Austrians take Antivari

A British chronology of the war records under 22 January 1916 the capture by Austro-Hungarian troops of the Montenegrin port of Antivari, today’s Bar. The same date is given by chronicles based on the war communiqués of the time, which under 22 January record the capture of Bar and of Ulcinj, further south, Dulcigno in Italian. The Western press reported it a day later. The Austrian official history does not give the day of the entry into the town. It mentions only that the units of the group of Feldmarschalleutnant Béla Sorsich, advancing along the coast, reached at about this time the valley of the Buna, the river on the border with Albania. The sources do not mention any fighting for the port itself.

Montenegro’s window on the world

Bar was the only important port of the Kingdom of Montenegro. From 1908 it was linked with Virpazar on Lake Scutari by a narrow-gauge railway built by the Italian company Compagnia di Antivari, which also ran shipping on the lake. During the war this was the route for the supplies sent to Montenegro by its allies: grain, food and ammunition. In September 1914 the French landed guns here, which were then hauled up Lovćen. That is why the port was a constant target of the Austro-Hungarian fleet from nearby Kotor. The most damaging was a torpedo-boat raid on the night of 1–2 March 1915, when the main pier and the warehouses were destroyed and the royal yacht Rumija sank in the harbour. At the end of 1915 Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats were intercepting grain ships bound for Bar, and Montenegro was starving.

The fall of the country

In January 1916 the Austro-Hungarian Third Army of General of Infantry Hermann Kövess attacked Montenegro from the west, from the area of the Bay of Kotor, and from the north-east. After the loss of Lovćen the Montenegrin units on the western front began to drift home, and on 13 January the Austrians entered Cetinje. The government asked for peace. Vienna demanded the unconditional surrender of the whole army. The negotiations broke down, and King Nicholas I left for Italy. The Austro-Hungarian command threatened to resume operations on 21 January and, at the request of the government in Vienna, postponed this deadline by one day. In practice the disarming of the Montenegrins was proceeding quickly anyway. According to the Austrian official history, the Montenegrin army simply ceased to exist.

In these circumstances the capture of Bar was more a march than a battle. Together with Ulcinj the whole coast of Montenegro passed into Austro-Hungarian hands, and the fleet at Kotor, the main base of the Austro-Hungarian navy in the southern Adriatic, no longer had a hostile coast beside it. The road through Stari Bar, the old town in the hills above the port, led on towards the Buna and Scutari, where the remnants of the Serbian army were gathering. As early as 16 January General Kövess had ordered two battalions with a mountain battery to be sent that way, through Virpazar and Stari Bar, to take Scutari by surprise and move on to San Giovanni di Medua.

The railway from Bar to Virpazar later served the Austrians as one of the supply lines for the troops in Montenegro and northern Albania. Bar remained under Austro-Hungarian occupation until the end of the war. At the beginning of November 1918 it was taken by the Italian navy.