Signing of the Peace Treaty of Neuilly, 27.11.1919.

November 27, 1919 is one of the blackest dates in Bulgarian history. On that day, Bulgaria was forced to sign the Neue Peace Treaty, which ended its participation in the First World War.

In the period between 1912 and 1918, Bulgaria participated in three wars - the two Balkan Wars and the First World War, and the reason for the inclusion in all three was one - the unification of all the lands of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by Bulgarians within the borders of the Kingdom. After the victory in the war with the Ottoman Empire of 1912-13 and the defeat in the summer of 1913 in the clash against all its neighbors, Sofia was forced to "lower the flags for better days". And an opportunity for rematch is provided very soon. The First World War broke out in 1914. At first, Bulgaria declared neutrality, but in the summer of the following year, 1915, the rulers of the Kingdom decided to join the war on the side of the Central Powers, who promised to solve all territorial issues with the unification of the lands with a predominant Bulgarian population and above all the accession of Macedonia. After the victories in 1915 against Serbia and 1916 against Romania, the offensive period of the war for the Bulgarian army ended and the fronts moved to positional actions. The trench warfare was a severe test for the Bulgarian units, who in the last two years of the conflict - 1917 and 1918 - suffered from a constant lack of food, clothing, weapons and equipment, and had an enemy many times superior to them in terms of numbers, armaments and supplies. . In September 1918, despite the victory at Doiran, Bulgaria was extremely exhausted and signed an armistice with the Entente countries on the 29th of the same month in Thessaloniki, ending all hostilities.

Defeat in the war leads to the abdication of King Ferdinand, a political crisis, a military uprising, hunger riots and economic ruin. After months of negotiations and discussions between the victorious countries, Bulgaria was forced to sign the heavy and humiliating peace treaty of Noi. This happened on November 27, 1919 in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Initially, the Bulgarian delegation was led by Prime Minister Teodor Teodorov, but seeing the terms of the Treaty, he refused to sign it and resigned. It is signed by the new Prime Minister Alexander Stamboliyski. Apart from the harsh and unbearable conditions - 2 billion gold francs in reparations, the loss of 25 square km of territory, the liquidation of the Bulgarian army, which from over 11 officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers in August 000 was reduced to just over 800 souls together with the gendarmerie and border units, compensating the neighboring countries with thousands of head of cattle and tons of minerals, the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the Kingdom with all the resulting problems - the Treaty of Nyoi was experienced by Bulgarian society as a national catastrophe leading to the end of the ideal of a unified and united Bulgaria. In the next two decades, the Kingdom found itself in a constant political crisis accompanied by attempted dictatorships, coups, rebellions, assassinations and an undeclared civil war. All these cataclysms are a direct consequence of the unjust Neue Peace Treaty.

Text: Hristo Hristov