From War to Peace

By the end of the first week in November 1918, the First World War was rapidly coming to an end. After a victorious attack by the Allied armies in Macedonia upon the Bulgarian front on 15 September, and a rising of the Bulgarian troops ten days later (occupying their army headquarters and proclaiming a republic), the Bulgarian Government sued for peace before the month was out. In the second half of September, too, the British army in Palestine launched a successful offensive against the Turks, capturing Damascus on 1 October, and during the next four weeks the whole of Syria: on 30 October Turkey capitulated. During the last week of October, in turn, the Austro-Hungarian armies were heavily defeated in northern Italy, and on 27 October their Government asked for an armistice. The following day an insurrection in Prague declared the independence of Czechoslovakia, on 29 October the south Slav political leaders (Slovenes and Croats) proclaimed their independence at Zagreb, and on 30 October armed workers and soldiers seized the main government buildings at Budapest, installing a left-wing Government which announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire thus ceased to exist — an event rounded off by a revolution in Vienna on 3 November which established a republican Government.