The Italians occupy Berat

On 9 July 1918 Italian troops entered Berat without a fight. An old town on the river Osum, it was, according to the British official history (Falls), the second town of southern Albania after Elbasan. This date is given consistently by the Austrian official history and by Italian accounts. The British chronology of the war records the capture of Berat a day later, under 10 July. Berat was the seat of the headquarters of an Austro-Hungarian brigade and, until 8 July, also of the staff of the 47th Infantry Division. Since February 1916, when Albanians allied with the Austrians had taken it, it had been one of the main centres of the Austrian occupation in the south of the country.

The town was taken by the Italians, not the French. It was entered by the Tanaro infantry brigade, which in the offensive launched on 6 July had been attacking in the centre of the front, from the Cafa Glavs pass. On the first day it met the strongest defence there, because the Austrians had long expected the main blow to come precisely in the direction of Berat. The issue was decided elsewhere, however. After the front on the lower Vjosa was broken on 7 July, the XIX Corps command ordered the whole line to fall back, and the weak, scattered battalions lost contact with one another. Italian accounts say that on 8 July General Rossi’s infantry took the Austrian fortifications on the heights of Mallakastër, and on 9 July the general entered Berat with Italian soldiers and Albanian volunteers. The Austrian official history says briefly that the Tanaro Brigade reached Berat without any fighting at all. The same day another Italian brigade took Fier, and the cavalry reached the bridges over the Seman, which the Austrians had blown up.

That day the XIX Corps staff ordered a withdrawal to a new line a dozen or so kilometres north of Berat and Fier. On the eastern wing, in the valley of the Devoll, the Austrian rearguards fell back under pressure from French columns. According to Italian accounts, in three days of fighting the Italians took nearly 2,000 prisoners and much booty at small cost to themselves. The Austrians, for their part, feared that the Italians would land troops on the coast near Durrës, and shifted forces to their western wing.

By the evening of 10 July almost all the Austrian units had reached the new line. Since the commander of XIX Corps, General Ludwig Können-Horák, was seriously ill, Emperor Charles I that day appointed Colonel-General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin commander of the forces in Albania; he reached the headquarters in Tirana on 13 July.

The victors, however, faced a more difficult enemy than the Austrians. The coastal plain and the valleys of the Seman and the Osum were among the most malarial areas of Albania. While the soldiers stayed in camps they held up somehow, but on the march, sleeping in the open, often in marshes, they went down with malaria in large numbers. The Italians held Berat until the end of August. After Pflanzer-Baltin’s counter-offensive the Austrians recaptured the town on 25 August, while the British chronology records this under 26 August.