The Armies
The Bulgarian field army in 1885 consisted of just under 30,000 men organised into 8, three battalion infantry regiments (700 men each), 9 squadrons of cavalry and 12, eight gun batteries. In addition the first line of the Eastern Rumelia militia had been mobilised consisting of 12 infantry battalions, 2 squadrons of cavalry and 4 guns. During the war the second ban of the Eastern Rumelia militia was mobilised (12 battalions) along with the Bulgarian second ban (8 battalions) and as many as 20 volunteer battalions, 3 Macedonian battalions and some 6000 Muslim volunteers.
Confident of an easy victory and to some extent recognising that the war was not popular in Serbia, Milan only mobilised the active (first ban) army. This gave a field army of 5 divisions consisting of 80 battalions (700 men), 21 cavalry squadrons and 46 batteries. A total of 70,000 men and 264 guns. In fact only 49 battalions and 23 batteries were ready for the invasion, the rest along with elements of the second ban only became available in the last stage of the war. A key weakness was the limited number of modern Krupp and du Bange guns.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Slivnitsa
Famous quotes containing the word armies:
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Christians would show sense if they dispatched these argumentative Scotists and pigheaded Ockhamists and undefeated Albertists along with the whole regiment of Sophists to fight the Turks and Saracens instead of sending those armies of dull-witted soldiers with whom they’ve long been carrying on war with no result.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)