Entente opposes intervention in Albania

A British chronology of the war records under 2 February 1915 that the Entente powers sent the governments of Greece, Serbia and Montenegro a message advising them against intervention in Albania. We have not been able to find the text of this document or to establish whether it was a joint note or separate representations by the ministers in Athens, Niš and Cetinje. It is known, however, why London, Paris and Petrograd wanted to restrain their Balkan allies.

A country without government

Since the departure of Prince Wilhelm of Wied in September 1914, Albania had been a state in name only. In Durrës Essad Pasha Toptani ruled, backed with money and arms from Serbia, but his authority did not reach far beyond the town. The central part of the country was held by Muslim insurgents, hostile both to Essad and to the Serbs. In the south, in Northern Epirus, Greek troops had been stationed since the end of October, and in December the Italians landed at Vlorë.

Albania’s neighbours had their own plans for it. The Greeks regarded Northern Epirus, with its Greek population, as their own land. Montenegro had not reconciled itself to the loss of Shkodër, which its troops had taken in 1913 and had been forced to give up under pressure from the great powers. Serbia wanted a friendly government in Albania and a route to the Adriatic, and above all quiet on its border. Armed bands, supplied with weapons and money by the Central Powers, were making incursions from the Albanian mountains into Serbian Kosovo and Macedonia. Essad Pasha had several times asked Belgrade for military help against the insurgents, and the Serbian government was preparing to intervene.

Why the Entente objected

According to Serbian studies, the Allied diplomats warned the government of Prime Minister Nikola Pašić that an entry into Albania would be badly received. The Entente had at least two reasons. The first was the war with Austria-Hungary. The Serbian army, exhausted by its victorious but costly autumn campaign and decimated by typhus, was to guard the border on the Sava and the Danube, not scatter its forces in the Albanian wilds. For the same reason the Entente preferred that Greece send troops to help Serbia rather than occupy more Albanian territory.

The second reason was Italy. The still neutral kingdom regarded Albania and the Adriatic coast as its sphere of interest, and its foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, was just then negotiating the terms of a possible entry into the war. Any occupation of Albanian territory by Serbs, Montenegrins or Greeks could alienate Rome and make it harder to win it over to the Entente. Formally Albania remained a neutral state whose independence the great powers had recognised in 1913.

No lasting effect

The Entente’s warning postponed intervention but did not prevent it. In the secret Treaty of London of April 1915 the Entente promised Italy Vlorë and a protectorate over central Albania, and allowed Serbia, Montenegro and Greece to count on its remaining parts. When the insurgents hemmed Essad in at Durrës, Serbia waited no longer. At the beginning of June 1915 its troops entered Albania from several directions and routed the insurgents. In the same month the Montenegrins entered Shkodër. Only a few months later, in the winter of 1915, the defeated Serbian army was retreating through the Albanian mountains.