Montenegro in the First World War

Montenegro, a small mountain monarchy in the Balkans, entered the war in the first week of August 1914 as Serbia’s ally. Its poorly armed army fought under Serbian command, threatened the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Kotor from the Lovćen massif, and in autumn 1915 covered the Serbs’ retreat to Albania. In January 1916 Austria-Hungary overran the country in less than three weeks, and Montenegro became the only Entente state to lose both its entire territory and its army in this war. King Nicholas I never signed a capitulation, but he never returned to the country either. In November 1918 the assembly at Podgorica deposed him and proclaimed union with Serbia.

The road to war

Before the Balkan Wars the Montenegro of King Nicholas I had about 250,000 inhabitants. On 8 October 1912 it was the first to declare war on Turkey, and its greatest ambition was Scutari in northern Albania. It took the town after a long siege in April 1913, but under the threat of intervention by the Great Powers it had to hand it over to the newly created Albania. It came out of the Balkan Wars enlarged by part of the Sanjak and Metohija, but exhausted and in debt. In the country the conviction grew that its future lay in a common state with Serbia, while the court feared that union would mean the end of the dynasty.

Entry into the war

During the July Crisis Nicholas I was not immediately ready for war. The Austro-Hungarian minister in Cetinje offered him financial help and territorial gains in return for neutrality, and the king assured the Russians that the Montenegrins would not attack first. Feeling in the country, however, was unmistakably pro-Serbian. On 26 July the government ordered mobilisation, on 1 August the National Assembly came out for taking part in the war, and on 5 August Montenegro declared war on Austria-Hungary. Other sources give 6 or 7 August, because the country used the Julian calendar. A few days later it found itself at war with Germany, and on 15 October 1915 with Bulgaria as well.

War at Serbia’s side

Montenegro mobilised about 40,000 men. Its army, organised along traditional clan lines, resembled a militia more than a modern force, but its soldiers were experienced and battle-hardened. On 6 August 1914 two-thirds of the army came under the Serbian supreme command, and the Serbian general Božidar Janković became chief of staff of the remaining part. The country’s greatest asset was the Lovćen massif above the Bay of Kotor. In August an Allied fleet sank the cruiser Zenta off the Montenegrin coast, and in the autumn the French hauled their guns up Lovćen and shelled Kotor, but the artillery of the warships and forts forced them to withdraw. In September the Montenegrins, together with the Serbs, advanced into Bosnia and came close to Sarajevo, from where, after the defeat at Glasinac in October, they had to withdraw across the Drina.

From the start the country depended on help from outside. Food, weapons and ammunition were short, and Austro-Hungarian warships shelled the port of Antivari and hunted the ships bringing supplies. Serbia paid the Montenegrin army 500,000 dinars a week, and Russia, France and Britain granted it a loan of 10 million francs on condition that purchases were decided by the supreme command run by the Serbs. In June 1915, against the wishes of their allies, the Montenegrins occupied Scutari and northern Albania. The Entente declared that it would not recognise this occupation.

In autumn 1915 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria occupied Serbia. The main Serbian forces retreated through Montenegrin Peć to Scutari, where the Serbian government and supreme command settled. The Montenegrins covered this retreat from the north, on the Tara river, although they suffered heavy losses themselves. On 22 December the Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić came to Cetinje and, according to some sources, advised the king to withdraw his army together with the Serbs if need be. The Montenegrin court did not do so. It feared that merging the two armies would strengthen the supporters of union, and the king counted on being able to make a separate peace with Vienna in the event of defeat.

Conquest and capitulation

At the beginning of January 1916 the Austro-Hungarian Third Army under General Hermann Kövess attacked Montenegro from three sides. On 6 and 7 January Serdar Janko Vukotić beat off the Austrians at Mojkovac, which Montenegrin tradition regards as its army’s greatest victory of the war. In the west, however, XIX Corps, supported by the guns of warships in the Bay of Kotor, took Lovćen in three days. On 11 January the government asked for an armistice, but Vienna demanded an unconditional laying down of arms, and on 13 January the Austrians entered Cetinje.

On 19 January the king, under pressure from Entente representatives, left via Scutari for Italy and announced that he rejected the Austrian terms. His son Prince Mirko and a few ministers remained in the country. On 21 January General Vukotić disbanded the army by Order No. 128, and the soldiers went home. On 25 January Montenegrin representatives signed the terms for laying down arms, which we take as the end of the fighting. Historians disagree whether this was an act of capitulation, since neither the king nor the lawful government signed it. Only a handful of Montenegrin soldiers reached Corfu, while about 15,000 soldiers and civilians ended up in Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war and internment camps.

Occupation and the government in exile

From 1 March 1916 the country was ruled by an Austro-Hungarian Military Governor-General in Cetinje. Montenegro then had 436,000 inhabitants and was of little economic importance to the monarchy. Hunger spread, and the occupiers banned the Cyrillic script and requisitioned food, livestock and church bells.

In 1917 and 1918 guerrilla bands, the komitas, numbering between 1,000 and 1,100 men, were active in the mountains. Several leaders of the Toplica uprising in Serbia were officers of the Montenegrin army, and in reprisal the occupiers executed 489 people in four districts. In January 1918 the most prominent resistance leaders, General Radomir Vešović and the former minister Milosav Raičević, surrendered to the Austrians.

The king and the government settled in France. The Allies treated them coolly, and in Serbia and parts of the Allied press Nicholas was accused of collusion with Vienna, which historians generally do not confirm. In his Fourteen Points of 8 January 1918 President Woodrow Wilson called for the evacuation of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, but the Corfu Declaration of 1917 had already announced a common Yugoslav state under the Karađorđević dynasty.

On 20 October 1918 Nicholas I came out for a Yugoslav confederation with Montenegro as an equal member. The French, however, did not allow him to return to the country.

The end of the war and the reckoning

At the end of October 1918 Serbian troops entered Montenegro, and at the beginning of November the last Austro-Hungarian units left the country. On 4 November the Italian navy occupied Bar (Antivari). The supporters of unconditional union, the “Whites”, won a majority in the elections to the assembly, and on 26 November the Great National Assembly at Podgorica deposed the king and proclaimed the union of Montenegro with Serbia.

A few days later Montenegro became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The king’s supporters, the “Greens”, took up arms at the beginning of January 1919, but their uprising failed. At the Paris Peace Conference Montenegro was granted a representative, but its seat at the table remained empty. Montenegro’s losses cannot be established precisely, because after the defeat most of its soldiers were not taken prisoner but simply went home.