Armistice of Belgrade

The armistice of Belgrade was an agreement on the termination of World War I hostilities between the Triple Entente and the Kingdom of Hungary concluded in Belgrade on 13 November 1918. It was largely negotiated by General Louis Franchet d'Espèrey, as the commanding officer of the Allied Army of the Orient, and Hungarian Prime Minister Mihály Károlyi, on 7 November. It was signed by General Paul Prosper Henrys and vojvoda Živojin Mišić, as representatives of the Allies, and by the former Hungarian Minister of War, Béla Linder.

The agreement defined a demarcation line marking the southern limit of deployment of most Hungarian armed forces. It left large parts of the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen (the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary) outside Hungarian control – including parts or entire regions of Transylvania, Banat, Bačka, Baranya, as well as Croatia-Slavonia. It also spelled out in eighteen points the obligations imposed on Hungary by the Allies. Those obligations included Hungary's armed forces being reduced to eight divisions, the clearing of naval mines, as well as the turning over of certain quantities of rolling stock, river ships, tugboats, barges, river monitors, horses and other materiel to the Allies. Hungary was also obliged to make certain personnel available to repair wartime damage inflicted on Serbia's telegraph infrastructure, as well as to provide personnel to staff railways.

The terms of the armistice and the subsequent actions of the Allies embittered a significant part of Hungary's population and caused the downfall of Károlyi and the First Hungarian Republic, which had been established only days after its signing. In 1919, the First Hungarian Republic was replaced by the short-lived, communist-ruled Hungarian Soviet Republic. Much of the Allied-occupied territories determined by the demarcation line (and additional territories elsewhere) were detached from Hungary through the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.