Serbo-Bulgarian War - Serbian Army

Serbian Army

The total number of Serbian armed forces expected to take part in the military operation was about 60,000. The Serbian army's infantry weaponry stood up to the most modern standards of the time (Mauser-Milovanovich single-shot rifles with excellent ballistic characteristics). However, the artillery was ill-equipped, having muzzle-loading cannons of La Hitte system. King Milan IV divided his force into two armies, the Nishava and Timok armies. The first took the main objective, i.e. to overcome the Bulgarian defences along the west border, to conquer Sofia and advance towards the Ihtiman heights. It was there that the army was supposed to encounter and crush the Bulgarian forces coming from the southeast. Serbia's main advantages on paper were the better small arms and the highly educated commanders and soldiers, who had gained a serious amount of experience from the last two wars against the Ottoman Empire.

However, internal Serbian problems supplemented by king Milan's conduct of the war, nullified most of these advantages:

In order to collect all the glory for the victory he considered imminent, King Milan did not call the most famous commanders of the previous wars (Gen. Jovan Belimarković, Gen. Đura Horvatović and Gen. Milojko Lešjanin) to command the army. Instead, he took the position of army commander himself and gave the divisional commands to less experienced officers like Petar Topalović of the Morava division.

Furthermore, underestimating the Bulgarian military strength and fearing mutinies for conducting such an unpopular war (and having indeed experienced the Timok Rebellion two years before), he ordered the mobilisation of only the first class of infantry (recruits younger than 30 years), which meant mobilising only about half of the available Serbian manpower. In doing so, he deprived the Serbian army of its veterans of the previous wars against the Ottoman Empire.

The timing for the beginning of the hostilities was very bad for the Serbian Army as it was in the middle of rearmament with modern weapons. The new De Bange steel, breech-loading cannons were ordered and paid for, but did not arrive until 1886.

The modern rifles, even though amongst the best in Europe at the time, still had issues of their own: they were introduced a rather short time (two years) before the outbreak of the war, so many of the soldiers were not very well trained to use them. More importantly, the theoretical capabilities of the rifle often mislead the Serbian officers, still lacking experience with it, to order volleys from distances of half a mile or more, wasting the precious ammunition for negligible results. Furthermore, the ammunition was purchased in quantities based on consumption of bullets by the previous, much older and slower firing rifles. The situation was made worse still by the contemporary Serbian tactics emphasizing firepower, and downplaying hand-to-hand fighting, which contributed to heavy casualties in such a fight for Neškov Vis in defence of Pirot.