Page - 467 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Fourth Offensive against Serbia 467 two German divisions that had first crossed the Sava intervened in the battle for the Serbian capital. On 11 October, General Živković was forced to give up Belgrade. Shortly afterwards, the city was taken over by the Central Powers. The fact that both German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been involved in the conquest was an im- pediment to perhaps again sending a telegram to Emperor Franz Joseph in order to lay the city at his feet for a second time. However, the occasion had to be marked in some way. On the Kalemegdan, the fortress of Belgrade high up above the Danube and the Sava, a black-yellow flag was hoisted. Further down the Danube, the mass of the German 11th Army had crossed the river at Smederevo. It is unlikely that anyone noticed that they passed Temes-Kubin, which had once been linked to the unleashing of the war. The Serbs were forced to retreat rapidly towards the south. Only now, on 14 October, did Bulgaria declare war. Bulgarian troops advanced to Niš, which since the beginning of the war had been used as the seat of the Serbian gov- ernment, and, to the south of the city, destroyed a part of the railway line to Salonika. This made it practically impossible for French and British troops from the ‘Army of the Orient’ under General Maurice Sarrail to arrive quickly in order to support the Serbs, even though the French were already positioned at Gevgelija. However, the German troops encountered the same problems as the Imperial and Royal armies had done during their offensive against Serbia. The rain and countless carts very quickly made the few roads almost impassable, supplies could only be brought forward with great effort, and the subsequent transportation of the artillery and ammunition for the guns had become almost impossible. The artillery could only be moved forwards at an average statistical rate of several hundred metres per hour.1113 At the same time, Mackensen knew that he was racing against time, since Serbia was to be entirely eliminated and its army encircled and taken captive. He envisaged a decisive battle in the Kragujevac area. The Chief of the General Staff and the person who was in reality commanding the Serbian troops, Radomir Putnik, saw that the time had come for negotiations. However, the political leadership was unwilling to surrender, and Prime Minister Pašić threat- ened to resign immediately. While this may not have been much of a deterrent for anyone, those surrounding the King clearly felt that it might be possible to bring the Serbian Army to the Albanian coast, where it could expect help from the Allies. The Serbs made ready to flee. To the chagrin of the Allied liaison officers, the Serbian High Command appeared to have lost the will to put up any energetic resistance. And in- stead of evacuating military storehouses, provisions, weapons and ammunition, the last trains were stuffed full with relatives of politicians and staff officers.1114 The Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian troops attacking from the Drina and Vardar Valley were unable to cut off the Serbs, enabling the already severely decimated Serbian formations to push their way through into Kosovo between Mitrovica and Pristina.