It was pouring with rain today, too wet to do anything outsider or much inside, so I treated myself to some downtime researching how Australian newspapers reported the abdication of Nicholas II.

Of course, Nicholas II was not the only ruler of a Slav state to be styled tsar, and not the only one to abdicate, Ferdinand of Bulgaria was also styled ‘Tsar’ and also abdicated, although in October 1918, after an Entente breakthrough on the Macedonian front.

Most anglophone histories of the First World War ignore the conflict with Bulgaria, despite the involvement of troops from the British and French colonial empires, not to mention Greek and Serb soldiers.

Yet, at the time this was seen as a crucial breakthrough, isolating the Ottoman Empire from Germany and causing financial panic in Berlin. (It’s also interesting how newspapers reported what was happening by relying on correspondents in neutral countries who had access to newspapers published in Germany and AustriaHungary).

Clearly it was felt in Germany and AustriaHungary that the collapse of Bulgaria had certainly brought about the endgame in the middle east and that the war was increasingly unsustainable, and that the loans made to their Balkan allies and Turkey had little if any chance of ever being paid back …