First Balkan War: King Peter I of Serbia issues a declaration "To the Serbian People", as his country joins the war.
Peter I (Serbian Cyrillic: I , romanized: Petar I araorevi; 11 July [O.S. 29 June] 1844 16 August 1921) was the last king of Serbia, reigning from 15 June 1903 to 1 December 1918. On 1 December 1918, he became the first king of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and he held that title until his death three years later. Since he was the king of Serbia during a period of great Serbian military success, he was remembered by the Serbian people as King Peter the Liberator, and also as Old King.
Peter was Karaore's grandson and third son of Persida Nenadovi and Prince Alexander Karaorevi, who was forced to abdicate. Peter lived with his family in exile. He fought with the French Foreign Legion in the Franco-Prussian War. He joined as a volunteer under the alias Peter Mrkonji in the Herzegovina uprising (18751877) against the Ottoman Empire.
He married Princess Zorka of Montenegro, daughter of King Nicholas, in 1883. She gave birth to his five children, including Prince Alexander. After the death of his father in 1885, Peter became head of the Karaorevi dynasty. After a military coup d'tat and the murder of King Alexander I Obrenovi in 1903, Peter became King of Serbia.
As king, he advocated a constitutional setup for the country and was famous for his liberal politics. The rule of King Peter was marked with the great exercise of political liberties, freedom of the press, national, economical and cultural rise, and it is sometimes dubbed a "golden" or "Periclean age".King Peter was the supreme commander of the Royal Serbian Army in the Balkan Wars. Because of his age, on 24 June 1914, he proclaimed his son, Prince Alexander, heir-apparent to the throne, as regent. In World War I he and his army retreated across the Principality of Albania.
The First Balkan War (Serbian: Први балкански рат, Prvi Balkanski rat; Bulgarian: Балканска война; Greek: Αʹ Βαλκανικός πόλεμος; Turkish: Birinci Balkan Savaşı) lasted from October 1912 to May 1913 and involved actions of the Balkan League (the Kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro) against the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan states' combined armies overcame the initially numerically inferior (significantly superior by the end of the conflict) and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success.
The war was a comprehensive and unmitigated disaster for the Ottomans, who lost 83% of their European territories and 69% of their European population. As a result of the war, the League captured and partitioned almost all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining territories in Europe. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albania, which angered the Serbs. Bulgaria, meanwhile, was dissatisfied over the division of the spoils in Macedonia, and attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 June 1913 which provoked the start of the Second Balkan War.