ABSTRACT
Few modern states have undergone such extreme changes of military and political fortune as Bulgaria did in the near decade of wars beginning in 1912. The First Balkan War of 1912–13 saw Bulgaria realize its national claims in Southeastern Europe with a surprising victory over the Ottoman Empire only to have these gains snatched away by its defeat at the hands of its erstwhile Balkan allies, abetted by Romania and the Ottomans in the Second Balkan War of 1913. The warfare from 1912 through 1918 was not the first time the young Bulgarian state had experienced great disappointment after having apparently achieved its national claims. Nineteenth-century Bulgarian nationalists had advocated a restoration of the medieval Bulgarian state from Ottoman controlled territories that included Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thrace. In 1904, the Bulgarian government reached an agreement with Serbia, but the Austrian-Russian agreement at Murzsteg for international oversight in Ottoman Macedonia pushed it aside.
