Capture of Peć

The British chronology of the war records under 6 December 1915 that Austro-German troops occupied the Montenegrin town of Peć, then called by its Turkish name, Ipek. According to the Austrian official history, Peć was taken a day later, on 7 December, by the 9th Mountain Brigade of the Austro-Hungarian 59th Infantry Division. According to that source there were no Germans in the action. The Austrians fought the Serbian rearguard, the Drina Division of the first levy, and took 400 prisoners and a great deal of equipment. The chronology’s entry probably reflects the fact that German and Austro-Hungarian troops were operating together in Serbia under the command of the German field marshal August von Mackensen.

The gateway to Montenegro

Peć lay in Metohija, the western part of present-day Kosovo, at the mouth of the Rugova gorge. It was the former seat of the Serbian patriarchs and one of the most important places in the history of the Serbian Church. Since the First Balkan War, when the Montenegrins took it in October 1912, it had belonged to Montenegro. From Peć a road led across the mountains to Andrijevica, and on to Podgorica and Scutari. This was the route by which the Serbian command led the army’s main forces during the retreat to the Adriatic. This was also the way all the field artillery was to go, since the other routes offered only mountain paths.

At the end of November thousands of soldiers, carts and refugees gathered in the basins of Peć and Đakovica. For several days the Serbian generals watched the exhausted army surge through Peć. When on 3 December the Bulgarians reached Đakovica, the last rearguards came down from their positions facing Novi Pazar, and the columns set off into the mountains. Beyond the town, however, the cart road came to an end. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith described how the hospital column of the Englishwoman Mabel Stobart was told in Peć that the roads would “no longer be good”. The women doctors and orderlies sawed their four-wheeled carts in half and drove on with the front halves. They gave half of the hospital equipment to the local hospital and handed their ambulances over to the prefect to be burned should the enemy arrive. Two days later they were ordered to burn the two-wheeled carts as well. They walked to Scutari for three weeks.

The Austrians in Peć

On 5 December Mackensen’s staff ordered the Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps to advance on Rožaje and Peć, and the 59th Division, after taking the town, to push on to Plav and Gusinje so as to threaten Andrijevica, where the road to Scutari began. The Austrians entered Peć on 7 December, and a day later made contact with the Bulgarians, who had come up from the south. According to the Austrian official history, the Serbian command regarded the events at Peć as far more important than the Montenegrin requests for help in defending Lovćen, since the fall of the town threatened the main forces’ line of retreat and opened the enemy’s way to the lowlands around Scutari. In so bad a position, however, it could only summon the Danube Division of the first levy, which was stuck on the congested roads, to cover the retreat towards Andrijevica in the Rugova gorge “to the point of utter self-sacrifice”.

The pursuit went no further. According to the Austrian official history, the supply of Kövess’s troops in the winter mountains almost broke down, and the soldiers were still waiting for warm clothing. The 9th Mountain Brigade remained in Peć for many more days. In addition to the guns captured in battle, it found there or dug out of the ground nearly a hundred hidden cannon. The last Serbian units meanwhile withdrew from Rugova towards Plav. In the following weeks the Austro-Hungarians advanced no further here. Vienna was already preparing, however, a blow against Montenegro itself, from the direction of Kotor and the Lovćen massif, which came in January 1916.