Chapter 225 Balkan Situation

At 6 pm on October 28th, the Greek Macedonian Corps Front Headquarters

Constantine's aide-de-camp, Colonel Hamit, walked into the marching tent with a telegram in his hand, looking very happy. Seeing the Greek Army Commander-in-Chief, Crown Prince Constantine, who was processing documents at his desk, he said excitedly: "Commander, good news."

He put the telegram in front of Constantine while speaking.

Fatigued Constantine, after hearing the report from aide-de-camp Colonel Hamit, took off his glasses on the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes, which were sore from reading documents for a long time: "What good news is it about?"

"Commander, just yesterday, our Greek Navy severely taught the Ottomans a lesson in the Aegean Sea. The fast fleet led by Commander Kontoriotis won a great victory in yesterday's naval decisive battle, sinking more than 10,000 tons of enemy warships, including a battleship and a destroyer." Seeing Constantine's tired look, aide-de-camp Hamit picked up the telegram and read it excitedly.

Constantine was also shocked when he heard the news. He stood up and picked up the telegram to confirm it himself.

Although he had expected the Greek Navy to win, after all, the Greek Navy was much stronger than the same period in the original history.

In the original historical time and space, when the war broke out, the Greek Navy could only rely on an armored cruiser purchased from Italy, named George Avilov.

With such an embarrassing warship and a group of old and outdated warships, under the command of Kontoriotis, the Greeks created an incredible miracle and successively damaged the two main battleships of the Ottoman Navy.

It is said that a warship defeated an empire.

The current Greek Navy is much stronger than the same period in history. In history, the Greek Navy had no money to buy expensive battle cruisers, so there is no reason why it cannot defeat the Ottoman Navy.

But what kind of results can be achieved is indeed an unknown.

When reporting the results of the battle to the General Staff, Kontoriotis frankly pointed out that one of the enemy's main battleships, the flagship Barbaros Hayreddin, was severely damaged and knew that it was unable to escape, so it chose to run ashore.

In order to boost the morale of the people at home, the Ottoman Navy purchased the Brandenburg-class battleship from Germany in the external propaganda, which was also regarded as the result of the navy's battle.

Such a result is already a good result for the Greek Navy today.

When the enemy knew that its strength was weak and had no tenacious will to fight, the Greek Navy had few opportunities to sink the enemy's ships.

After reading the telegram, Constantine thought for a moment and said happily: "In this way, the route of the Ottomans to support the Macedonian region by sea transportation has been cut off by us, which is also good news for our Macedonian Corps."

After the defeat in this naval battle, it was basically impossible for the Ottoman Navy to attack again, and the Greek Navy could safely and boldly occupy the remaining Aegean islands that were still under the actual control of the Ottoman Empire.

"Also, when I went to the communications room to get the telegram, I heard that the Chief of Staff, His Excellency Emmanuel, would arrive at our front-line headquarters this afternoon." Colonel Hamit continued to tell the news he had heard.

Constantine nodded, indicating that he understood, and then paced back and forth in the tent.

The current Macedonian Corps is currently in a stalemate.

Since the last war, the Greek territory is close to Thessaloniki, which makes Thessaloniki almost a border city, and the Greek army is also eyeing this important city.

In this case, the Ottoman army naturally strengthened the city's defense.

Just take a look at the map, with a little strategic awareness, you can perceive the importance of this city.

The Macedonian territory owned by the Ottoman Turkey is generally surrounded by Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia.

Greece is in the southwest, Serbia is in the north, and Bulgaria is in the northeast. The Austrian Macedonia deep into the Balkan Peninsula relies on the southeast of Macedonia to maintain contact with the Ottomans by land.

Once the city of Thessaloniki falls, it means that the Ottoman army deployed in the rest of Macedonia will face the risk of being cut off.

Once this city is lost, all the deployments of the Ottoman army in Macedonia will be in disarray.

Not to mention that the city itself is a transportation hub and a commercial center.

It is for these reasons that, according to the information collected by Greece from all sides, the Ottoman army has deployed nearly 100,000 troops near Thessaloniki.

In addition, the Ottoman military built two strong fortresses near Thessaloniki with the help of the Germans.

The two fortresses are Bazani Fortress and Kastritsa Fortress.

According to the German design, the fortresses are built with concrete bunkers, artillery and machine gun positions, trenches, barbed wire and searchlights.

These two fortresses alone are guarded by about 35,000 Turkish troops, forming a solid fortress.

Thessaloniki itself is just a plain city with no passes nearby, but after the construction of these two fortresses, the city became a difficult barrier for the Greek army.

So after the Macedonian army initially contacted the two fortresses and launched a tentative attack, Constantine immediately called off the attack.

In this era without airplanes and tanks, if you want to use the flesh and blood of soldiers to conquer the enemy's heavily guarded permanent fortifications, you will definitely pay a huge price in casualties.

Moreover, the enemy's trenches, barbed wire and Maxim machine guns also touched Constantine's sensitive nerves.

Subconsciously, Constantine did not want to attack such enemy positions head-on.

Obviously, the trench warfare that was so powerful in the European wars in the future had already begun in this war, but it did not seem to attract the attention of the mainstream military circles in Europe.

So far, the war has only been going on for more than ten days, and the situation is still unclear. Neither the Serbian nor the Bulgarian army has time to launch an attack to distract the Ottoman army.

If Constantine attacked Salonika at this time, in order to maintain the situation in Macedonia from collapsing, the Ottoman army stationed near Salonika would fight to the death, whether they wanted to or not.

That means that the Macedonian army will face the main force of the Osman army in Macedonia.

On the other hand, facing such solid enemy fortifications, the Macedonian Corps also needs more heavy artillery.

Because heavy artillery is inconvenient to move, it takes a certain amount of time to prepare.

Moreover, after more than ten days of contact with the Ottoman army, Constantine discovered that the Ottoman soldiers did not lack the courage to fight.