French occupy Corfu

On the evening of 11 January 1916 a French warship landed a detachment of soldiers on Corfu. That is how the Italian Stefani agency reported it, and the date of 11 January is also given by the British chronology of the war, The Times History of the War and American yearbooks of the period. Some later studies give 12 January, which may be because the press reported the landing a day later. The day before, the Entente ministers in Athens had notified the Greek government that the island would receive the remnants of the Serbian army from Albania. The French were to prepare it for the arrival of tens of thousands of starving and sick men.

A flag over the Achilleion

According to a Reuters dispatch from Athens, the French detachment had landed on the island for a “temporary occupation”, and a dozen or so ships were cruising around Corfu. French soldiers occupied the Achilleion, the palace built for Empress Elisabeth, which had belonged to Emperor Wilhelm II since 1907, and hoisted the French flag over it. In Germany this was regarded as an insult. The press even reported that the Kaiser had sent a personal protest to the King of Greece, his brother-in-law, although this report was not confirmed. The British official naval history states that Corfu was occupied by a French naval detachment and that the island became a base for the French fleet at the entrance to the Adriatic.

The French behaved cautiously towards the inhabitants. The correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle wrote from Corfu on 16 January that their presence could not be called an occupation in the military sense. Civilian life went on as before, and the Greek officials remained at their posts. The French did, however, arrest the two most active members of the local German intelligence network. The German consul hid at the other end of the island, while the Austrian one shut himself up in his consulate and hung out his flag on it, as if he wanted to provoke an incident. The French officer pretended not to see it. A dozen or so days earlier General Sarrail had ordered the arrest of the Central Powers’ consuls in Salonika. The allies suspected that German and Austrian submarines were taking on supplies off the coasts of Corfu and nearby Epirus, and this too was given as a reason for occupying the island. At the end of December the French had occupied, for similar reasons, the islet of Kastellorizo off the coast of Asia Minor.

Preparations

Corfu then had about 100,000 inhabitants and could not feed an army. According to Gordon Gordon-Smith, who knew the matter from the Serbian side, the preparations were directed by General Piarron de Mondésir, head of the French mission charged with rebuilding the Serbian army, the commander of the French navy on the island and the French diplomatic representative. A naval base was set up to land the soldiers and supplies, and a land base to feed and quarter them. Flour was shipped from France, and engineers built field bakeries, because the bread from the local ovens could not be enough.

Greece did not consent to the occupation of the island, and Austria-Hungary protested that the allies were violating the treaties of 1863 and 1864 guaranteeing the neutrality of Corfu. After a few days the first Serbs began to arrive on the island. The French remained on Corfu until the end of the war, and for more than two years the island became the seat of the Serbian government.