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Battle of Kirk Kilisse
1912Oct, 24

First Balkan War: The Battle of Kirk Kilisse concludes with the Bulgarian victory against the Ottoman Empire.

The Battle of Kirk Kilisse or Battle of Kirkkilise or Battle of Lozengrad was part of the First Balkan War between the armies of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. It took place on 24 October 1912, when the Bulgarian army defeated an Ottoman army in Eastern Thrace.

The initial clashes were around several villages to the north of the town. The Bulgarian attacks were irresistible and the Ottoman forces were forced to retreat. On 10 October the Ottoman army threatened to split 1st and 3rd Bulgarian armies but it was quickly stopped by a charge by 1st Sofian and 2nd Preslav brigades. After bloody fighting along the whole town front the Ottomans began to pull back and on the next morning Krk Kilise (Lozengrad) was in Bulgarian hands.

After the victory, the French minister of war Alexandre Millerand stated that the Bulgarian Army was the best in Europe and that he would prefer 100,000 Bulgarians for allies than any other European army.

Battle of Kirk KilisseBattle of Kirk Kilisse
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.

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