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The great immemorial highway from the north-west to the Balkan peninsula crosses the Danube at Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava to Nish; thence it branches off eastwards, going through Sofia and again crossing all Bulgaria to reach Constantinople, while the route to Salonika follows the Morava southwards from Nish and crosses the watershed into the valley of the Vardar, which flows into the Aegean.
Passing rapidly on through Ishtip, they occupied that part of Veles lying east of the Vardar River, where, on October 20, 1915, they again cut the railroad line and so made any further advance on the part of the French almost impossible. The next day the Bulgarians captured Kumanova and then, on the day following, drove the Serbians on through Uskub.
His troops were bunched up in a very acute salient, the head of which was just south of Gradsko, and his front very largely conformed to the convolutions of this and the Vardar River. On his right, from before Strumitza Station, the British continued the line to the north of Lake Doiran.
Why then was Bulgaria so insistent on getting beyond that base line, crossing the Vardar, and possessing herself of Central Macedonia up to Ochrida and the eastern frontier of Albania?
More than once it looked as though the British would be literally overwhelmed and annihilated. Eight guns were lost and about 1,300 men were killed or wounded. The retirement had been in the direction of the Vardar and by the end of the second week of December, 1915, the British were able to make another stand over on the banks of the Vardar, below the right wing of the French.
The retreat through the defile was an extremely precarious and difficult task, as there was no way out except along the railroad, running along a narrow shelf cut out of the steep, rocky banks of the Vardar.
Every fresh intrigue of Sofia with Vienna confirmed Belgrade in its view of the vital necessity for retaining the Vardar Valley. The hoary argument that "circumstances alter cases," appeared anew in the garb of the Bismarckian theory that all treaties are subject to the provision "rebus sic stantibus" a theory which many great international lawyers have unhesitatingly endorsed.
As it was, they faced north towards Mackensen, and the Bulgarian offensive towards Uskub took the Serbians in the rear, cut their communications with Salonika down the Vardar, and eventually forced a retreat into the Albanian mountains. Serbia would in any case have been overrun, and Mackensen's conquest of its northern half would have been more rapid than it was.
Their trenches, north and West of Lake Doiran, among bleak hills covered with snow, spread out fanwise in the direction of Strumitza, which they had taken over from the French when the latter had gone up the Vardar to Krivolak. On December 5, 1915, the Bulgarians gave the first indications of their preparations to break through the thin lines of the Allies.
With adequate forces they could have pushed beyond Veles to Uskub, broken the wedge which the Bulgarians had driven in between them and the Serbians, restored the line of the Vardar, and secured the Serbian retreat. It was this Bulgarian stab in the back which made havoc of the Serbian defence.
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