114 years ago this month, Greek forces fought the bloodiest battle of the First Balkan War at Giannitsa, a confrontation...

114 years ago this month, Greek forces fought the bloodiest battle of the First Balkan War at Giannitsa, a confrontation that determined whether Thessaloniki would fly a Greek or Bulgarian flag. On October 19, 1912, Crown Prince Constantine led six infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade into an attack against 25,000 to 30,000 Ottoman troops dug into the heights above Giannitsa. The Ottomans had chosen the position deliberately. The city was surrounded by the impassable Giannitsa Lake to the south and the steep Paiko hills to the north, and it held the tombs of the Ghazis, the first Ottoman conquerors of the region. Losing it would not just be a military defeat but a blow to the morale of the entire empire. The Greeks attacked in pouring rain across mud-soaked Macedonian plains. By nightfall on the 19th, after absorbing relentless artillery fire and heavy casualties, Greek units had broken through the forward Ottoman lines and reached the rear of the city. On October 20th, the defense collapsed entirely. What had been an organized Ottoman withdrawal turned into a rout toward the Axios River, with soldiers abandoning weapons, ammunition, and flags in the field. The Greek army lost 188 dead, including Artillery Lieutenant Adam Doukas, with over 970 wounded. Ottoman casualties exceeded 3,000. The speed of the victory had consequences far beyond Giannitsa itself. Bulgaria's 7th Division was racing toward Thessaloniki from the north with the same objective. The collapse of the Ottoman line allowed Greek forces to reach the city's walls nearly 48 hours ahead of the Bulgarians, settling the question of who would claim it. The Ottoman commander at the center of all this was Hassan Tahsin Pasha, born in southern Albania in 1845, educated at the Zosimaia School in Ioannina, and fluent in Greek. Cut off from Constantinople and surrounded, he made the decision on October 26, 1912, the feast day of Saint Demetrios, to surrender Thessaloniki to the Greek army rather than allow the city to be destroyed. When Bulgarian envoys pressured him to sign a parallel surrender protocol with them, he refused outright, saying: "We took Thessaloniki from the Greeks, and to the Gree...