On November 7, 2025, it will be exactly 140 years since the victorious end of the Battle of Slivnitsa – the most important success for the Bulgarian army and a turning point in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885.
140 years since the Battle of Slivnitsa
On November 7, 2025, it will be exactly 140 years since the victorious end of the Battle of Slivnitsa – the most important success for the Bulgarian army and a turning point in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885.
After the Unification of the Principality of Bulgaria with Eastern Rumelia on September 6, 1885, the expectations of the Bulgarian rulers were for possible hostile actions by the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, Bulgarian military units were stationed on the southern border of the Principality. In the next few weeks it became clear that the main enemy of the Union would not be the Ottomans, but the Kingdom of Serbia, which did not want Bulgaria to become the most powerful state in the Balkans. On November 2, 1885, the Serbian King Milan declared war on Bulgaria. On the same day, the Bulgarian Knyaz Alexander I Battenberg issued a Manifesto to all Bulgarians in Plovdiv, which stated: “…we announce to our beloved people that…we have ordered our brave and heroic troops to begin their actions against the Serbs and to defend the land, honor and freedom of the Bulgarian people.” The Bulgarian command determined the position around Slivnitsa as the most suitable for stopping the Serbian units advancing towards Sofia. In just a few days between 2 and 5 November, the main Bulgarian troops covered the distance between the southern borders and the Slivnitsa position, and without delay or rest joined the battle. Between 5 and 7 November 1885, the key battle took place at Slivnitsa, which determined the entire course of the war. The Bulgarian units were distributed in three sections of the front: right, central and left, and were outnumbered compared to the numerically superior enemy. Despite this, they managed to withstand the pressure in the first two days, and on 7 November they launched a counter-offensive, with a decisive success achieved on the right flank, and the Serbs were pushed back all the way to Dragoman. In the following days, the Bulgarian army’s offensive continued and the enemy was forced to leave the territory of the Principality. The victorious march of the Bulgarian units was stopped only after the intervention of Austria-Hungary.
The victory at Slivnitsa was the most important in the war and showed that the young Bulgarian army, even without the Russian officers, who had been withdrawn only a few days after the Unification, and commanded mainly by captains, was capable of dealing with an enemy superior in numbers, armament and experience. In the following decades, in several successive wars, the heroes of Slivnitsa would achieve many more glorious victories on the battlefields of the Balkans.
Text: Hristo Hristov
