Battle of Pirot | |||||||
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Part of the Second Balkan War | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Kingdom of Bulgaria | Kingdom of Serbia | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Unknown | Stepa Stepanović | ||||||
Units involved | |||||||
The Battle of Pirot were engagements between the Bulgarian and Serbian armies in the surroundings of Pirot near the Serbian–Bulgarian border between 6 and 8 July 1913. [1]
On the front between the Bulgarian 3rd Army (Slivnica-Trn-Caribrod) and Serbian 2nd Army (Sofia-Pirot-Niš), the main fighting took place outside Pirot on 6 and 7 July. [2] A commander of the Serbian 2nd Army, general Stepa Stepanović suggested on 8 July that Pirot was to be evacuated. [3] However, when the Romanian advance threatened the Bulgarian 1st Army on the evening the same day, the Bulgarian command ordered for withdrawal. [3] Due to the Serbian victory at Bregalnica, the Bulgarians were forced to give up aspirations in southeastern Serbia. [4]
The Balkan Wars were a series of two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four original combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the July crisis of 1914 and thus served as a prelude to the First World War.
The First Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states' combined armies overcame the initially numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies, achieving rapid success.
The Second Balkan War was a conflict that broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 (O.S.) / 29 (N.S.) June 1913. Serbian and Greek armies repulsed the Bulgarian offensive and counterattacked, entering Bulgaria. With Bulgaria also having previously engaged in territorial disputes with Romania and the bulk of Bulgarian forces engaged in the south, the prospect of an easy victory incited Romanian intervention against Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire also took advantage of the situation to regain some lost territories from the previous war. When Romanian troops approached the capital Sofia, Bulgaria asked for an armistice, resulting in the Treaty of Bucharest, in which Bulgaria had to cede portions of its First Balkan War gains to Serbia, Greece and Romania. In the Treaty of Constantinople, it lost Adrianople to the Ottomans.
Stepan "Stepa" Stepanović was a Serbian military commander who fought in the Serbo-Turkish War, the Serbo-Bulgarian War, the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War and World War I. Having joined the Serbian military in 1874, he fought against the forces of the Ottoman Empire in 1876. Over the following years, he climbed up the ranks of the Serbian Army and fought against Bulgarian forces in 1885. He eventually became the Serbian Minister of War in April 1908 and was responsible for instituting changes in the Serbian Army.
The Serbian Armed Forces is the military of Serbia.
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Nikola Ivanov Ivanov was a Bulgarian general and a minister of defence of the Principality of Bulgaria.
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The Serbian–Ottoman Wars, also known as the Serbian–Turkish Wars or Serbian Wars for Independence, were two consequent wars, fought between the Principality of Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. In conjunction with the Principality of Montenegro, Serbia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 30 June 1876. By the intervention of major European powers, ceasefire was concluded in autumn, and the Constantinople Conference was organized. Peace was signed on 28 February 1877 on the basis of status quo ante bellum. After a brief period of formal peace, Serbia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 11 December 1877. Renewed hostilities lasted until February 1878.
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