British reinforcements had only just arrived on the Balkan Peninsula and had not yet had time to take over all the defensive sectors when the Bulgarian guerrillas launched a full-scale counterattack. This time, the Russians cooperated closely as well, firmly pinning down the Allied forces at the front.
The facts proved that Plovdiv truly had been bait laid by the British, intended to annihilate the main force of the Bulgarian guerrillas there. Unfortunately, they had controlled the beginning but failed to control the ending.
The moment the battle began, the situation changed. More than ten cities, including Plovdiv, came under guerrilla attack simultaneously.
Most of these were feint attacks, but this chaotic barrage exposed the British arrangements before they could be completed.
There was no helping it. Though the Greeks were not particularly strong, their timing had been too good. Who knew whether they might charge all the way into Constantinople? To be safe, the Ottoman Empire had no choice but to pull troops away to contain them.
There were too few troops defending the cities, and there were collaborators inside to guide the enemy. Even a feint could potentially breach a city. If all these places fell, the Allied forces in the Sofia region would be surrounded. Left with no alternative, the British Army could only dispatch reinforcements.
The Bulgarian guerrillas' firepower was too weak. They could bully the Ottoman second-line troops, but they could not stand up to the British on a head-on battlefield.
But being unable to win did not mean they had no way to fight. The British troops who had just arrived at the front had never fought them before, and their commanders, brimming with arrogance, directly treated them as colonial natives.
That understanding was not wrong. In theory, Bulgaria could indeed be considered a