Austrians occupy Cetinje

On the afternoon of 13 January 1916 the first Austro-Hungarian soldiers entered Cetinje, the capital of the Kingdom of Montenegro. According to the Austrian official history, it was a reconnaissance detachment of the 14th Mountain Brigade, which occupied the town without a fight. During the night a larger group under Lieutenant-Colonel Törk of the 47th Infantry Division was moved into Cetinje, the same division whose advanced units had reached the summit of Lovćen three days earlier. The British chronology of the war also records the occupation of Cetinje under 13 January.

A capital without defenders

Cetinje was a small town in a karst basin at the foot of Lovćen, but since the 15th century it had been the heart of the Montenegrin state. Here stood the monastery, the former seat of the prince-bishops, the palace of King Nicholas I and the legations of foreign states. After the loss of Lovćen the town had nothing left to defend itself with. According to the Austrian official history, chaos already reigned there on 11 January. The carriages of the royal family and the legations hurriedly left for Rijeka Crnojevića on Lake Scutari, while hungry refugees crowded around the state warehouses. The king left the capital, and most of his soldiers from the western part of the country were dispersing to their homes.

On 12 January the troops of General Hermann Kövess on Montenegro’s western front were still meeting resistance, but on 13 January they found the ground ahead empty. Besides Cetinje, the Austrians that day took the heights above the coast and the village of Ubli in the north, and on the Herzegovina sector the enemy also withdrew. It was different in the north and east of the country, where the Montenegrins were still resisting on the Tara near Mojkovac and in the Lim valley south of Berane.

A second plea for peace

The Montenegrin government had already asked for an armistice, but the Austrians had demanded the unconditional laying down of arms by the whole army and the handing over of the Serbian soldiers still in the country. On the evening of 13 January a new peace proposal from the government arrived at the headquarters of the 47th Division at Njeguši, the home village of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty. With it came a letter from the king to Emperor Franz Joseph, in which Nicholas asked for an “honourable peace”. The answer from Vienna was the same as before: negotiations could begin only once the army’s conditions had been met. The Austro-Hungarian high command repeated them on 15 January.

Under occupation

The entry into Cetinje was above all of symbolic importance for Austria-Hungary. For decades the Monarchy had regarded little Montenegro as a troublesome neighbour tied to Serbia and Russia. Now its troops stood in the Montenegrin capital, and the inhabitants, exhausted by hunger, offered no resistance. A few days later, in Cetinje, the Montenegrin government accepted the condition that the army capitulate. King Nicholas, however, did not wait for the negotiations to end and soon left the country. Cetinje became the seat of the Austro-Hungarian military general government, which ruled occupied Montenegro until the autumn of 1918.