{
 "slug": "lule-burgas",
 "title": "Battle of Lule Burgas",
 "status": "draft",
 "era": "1900–1918",
 "date_text": "28 October – 2 November 1912",
 "start": "1912-10-28",
 "end": "1912-11-02",
 "war": "The Balkan Wars",
 "cdb90_war": "THE BALKAN WARS",
 "place": {
  "name": "Lule Burgas (Lüleburgaz) and Bunarhisar (Pınarhisar), Eastern Thrace, Ottoman Empire (now Kırklareli Province, Turkey)",
  "lat": 41.4,
  "lon": 27.36,
  "wikidata": "Q1445532"
 },
 "lede": "At the end of October 1912 Bulgaria's First and Third Armies drove the Ottoman Eastern Army from its line at Lule Burgas and Bunarhisar in Thrace. It was the bloodiest battle of the First Balkan War and sent the Ottomans back to Chataldja.",
 "result": "Decisive Bulgarian victory",
 "result_cdb90": "attacker win",
 "belligerents": [
  {
   "role": "attacker",
   "name": "Bulgarian First and Third Armies",
   "commanders": [
    "Radko Dimitriev (Third Army, later both armies)",
    "Vasil Kutinchev (First Army)",
    "Mihail Savov and Ivan Fichev (High Command)"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 108000,
    "low": 108000,
    "high": 140000,
    "source": "s1"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 20162,
    "low": 20000,
    "high": 20162,
    "source": "s1"
   }
  },
  {
   "role": "defender",
   "name": "Ottoman Eastern Army (First and Second Armies)",
   "commanders": [
    "Abdullah Pasha (First Army and overall command in Thrace)",
    "Hamdi Pasha (Second Army)",
    "Mahmud Muhtar Pasha"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 129500,
    "low": 129500,
    "high": 130000,
    "source": "s1"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 24800,
    "low": 22000,
    "high": 24800,
    "source": "s1"
   }
  }
 ],
 "sections": {
  "background": "Lule Burgas belongs to the Bulgarian front of the First Balkan War, fought in Thrace between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. The Bulgarians were also encircling the fortress of Adrianople (Edirne), and the first big clash in the field was Lozengrad (Kirk Kilisse), a Bulgarian victory.\n\nAfter it the Bulgarians stopped. The army rested for two or three days instead of pursuing, and even the cavalry division rested instead of screening the Ottoman retreat. Headquarters later saw this as a mistake, and contact with the Ottoman forces was largely lost.\n\nThe Ottomans used the pause. Mahmud Muhtar Pasha reorganised the army and set up a defensive position of about 30 km on the Lule Burgas–Bunarhisar line, running from the Ergene River past both towns along a ridge with shallow trenches. Reinforcements from Constantinople helped to restore discipline. Abdullah Pasha's plan was to hold the left and centre and swing around the Bulgarian right.\n\nIn the Bulgarian command, Radko Dimitriev urged a general advance, but Savov and Fichev refused: they cited poor logistics, weak reconnaissance, doubt about Ottoman numbers and the unfinished encirclement of Adrianople. A division was redeployed to guard against a sortie from that city, reducing the Bulgarian force to about 108,000. The advance resumed on 27 October. The Third Army moved fast and separated from the First Army, so the two armies went into the battle on different days.",
  "forces": "The Bulgarian army was organised in divisions, with the Third Army under Dimitriev (the 5th Danube, 4th Preslav and 6th Bdin Divisions) forming the frontal force and Kutinchev's First Army sent to turn the Ottoman left. Together the main source gives about 108,000 men with 116 machine guns and 360 guns.\n\nThe Ottoman Eastern Army had about 129,500 men with 90 machine guns and 342 guns in two armies, Abdullah Pasha's First Army around Lule Burgas and Hamdi Pasha's Second Army around Bunarhisar. It had been reorganised by Mahmud Muhtar Pasha after the retreat from Kirk Kilisse, with reinforcements from Constantinople.\n\nA war correspondent, whose account was reprinted in a 1914 anthology, wrote that the Bulgarian guns were more numerous and better served and well supplied, while Turkish gunners ran out of ammunition at the critical moment; he adds that many Turkish soldiers went into battle hungry, though they fought stubbornly. He saw only part of the fight on a front of 'something like fifty miles', and the text says so, so treat it as an impression rather than a measurement.\n\nThe Bulgarian command was divided before the battle: the High Command refused Dimitriev's request for a general advance, and on 31 October Fichev ordered a halt to reorganise the armies. On the Ottoman side Abdullah Pasha held both an army command and the overall command in Thrace.",
  "course": "**The plans.** The Bulgarian plan was for the Third Army to pin the Ottomans on the Lule Burgas–Bunarhisar line while Kutinchev's First Army made a flanking move against the Ottoman left, to drive them towards Viza and the Black Sea. Abdullah Pasha's plan was to hold the left and centre and sweep around the Bulgarian right.\n\n**28 October.** The Third Army reached the Ottoman line and committed all three divisions: the 5th Danube Division (Pavel Hristov) on the left at Pınarhisar, the 4th Preslav Division (Kliment Boyadzhiev) in the centre at Karaagach and the 6th Bdin Division (Pravoslav Tenev) on the right at Lule Burgas. The right column of the 5th Division flanked the Ottomans near Mandra-Kuliba and drove them back, but was ordered to withdraw rather than hold and wait for the 4th Division. By evening the 6th Division had taken Lule Burgas town.\n\n**29 October.** The 2nd Danube Brigade met heavy resistance and artillery fire near Viza. Dimitriev asked Kutinchev to hurry up and envelop the Ottoman left. Units of the First Army, including the 10th Combined Division (Stoyu Bradistilov), began to arrive. The 4th Division was under heavy pressure with all its reserves committed.\n\n**30 October.** About 50,000 Ottoman troops attacked the 5th Danube Division under heavy artillery support. The heights between the Soudjak and Karaağaç rivers changed hands several times. The weight of numbers and guns forced the Bulgarians back six or seven kilometres to entrenched positions on the hills east of Bunarhisar. High Command placed the First and Third Armies under Dimitriev, and Savov ordered Kutinchev to put himself under the Third Army commander.\n\n**31 October.** Dimitriev ordered Kutinchev to attack the Ottoman left in the Lule Burgas–Satıköy direction. Despite fog the First Army broke through and advanced east. The 6th Division pushed on around Satıköy and forced a disorderly Ottoman retreat. The Bulgarians did not pursue, because their artillery had lagged behind, and Fichev ordered a halt to reorganise.\n\n**1 November.** The 4th Preslav Division, building on the breakthrough, attacked around Chongora and stopped an Ottoman attack on the 5th Division. It took the Karaağaç–Soudjak positions and beat Mahmud Muhtar Pasha's last attempt to break through to Bunarhisar and Lozengrad.\n\n**Night of 2 November.** The Ottomans began a general withdrawal that the Bulgarian command did not notice. Contact was lost and most of the army reached the fortified Chataldja lines. The correspondent's account of the retreat towards Chorlu describes men jamming the bridge over the river and, in places, trampling one another, while officers tried to restore order with swords and revolvers.",
  "aftermath": "The Ottoman army was decisively beaten, with the heaviest losses falling on the First Army. It was driven back to the Chataldja line about 30 km from Constantinople. In the correspondent's account the retreat turned into a rout: discipline collapsed, men fled in disorder towards Chorlu and jammed the bridge at the river, and wounded and exhausted soldiers were left in the mud.\n\nBulgarian losses were heavy as well, most of them in the fighting against the Ottoman 2nd Army in the Third Army's sector. The Bulgarians lost contact with the retreating enemy, so the withdrawal was not exploited immediately. Two weeks later, in the Chataldja operation, the Ottomans halted the Bulgarian offensive.\n\nThe battle is described in the main source as the bloodiest of the First Balkan War and, by forces engaged, the largest battle in Europe between the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War. The slow pursuit after Kirk Kilisse and the failure to detect the night withdrawal are the usual criticisms of the Bulgarian command.",
  "wargaming": "Lule Burgas suits a brigade-and-regiment game on a front of about 30 km, over the five days with a turn per day. The ground is open rolling country with shallow trenches on a ridge between the Ergene River and Bunarhisar, so the real game is manoeuvre and artillery, not fortification.\n\nThe most interesting thing is the Bulgarian chain of command and the timing of the two armies. The Third Army arrives alone on 28 October and takes the weight of the Ottoman response; the First Army only arrives on the 29th and 30th and is the force that turns the battle on 31 October. A game can use a delayed arrival table for the First Army, with the Third Army player deciding how long to hold before it is forced to retreat. In the 30 October counter-attack the Ottomans had about 50,000 men, which makes a good set-piece scenario of its own.\n\nFor the Ottoman player, the question is whether to stay on the defensive or to try Abdullah Pasha's plan of holding the left and centre and swinging around the Bulgarian right. For the Bulgarians, the question is whether to commit the Third Army on the first day. The 'what if' is the night of 2 November: if the Bulgarians had detected the withdrawal, could the cavalry and the guns have caught the retreating army before Chataldja?"
 },
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   "file": "File:Osmanlı planı Lüleburgaz muharebesi 1912.png",
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   "caption": "The Ottoman plan for the battle of Lule Burgas, 1912.",
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   "credit": "Edward J. (2003). Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913, Greenwood Publishing Group, s.99-122 ISBN 0-275-97888-5 kitabından yararlanılmıştır.",
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   "caption": "A postcard of the battle of Lule Burgas.",
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   "caption": "Ottoman troops leaving the field during the battle of Lule Burgas.",
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   "caption": "The Turkish retreat of Lüleburgaz, painted by Jaroslav Věšín in 1914.",
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   "artist": "Jaroslav Věšín",
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   "artist": "The original uploader was Avidius at English Wikipedia . ( Original text: unknown )",
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 "sources": [
  {
   "id": "s1",
   "title": "Battle of Lule Burgas, Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lule_Burgas",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s2",
   "title": "'The Battle of Lule-Burgas' (an unnamed correspondent), in Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story, vol. VI, Houghton Mifflin, 1914, pp. 441–450; reproduced by the Internet Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University)",
   "url": "https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/mod/1912lulebergas.asp",
   "kind": "primary"
  },
  {
   "id": "s3",
   "title": "Edward J. Erickson, Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913, Greenwood, 2003, pp. 99–122 (cited by s1 and by Commons for the Ottoman plan; not read)",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s4",
   "title": "Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913: Prelude to the First World War, Routledge, 2000 (cited by s1; not read)",
   "url": null,
   "kind": "book"
  },
  {
   "id": "s5",
   "title": "Commons file page for Osmanlı planı Lüleburgaz muharebesi 1912.png",
   "url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Osmanl%C4%B1_plan%C4%B1_L%C3%BCleburgaz_muharebesi_1912.png",
   "kind": "web"
  }
 ],
 "cdb90": [
  249
 ],
 "order": 152,
 "url": "https://battles.georgewyrd.com/lule-burgas/",
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}