Austrians take Podgorica

The British chronology of the war records under 23 January 1916 the capture of Podgorica by Austro-Hungarian troops. The Austrian official history does not give the exact day, but describes the entry into the town together with the events of 23 January, when another detachment took Scutari. Podgorica was entered by units of the 47th Infantry Division from General Ignaz Trollmann’s corps, which after taking Lovćen and Cetinje were advancing east through Rijeka Crnojevića. According to the Austrian account the inhabitants greeted them joyfully. It was different in Nikšić, the second large town of the interior, which the advance guard of General Braun’s group entered in the same days. The population there received the Austrians with hostility.

The most important town of the interior

Podgorica, lying on a plain on the Morača, north of Lake Scutari, was the largest town and the commercial centre of the Kingdom of Montenegro. Roads crossed here to Cetinje and Nikšić, north towards Kolašin and south towards Scutari, and across the lake and by the railway from Virpazar the town was connected with the port of Bar. The war touched Podgorica from its first days. As early as 10 August 1914 Austro-Hungarian aircraft bombed the town, killing nine soldiers and thirteen civilians. During the Serbian retreat in the autumn of 1915 the powerful French radio station operating here was one of the few links between this part of the Balkans and the outside world.

In the Austro-Hungarian plans Podgorica had from the outset been the objective of an advance from two directions. From the west Trollmann’s corps was to march on it, and from the north-east, through Berane and Kolašin, units of VIII Corps. The advance from the north, however, bogged down in the mountains, the snow and on wretched supply roads, and when after the fall of Cetinje the Montenegrin army began to disintegrate, the town was taken by soldiers coming from the west. This happened while the Montenegrins were already being disarmed. According to the Austrian official history, on the same day, 23 January, an agreement was concluded on the laying down of arms by the Montenegrin army, signed two days later.

The death of Isa Boletini

According to the Austrian official history, on the way to Podgorica Austrian troops met Prince Mirko, son of King Nicholas I, who had remained in the country after his father left for Italy. The prince spoke of atrocities in the town he had left. The Austrians established, however, that this referred to a skirmish with Albanians in which their most famous leader, Isa Boletini, had been killed. This hero of the Albanian uprisings against the Turks, who had taken part in the proclamation of Albanian independence in 1912, was then living in Podgorica under Montenegrin supervision. The circumstances of his death are uncertain. It is most often dated to 23 January, less often to 24 January. According to one version, Montenegrin gendarmes shot him together with his sons and other relatives on the bridge over the Morača just as the Austrians were entering the town, because they suspected that he wanted to join them. According to other accounts Boletini died in a shoot-out that he started himself or was drawn into, and before his death he killed several of his opponents.

Podgorica remained under Austro-Hungarian occupation until the autumn of 1918. It was here, in November 1918, that an assembly met which deposed King Nicholas and proclaimed the union of Montenegro with Serbia.