Austrians capture Lovćen

At dusk on 10 January 1916, fires lit on the summit of the Lovćen massif signalled that Austro-Hungarian infantry had reached the top of the mountain the Montenegrins called sacred. According to the Austrian official history, the first to get there were the leading detachments of Lieutenant-Colonel Törk’s group of the 47th Infantry Division. The same day the last defenders of the Krstac pass, through which the serpentine road ran from Kotor to the country’s capital, abandoned their positions under the fire of naval guns. A British chronology of the war records the taking of Lovćen under 10 January. The Austro-Hungarian communiqué announced it a day later, which is why some studies give the date as 11 January.

The third day of the assault

The attack of Feldmarschalleutnant Ignaz Trollmann’s XIX Corps began on 8 January with a massive bombardment from hundreds of guns of the Kotor fortress and from warships lying in the Bay of Kotor. Within two days the Austrians climbed the karst rocks to the Solar ridge and broke through the Montenegrin line of defence on the edge of the plateau. On 9 January a hit blew up the ammunition dumps near Kuk hill, and the defenders lost all their heavy artillery.

During the night of 9/10 January the main Montenegrin forces, shaken by the bombardment, fell back to a line running across the highest peak of the massif, Štirovnik. In the morning the Austrians pressed on. By noon they had passed all the heights on the edge of the plateau, and in the evening they stood on the summits of Lovćen itself. On the coast the brigades of Feldmarschalleutnant Sorsich advanced above Budva, and on the northern flank Lieutenant-Colonel Lottspeich’s group took the heights near the village of Vališta after heavy fighting. The same day other Austro-Hungarian units occupied the town of Berane in the east of the country.

An army that stopped fighting

The Montenegrin command ordered a night counter-attack to recover the lost positions. According to the Austrian official history, here based on a work by the Serbian general staff, the exhausted soldiers refused. They said that after several days of hunger, “naked and barefoot”, they could not withstand even the winter, let alone a superior enemy. The sons of King Nicholas I, Prince Mirko and Prince Peter, tried in vain to rally them. Reinforcements from the interior arrived slowly and reluctantly.

On the evening of 10 January the government proposed to the King that the Austrians be asked for an armistice. Nicholas still refused, counting on help promised to him by the Russian Tsar and on his own authority. He gave way only the next morning, when his appeals to the retreating troops went unheeded. The rapid fall of the mountain at once aroused suspicions that the court had not defended it with all its strength. Opponents of the dynasty later openly accused the King and Prince Peter, who commanded in this sector, of treason, although they never proved it.

The end of the threat to Kotor

From the first days of the war Lovćen had threatened the Austro-Hungarian fleet base. It was from its slopes that Montenegrin guns, and in the autumn of 1914 French guns as well, had shelled the forts and the harbour. Now Kotor was safe on the landward side, and the Austrians had an open road to the capital, Cetinje, a dozen or so kilometres further on. On 11 January their advanced guards reached the heights above the town, and the Montenegrin government sent envoys to ask for a ceasefire. Vienna demanded unconditional surrender.