Bulgarian theatre . Montenegro started the First Balkan War by declaring war against the Ottomans on . The western part of the Balkans, including Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia, was less vital to the resolution of the war and the survival of the Ottoman Empire than the Thracian theatre, where the Bulgarians fought significant battles against the Ottomans. Although geography dictated Thrace would be the primary battlefield in a war with the Ottoman Empire, The first large-scale battle occurred against the Edirne-Kırklareli defensive line, where the Bulgarian First and Third Armies (a combined 174,254 men) defeated the Ottoman East Army (of 96,273 combatants), near Gechkenli, Seliolu and Petra. The Ottoman XV Corps urgently left the area to defend the
Gallipoli Peninsula against an expected Greek amphibious assault, which never materialized. The absence of the corps created an immediate vacuum between Adrianople and
Demotika, and the 11th Infantry Division from the Eastern Army's IV Corps was moved there to replace it. Thus, one complete army corps was removed from the Eastern Army's order of battle. Thus, the Greek navy played an indirect but crucial role in the Thracian campaign by neutralizing three corps, a significant portion of the Ottoman army, in the all-important opening round of the war. and reached the
Sea of Marmara. In terms of forces engaged, it was the largest battle fought in Europe between the end of the
Franco-Prussian War and the beginning of the First World War. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian 2nd Thracian division's forces, 49,180 men divided into the Haskovo and Rhodope detachments, advanced towards the Aegean Sea. The Ottoman Kircaali detachment (Kircaali Redif and Kircaali Mustahfiz Divisions and 36th Regiment, with 24,000 men), tasked with defending a front across the Thessaloniki-
Alexandroupoli railroad, failed to offer serious resistance and the commander, Yaver Pasha, was captured with 10,131 officers and men by the
Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps on 26 November. After the occupation of Thessaloniki by the Greek army, his surrender completed the isolation of the Ottoman forces in Macedonia from those in Thrace. ,
Nazim Pasha and General
Mihail Savov are in the first row. On , the offensive against the Çatalca Line began, despite clear warnings that Russia would attack the Bulgarians if they occupied Constantinople. The Bulgarians launched their
attack along the defensive line, with 176,351 men and 462 artillery pieces against the Ottomans' 140,571 men and 316 artillery pieces, The Ottomans were probably unaware of the presence in the area of the new
4th Bulgarian Army, of 92,289 men, under General
Stiliyan Kovachev. Thick fog, intense Bulgarian artillery, and machine gunfire hampered the Ottoman attack in the thin
isthmus, with a front of just 1800m. As a result, the attack stalled and was repulsed by a Bulgarian counterattack. By the end of the day, both armies had returned to their original positions. Meanwhile, the Ottoman X Corps, which had landed at Şarköy, advanced until , when the reinforcements sent by General Kovachev succeeded in halting them. Casualties on both sides were light. After the frontal attack in Bulair's failure, the Ottoman forces at Şarköy re-entered their ships on and were transported to Gallipoli. The Ottoman attack at Çatalca, directed against the powerful Bulgarian First and Third Armies, was initially launched only as a diversion from the Gallipoli-Şarköy operation to pin down the Bulgarian forces
in situ. Nevertheless, it resulted in unexpected success. The Bulgarians, who were weakened by cholera and concerned that an Ottoman amphibious invasion might endanger their armies, deliberately withdrew about and to the south over to their secondary defensive positions, on higher ground to the west. With the end of the attack in Gallipoli, though the Ottomans cancelled the operation since they were reluctant to leave the Çatalca Line, several days passed before the Bulgarians realized that the offensive had ended. By 15 February, the front had again stabilized, but fighting along the static lines continued. The battle, which resulted in heavy Bulgarian casualties, could be characterized as an Ottoman tactical victory but a strategic defeat since it did nothing to prevent the failure of the Gallipoli-Şarköy operation or to relieve the pressure on Edirne.
Fall of Adrianople and Serbo-Bulgarian friction The failure of the Şarköy-Bulair operation and the deployment of the Second Serbian Army, with its much-needed heavy siege artillery, sealed Adrianople's fate. On 11 March, after a two weeks bombardment, which destroyed many fortified structures around the city, the final assault started, with League forces enjoying a crushing superiority over the Ottoman garrison. The Bulgarian Second Army, with 106,425 men and two Serbian divisions, with 47,275 men, conquered the city, with the Bulgarians suffering 8,093 and the Serbs 1,462 casualties. The Ottoman casualties for the entire Adrianople campaign reached 23,000 dead. The number of prisoners is less clear. The Ottoman Empire began the war with 61,250 men in the fortress. Richard Hall noted that 60,000 men were captured. Adding to the 33,000 killed, the modern "Turkish General Staff History" notes that 28,500-man survived captivity leaving 10,000 men unaccounted for That was the last and decisive battle that was necessary for a quick end to the war even though it is speculated that the fortress would have fallen eventually because of starvation. The most important result was that the Ottoman command had lost all hope of regaining the initiative, which made any more fighting pointless. The battle had significant results in Serbian-Bulgarian relations, planting the seeds of the two countries' confrontation some months later. The Bulgarian censor rigorously cut any references to Serbian participation in the operation in the telegrams of foreign correspondents. Public opinion in Sofia thus failed to realize the vital services of Serbia in the battle. Accordingly, the Serbs claimed that their troops of the 20th Regiment captured the Ottoman commander of the city and that Colonel Gavrilović was the allied commander who had accepted Shukri's official surrender of the garrison, a statement that the Bulgarians disputed. The Serbs officially protested and pointed out that although they had sent their troops to Adrianople to win for Bulgaria's territory, whose acquisition had never been foreseen by their mutual treaty, the Bulgarians had never fulfilled the clause of the treaty for Bulgaria to send 100,000 men to help the Serbians on their Vardar Front. The Bulgarians answered that their staff had informed the Serbs on 23 August. The friction escalated some weeks later when the Bulgarian delegates in London bluntly warned the Serbs that they must not expect Bulgarian support for their Adriatic claims. The Serbs angrily replied that it 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 had been agreed. On 5 November, Major
Spyros Spyromilios led a
revolt in the coastal area of
Himarë and expelled the Ottoman garrison without any significant resistance, and on 20 November, Greek troops from western Macedonia entered
Korçë. However, Greek forces in the Epirote front lacked the numbers to initiate an offensive against the German-designed defensive positions of
Bizani, which protected Ioannina and needed to wait for reinforcements from the Macedonian front. After the campaign in Macedonia was over, a large part of the Army was redeployed to Epirus, where Constantine assumed command. In the
Battle of Bizani, the Ottoman positions were breached, and Ioannina was taken on . During the siege, on 8 February 1913, the Russian pilot N. de Sackoff, flying for the Greeks, became the first pilot ever shot down in combat when his biplane was hit by ground fire after a bomb ran on the walls of Fort Bizani. He came down near the town of Preveza, on the coast north of the Ionian island of
Lefkas, secured local Greek assistance, repaired his plane and resumed flying back to base. The fall of Ioannina allowed the Greek army to continue its advance into
northern Epirus, now the south of Albania, which it occupied. There they halted, but the Serbian control was very close to the north.
Naval operations on 5/18 October 1912 before it sailed for Lemnos. On the outbreak of hostilities on 18 October, the Greek fleet, placed under the newly promoted Rear Admiral
Pavlos Kountouriotis, sailed for the island of
Lemnos,
occupying it three days later (although fighting continued on the island until 27 October) and establishing an anchorage at
Moudros Bay. That move had significant strategic importance by providing the Greeks with a forward base near the Dardanelles Straits, the Ottoman fleet's main anchorage and refuge. The Ottoman fleet's superiority in speed and
broadside weight made Greek plans expect it to sortie from the straits early in the war. The Greek fleet's unpreparedness because of the early outbreak of the war might as well have let such an early Ottoman attack achieve a crucial victory. Instead, the Ottoman navy spent the first two months of the war in operations against the Bulgarians in the Black Sea, which gave the Greeks valuable time to complete their preparations and allowed them to consolidate their control of the Aegean Sea.
Establishment of Greek control of the Aegean Lieutenant
Nikolaos Votsis scored a significant success for Greek morale on 21 October by sailing his
torpedo boat No. 11, in the cover of night, into the harbour of Thessaloniki, sinking the old Ottoman
ironclad corvette and escaping unharmed. On the same day, Greek troops of the Epirus Army seized the Ottoman naval base of Preveza. Though the Ottomans scuttled the four ships present there, the Greeks were able to salvage the Italian-built torpedo-boats and , which were commissioned into the Greek Navy as and , respectively. A few days later, on 9 November, the wooden Ottoman armed steamer
Trabzon was intercepted and sunk by the Greek torpedo boat No. 14, under Lieutenant-General
Periklis Argyropoulos, of
Ayvalık. On 7 December, the head of the Ottoman fleet, Tahir Bey, was replaced by Ramiz Naman Bey, the leader of the hawkish faction among the officer corps. A new strategy was agreed with the Ottomans to take advantage of any absence of
Georgios Averof to attack the other Greek ships. The Ottoman staff formulated a plan to lure a number of the Greek destroyers on patrol into a trap. The first attempt, on 12 December, failed because of boiler trouble, but a second attempt, two days later, resulted in an indecisive engagement between the Greek destroyers and the cruiser
Mecidiye. The war's first significant fleet action, the
Battle of Elli, was fought two days later, on . The Ottoman fleet, with four battleships, nine destroyers and six torpedo boats, sailed to the entrance of the straits. The lighter Ottoman vessels remained behind, but the battleship squadron continued south, covered by forts at
Kumkale, and engaged the Greek fleet coming from Imbros at 9:40. Leaving the older battleships to follow their original course, Kountouriotis led the
Averof into independent action: using her superior speed, she cut across the Ottoman fleet's bow. Under fire from two sides, the Ottomans were quickly forced to withdraw to the Dardanelles. The whole engagement lasted less than an hour in which the Ottomans suffered heavy damage to the
Barbaros Hayreddin and 18 dead and 41 wounded (most during their disorderly retreat) and the Greeks had one dead and seven wounded. In the event,
Hamidiye slipped through the Greek patrols on the night of 14–15 January and bombarded the harbour of the Greek island of
Syros, sinking the Greek auxiliary cruiser , which lay in anchor there (it was later raised and repaired). The
Hamidiye then left the Aegean for the Eastern Mediterranean, making stops at
Beirut and
Port Said before it entered the
Red Sea. Although it provided a significant morale boost for the Ottomans, the operation failed to achieve its primary objective since Kountouriotis refused to leave his post and pursue the
Hamidiye. Four days later, on , when the Ottoman fleet again sallied from the straits towards Lemnos, it was defeated for a second time in the
Battle of Lemnos. This time, the Ottoman warships concentrated their fire on the
Averof, which again made use of its superior speed and tried to "
cross the T" of the Ottoman fleet.
Barbaros Hayreddin was again heavily damaged, and the Ottoman fleet was forced to return to the shelter of the Dardanelles and their forts, with 41 killed and 101 wounded. General Ivanov, the commander of the Second Bulgarian Army, acknowledged the role of the Greek fleet in the overall Balkan League victory by stating that "the activity of the entire Greek fleet and above all the
Averof was the chief factor in the general success of the allies." The Ottomans were also aware of the impact of the Greek naval actions on the conflict; according to navy commander Hasan Sami Bey, without the Greek navy establishing control of the sea lanes, "the allied land operations would have undoubtedly taken another course."
Serbian and Montenegrin theatre during the attack on
Berane The Serbian forces operated against the primary part of the Ottoman Western Army in Novi Pazar, Kosovo and northern and eastern Macedonia. Strategically, they were divided into four independent armies and groups operating against the Ottomans: the Javor brigade and the Ibar Army in
Novi Pazar; the Third Army in Kosovo; the First Army in northern Macedonia; and the Second Army from Bulgaria in eastern Macedonia. The decisive battle was expected to be fought in north Macedonia, in the plains of Ovče Pole, where the Ottoman Vardar Army's main forces were expected to concentrate. The plan of the Serbian Supreme Command had three Serbian armies encircle and destroy the Vardar Army in that area, with the First Army advancing from the north (along the line of Vranje-Kumanovo-Ovče Pole), the Second Army from the east (along the line of Kriva Palanka-Kratovo-Ovče Pole) and the Third Army from the northwest (along the line of Priština-Skopje-Ovče Pole). The prime role was given to the First Army. The Second Army was expected to cut off the Vardar Army's retreat and, if necessary, to attack its rear and right flank. The Third Army was to take Kosovo and, if necessary, to assist the First Army by attacking the Vardar Army's left and rear. The Ibar Army and the Javor brigade had minor roles in the plan and were expected to secure the Sanjak of Novi Pazar and replace the Third Army in Kosovo after it had advanced south. The Serbian army, under General (later Marshal) Putnik, achieved three decisive victories in
Vardar Macedonia, the primary Serbian objective in the war, by effectively destroying the Ottoman forces in the region and conquering northern Macedonia. The Serbs also helped the Montenegrins take the Sandžak and sent two divisions to aid the Bulgarians at the siege of Edirne. The last battle for Macedonia was the
Battle of Monastir, in which the remains of the Ottoman Vardar Army were forced to retreat to central Albania. After the battle, Serbian Prime Minister Pasic asked General Putnik to take part in the race for Thessaloniki. Putnik declined and turned his army to the west, towards Albania, since he saw that a war between Greece and Bulgaria over Thessaloniki could greatly help Serbia's plans for Vardar Macedonia. After pressure from the Great Powers, the Serbs started withdrawing from northern Albania and the Sandžak, yet left behind their heavy artillery park to help the Montenegrins in the continuing Siege of Shkodër. On 23 April 1913, Shkodër's garrison was forced to surrender because of starvation. ==Atrocities and migrations==