page_title: Great Retreat (Serbian)
section_title: Serbian campaign
hierarchical_section_title: Great Retreat (Serbian) / Background / Serbian campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: created based on a black and white map
context_page_description: The Great Retreat, also known in Serbian historiography as the Albanian Golgotha, was a strategic withdrawal of the Royal Serbian Army, which marked the end of the second Serbian Campaign of the First World War.
  In late October 1915, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria launched a synchronised major offensive against Serbia. That same month, France and Britain landed four divisions at Salonika, but were unable to move north to help their outnumbered Serbian ally caught between the invading forces. The Serbs slowly retreated southwards with the plan to withdraw into Macedonia to link up with Allies forces. After Bulgarian forces prevented a French advance in the Vardar Valley and the defection of Greece, the Serbs found themselves swept together in the plain of Kosovo by the converging Austro-Hungarian, German, and Bulgarian columns; few options remained to escape the invaders encirclement.
  On 23 November 1915, the government and the supreme command made the decision to retreat across the mountains of Montenegro and Albania where they hoped to reach the Adriatic coast and be rescued by Allied ships.
context_section_description: On July 28, 1914, a month after the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary, the second-largest country in Europe, declared war on Serbia. Five months later after suffering a third major defeat on the battlefield, the ancient Habsburg Monarchy was left humiliated by "the peasant regiments of a small Balkan kingdom”. Franz Ferdinand had not been avenged, with the Dual Monarchy losing twice as many men as the Serbs had. The blow to Habsburg prestige was incalculable and Serbia marked the first Allied victory of World War One.
  In early 1915, the German chief of the general staff von Falkenhayn convinced the Austro-Hungarian chief of staff von Hoetzendorf to launch a new invasion of Serbia. In September Bulgaria signed a treaty of alliance with Germany and quickly mobilized its army.  On 6 October 1915, combined German and Austro-Hungarian forces under the command of Field Marshall August von Mackensen attacked Serbia from the north and west with the intention of drawing the bulk of the Serbian forces along the Sava and Danube.
  On 11 October, without any previous declaration of war, the Bulgarian started making attacks on Serbian border positions;  then on 14 October Bulgaria finally declared war on Serbia, the First and Second Armies under the command of General Boyadzhiev, advanced into the Timok region of northeastern Serbia with the mission of cutting the vital rail line that ran from Salonika, up the Vardar and Morava River valleys, and depriving Serbia of reinforcements and artillery ammunition. Numbering nearly 300,000 men, the forces of Bulgaria quickly overwhelmed the weak Serbian units along the frontier. The Serbian Army had 250,000 men of which a large number were already battling 300,000 Germans and Austrians in the north. In addition Austrian troops soon started marching from Dalmatia. 
  Facing a front of 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) against three armies and as promises of aid and reinforcements from the Allies fell through, the Supreme Command of the Serbian Army started an organised retreat towards Kragujevac and Niš. On 6 November the Bulgarian First Army, made contact with General Gallwitz’s Eleventh German Army in the vicinity of Niš, on 10 November they crossed the Morava River about 18 miles south of Niš and struck the Serbs. For two days, the greatly outnumbered Serbian army held Prokuplje but eventually had to retreat.The pressure of the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans, and the Bulgarian First Army in the north and the Bulgarian Second Army advancing from the east forced the Serbs to retreat in a southwesterly direction into Kosovo.
caption: Central Powers attack on Serbia, October 1915
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