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Updated: June 6, 2025
Sarrail recognized his danger and began to retire his northern units, covering the movement with a fiercely contested action in the region of Strumitza.
West of the Vardar and in front of Monastir no advance was attempted; but on 8 May Milne was told to repeat his effort, which had similar results to those of his first; and Sarrail was presently superseded by Franchet d'Esperey. Nevertheless the Russian revolution had one beneficial effect upon the Balkan situation.
Sarrail now advanced his men northward, along the west bank of the Tcherna, and next day he delivered an assault on the Mount of the Archangel, ten miles below Vozartzi. Here was the center of the Bulgarian positions, and here their lines must be pierced, if Babuna Pass was to be reached. But not only was this position well fortified, but the Bulgarians were in superior force to the French.
No army and no generalship could have done more than the Third Army and General Sarrail did, but they could not hold their ground before Troyon. On September 7, 1914, the way to Troyon was open, and the army of the crown prince prepared to demolish it. Then came September 9, 1914, when the allied successes in the western part of the Marne valley allowed them to send reenforcements.
The French and English had wished the Roumanians to declare war first on Bulgaria and, attacking that country from the north while General Sarrail attacked it from the south, crush it before help could arrive from Germany, much in the fashion in which poor Serbia had been caught between Austria and Bulgaria a year previously.
It was the Crown Prince and General von Strantz with seven army corps who threatened her. General Sarrail, now commanding the allied forces in Salonika, with three army corps, and reinforced by part of an army corps from Toul, directed the defense. The attack was made upon Fort Troyon, about twenty miles south of Verdun. The fort was destroyed, but the Germans were repulsed.
In a speech which he made, King Ferdinand addressed the emperor with "Ave Imperator, Cæsar et Rex." During the first two months of the year the Allies had continued to reenforce their forces in Saloniki, and toward the end of February there were reports to the effect that General Sarrail would assume an offensive up into Macedonia and Bulgaria.
With the situation thus cleared, so to speak, one may now pass to the details of the second part of the German plan, which was to engage the powerful Ninth and Fourth Armies, under the command of Generals Foch and Langle, respectively, to break through them, if possible, but at all hazards to keep them sufficiently menaced to disable General Joffre from sending reenforcements therefrom to the army of General Sarrail, on which the whole force of the army of the crown prince was to be hurled.
General Sarrail, however, was now better supported by the movement of General Langle with the Fourth French Army, who advanced toward Troyon and confronted the combined armies of the Imperial Crown Prince and the Duke of Württemberg.
A number of high officers had already been "retired" in connection with those failures, which were serious enough. But the charge alleged against Sarrail was that he had omitted to supply his men adequately with antipoison gas masks. In one of the German attacks in which gas was used, Sarrail's front was pierced and a thousand men were forced to surrender. Some accounts gave the number as 5,000.
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