonia. The fighting began on 29–30 June 1913, between the 4th Bulgarian army and the 1st and 3rd Serbian armies, first along the Zletovska and then after a Bulgarian retreat, along the Bregalnica.

On the north, the Bulgarians started to advance towards the Serbian border town of Pirot and forced Serbian Command to send reinforcements to the 2nd army defending Pirot and Niš. This enabled Bulgarians to stop the Serbian offensive in Macedonia at Kalimanci on 18 July.

On 13 July 1913, General Mihail Savov assumed control of the 4th and 5th Bulgarian armies. The Bulgarians dug into strong positions around the village of Kalimantsi, at the Bregalnica river in the northeastern Macedonia region. Although this boosted the Bulgarians, the situation was critical in the south, with the Greek Army. Meanwhile, the Greek forces continued their march inland into western Thrace, on 26 July, they entered Xanthi and the next day Komotini.

The Greek army was exhausted and faced logistical difficulties, but resisted strenuously and launched local counterattacks. By 30 July, the Bulgarian army downscaled its attacks, having to repulse Greek counterattacks on both sides. On the eastern flank, the Greek army launched a counterattack towards Mehomia through the Predela pass. The offensive was stopped by the Bulgarians on the eastern side of the pass and fighting ground to a stalemate. On the western flank, an offensive was launched against Tsarevo Selo to reach the Serbian lines. This failed, and the Bulgarian army continued advancing, especially in the south. However, after three days of fighting at the sectors of Pehchevo and Mahomia, the Greek forces retained their positions.

Romanian intervention

Romania mobilized its army on 5 July 1913, intending to seize Southern Dobruja, and declared war on Bulgaria on 10 July.

On 18 July, Romania took Ferdinand, and on 20 July, they occupied Vratsa, north of Sofia. On 23 July, advanced cavalry forces had entered Vrazhdebna, a suburb only from Sofia.

To help Bulgaria repulse the rapid Ottoman advance in Thrace, Russia threatened to attack the Ottoman Empire through the Caucasus and send its Black Sea Fleet to Constantinople; this caused Britain to intervene.

The Bulgarian command began to transfer troops to Thrace and on 20 July, with increasing resistance, the Turkish advance was halted.

According to the 1918 book Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913, Ottoman forces perpetrated atrocities against the Bulgarians in Eastern Thrace during the invasion and aftermath.

Negotiating a way out

Armistice

As the Romanian army closed in on Sofia, Bulgaria asked Russia to mediate. On 13 July, Prime Minister Stoyan Danev resigned in the face of Russian inactivity. On 17 July, the tsar appointed Vasil Radoslavov to head a pro-German and Russophobic government. Romania refused to allow the Ottomans to participate, forcing Bulgaria to negotiate with them separately. Greece increased her population from 2.7 to 4.4 million and her territory by 68 percent. Serbia almost doubled her territory, enlarging her population from 2.9 to 4.5 million. The Montenegrins at Bucharest were primarily interested in obtaining a favourable concession from Serbia in the former Sanjak of Novi Pazar. They did it, later confirming it in a treaty signed at Belgrade on 7 November. The Ottoman delegation was led by Foreign Minister Mehmed Talat Bey, assisted by future Naval Minister Çürüksulu Mahmud Pasha and Halil Bey. Although Russia tried to intervene throughout August to prevent Edirne from becoming Turkish again, Toshev told the Ottomans at Constantinople that "[t]he Russians consider Constantinople their natural inheritance. Their main concern is that when Constantinople falls into their hands it shall have the largest possible hinterland. If Adrianople is in the possession of the Turks, they shall get it too." After the exchange, according to the 1914 Ottoman census, there remained 14,908 Bulgarians belonging to the Bulgarian Exarchate in Ottoman Empire.

On 14 November 1913, Greece and the Ottomans signed a treaty in Athens, formally ending their hostilities. On 14 March 1914, Serbia signed a treaty in Constantinople, restoring relations with the Ottoman Empire and reaffirming the 1913 Treaty of London. Years of military investment financed by French loans borne fruit. Central Vardar and the eastern half of the Sanjak of Novi Pazar were acquired. Its territory grew in extent from 18,650 to 33,891 square miles, and its population grew by more than one and a half million. The aftermath brought harassment and oppression for those in the newly conquered lands. The freedom of association, assembly and the press guaranteed under the Serbian constitution of 1903 was not introduced into the new territories. The inhabitants were denied voting rights, ostensibly because the cultural level was considered too low, in reality, to keep the non-Serbs, who made up the majority in multiple areas, out of national politics. Opposition newspapers like Radicke Novine remarked that the 'new Serbs' had better political rights under the Turks. There was a destruction of Turkish buildings, schools, baths, mosques. In October and November 1913, British vice-consuls reported systematic intimidation, arbitrary detentions, beatings, rapes, village burnings and massacres by Serbs in the annexed areas. The Serbian government showed no interest in preventing further outrages or investigating those that had happened. When the Carnegie Commission, composed of an international team of experts selected for their impartiality, arrived in the Balkans, they received virtually no assistance from Belgrade.

The treaties forced the Greek Army to evacuate Western Thrace and Pirin Macedonia, which it had occupied during operations. The retreat from the areas that had to be ceded to Bulgaria, together with the loss of Northern Epirus to Albania, was not well received in Greece; from the areas occupied during the war, Greece succeeded in gaining only the territories of Serres and Kavala after diplomatic support from Germany. Serbia made additional gains in northern Macedonia and, having fulfilled its aspirations to the south, turned its attention to the north where its rivalry with Austro-Hungary over Bosnia-Herzegovina led the two countries to war a year later igniting the First World War. Italy used the excuse of the Balkan wars to keep the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean, which it had occupied during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 over Libya, despite the agreement that ended that war in 1912.

At the strong insistence of Austria-Hungary and Italy, both hoping to control for themselves the state and thus the Otranto Straits in Adriatic, Albania acquired officially its independence according to the terms of the Treaty of London. With the delineation of the exact boundaries of the new state under the Protocol of Florence (17 December 1913), the Serbs lost their outlet to the Adriatic and the Greeks in the region of Northern Epirus (Southern Albania). This was highly unpopular with the local Greek population, who, after a revolt, managed to acquire local autonomy under the terms of the Protocol of Corfu.

After its defeat, Bulgaria became a revanchist local power looking for a second opportunity to fulfill its national aspirations. After Bucharest, the head of the Bulgarian delegation, Tonchev, remarked that "[e]ither the Powers will change [the territorial settlement], or we will destroy it."

List of battles

Bulgarian–Greek battles

{| style="width:76%; text-align:center" class="wikitable"

|-

! style="width:20%;"| Battle

! style="width:15%;"| Date

! style="width:19%;"| Commander

! style="width:12%;"| Commander

! style="width:18%;"| Result

|- style="background:#D4F2CE;"

|align="left"|Battle of Kalinovo

| style="text-align:center;"|19-21 June 1913

| style="text-align:center;"|Konstantin Kavarnaliev

| style="text-align:center;"|Constantine I

| style="text-align:center;"|Bulgarian Victory

|- style="background:LightSkyBlue;"

|align="left"| Battle of Kilkis-Lahanas || style="text-align:center;"| 19–21 June 1913 || style="text-align:center;"| Nikola Ivanov|| style="text-align:center;"| Constantine I || style="text-align:center;"|Greek Victory

|- style="background:LightSkyBlue;"

|align="left"| Battle of Doiran|| style="text-align:center;"| 23 June 1913 || style="text-align:center;"| Nikola Ivanov|| style="text-align:center;"| Constantine I || style="text-align:center;"|Greek Victory

|- style="background:#D4F2CE;"

|align="left"| Battle of Kresna Gorge|| style="text-align:center;"| 27–31 July 1913|| style="text-align:center;"| Mihail Savov || style="text-align:center;"| Constantine I|| style="text-align:center;"|Final Armistice

|}

Bulgarian–Serbian battles

{| style="width:76%; text-align:center" class="wikitable"

|-

! style="width:20%;"| Battle

! style="width:17%;"| Date

! style="width:13%;"| Commander

! style="width:14%;"| Commander

! style="width:18%;"| Result

|-

|- style="background:plum;"

|align="left"| Battle of Bregalnica

|align="center"| 30 June–9 July 1913

| Mihail Savov

| Radomir Putnik

| Serbian Victory

|-

|- style="background:lightgrey;"

|align="left"| Battle of Knjaževac

|align="center"| 4–7 July 1913

| Vasil Kutinchev

| Vukoman Aračić

| Inconclusive

|- style="background:plum;"

|align="left"| Battle of Pirot

|align="center"| 6–8 July 1913

|Mihail Savov

| Božidar Janković

| Serbian Victory

|-

|- style="background:lightgrey;"

|align="left"| Battle of Belogradchik

|align="center"| 8 July 1913

|Mihail Savov

|Božidar Janković

| First Armistice

|- style="background:lightgrey;"

|align="left"| Siege of Vidin

|align="center"| 12–18 July 1913

| Krastyu Marinov

| Vukoman Aračić

| Final Armistice

|-

|- style="background:#D4F2CE;"

|align="left"| Battle of Kalimanci

|align="center"| 18–19 July 1913

| Mihail Savov

| Božidar Janković

| Bulgarian Victory

|}

Bulgarian–Ottoman battles

{| style="width:76%;" class="wikitable"

|-

! style="width:20%;"| Battle

! style="width:13%;"| Year

! style="width:13%;"| Commander

! style="width:12%;"| Commander

! style="width:18%;"| Result

|- style="background:lightgrey;"

|align="left"| Siege of Adrianople|| style="text-align:center;"| 1913 || style="text-align:center;"| Mihail Savov|| style="text-align:center;"| Enver Pasha|| style="text-align:center;"|Final Armistice

|}

Bulgarian–Romanian battles

{| style="width:76%;" class="wikitable"

|-

! style="width:20%;"| Battle

! style="width:13%;"| Year

! style="width:13%;"| Commander

! style="width:12%;"| Commander

! style="width:18%;"| Result

|- style="background:lightyellow;"

|align="left"| Romanian landings in Varna|| style="text-align:center;"| 1913 || style="text-align:center;"| Ferdinand I|| style="text-align:center;"| Carol I || style="text-align:center;"| First Armistice

|- style="background:#D4F2CE;"

|align="left"| Southern Dobruja Offensive|| style="text-align:center;"| 1913 || style="text-align:center;"| Ferdinand I|| style="text-align:center;"| Carol I || style="text-align:center;"| Final Armistice

|}

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Hall, Richard C.: Balkan Wars 1912–1913, in: 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.