Italians occupy Scutari

On 31 October 1918 Italian troops entered Scutari, the chief town of northern Albania, which had been in Austro-Hungarian hands since January 1916. They were not the first to arrive, however. According to a report of the Italian supreme command, quoted on 5 November by the foreign minister Sidney Sonnino in a dispatch to the ambassador in Paris, a Yugoslav regiment under the Serbian Colonel Ristić had already occupied the new part of the town on 30 October. The Austrians were still holding out in the old town at the time and blew up the bridge over the Buna. On 31 October the Italians fought their way into old Scutari and planted the Italian flag on the castle overlooking the town. The British chronology of the war records the recapture of Scutari by the Italians under that date. Some Italian studies state that on 31 October the troops only reached the outskirts of the town, shelled the fortifications on Mount Tarabosh, and entered Scutari on 1 November.

The Serbs came from the east. After Bulgaria left the war, the Serbian command sent a detachment under Colonel Dragutin Milutinović, called the Scutari troops, through northern Albania to liberate Montenegro. For Belgrade, however, Scutari also had political significance. Serbia and Montenegro had long wanted the town, and in 1913 and 1915 it had been occupied by the Montenegrins.

The meeting of the allies in Scutari did not go smoothly. According to the Italian report, the Serbian colonel would not allow the Italian flag to be hoisted on the town hall next to the Albanian and Serbian ones, and he told the commander of the Italian XVI Corps, General Giacinto Ferrero, that he had orders to take command in Scutari in the name of Serbia. Ferrero replied that without orders from his superiors he could not recognise a Serbian occupation of a town that the powers had assigned to Albania. Under the arrangements the Italians invoked, northern Albania was to be occupied by Italian troops, and Scutari itself by a joint Italian, French and British garrison, without the Serbs. On 5 November Sonnino complained to the French foreign minister, Stéphen Pichon, that the presence of the Serbs in Scutari violated the agreements, and Pichon agreed with him.

The dispute foreshadowed the rivalry between Italy and the new Yugoslav state for influence in Albania and on the Adriatic. According to a report passed to the Italians a few days later, General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey ordered the Serbs to withdraw from Scutari and rejoin the main forces in the east. Soon Scutari came under an inter-Allied occupation, in which the French played the main role alongside the Italians. Meanwhile the Austro-Hungarian Army Group Albania was retreating through Montenegro to Cattaro. A few days later, after the Armistice of Villa Giusti, the fighting in Albania came to an end.