King Nicholas's manifesto

On 20 October 1918 at Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, where he was living in exile, King Nicholas I of Montenegro signed an appeal “To the Yugoslavs”. In it he declared that he wished Montenegro to become part of Yugoslavia, but in the form of a confederation in which each would retain its rights. The document is dated 7 October according to the Julian calendar, which Montenegro still used, that is 20 October in the Gregorian calendar. The next day it was printed by the government daily Glas Crnogorca. The British chronology of the war records the manifesto under 26 October, probably by the date on which the Allied press reported it.

The King wrote the appeal under the impression of President Wilson’s reply to the Austro-Hungarian request for an armistice. He began by saying that when he learned “today” of the “manly and just” reply of the President of the United States, he was moved to joy at seeing the right of the Yugoslavs to freedom and unification proclaimed. He recalled that when declaring war on Austria in 1914 he had announced that he was taking up the sword for the unification of the Yugoslavs. He then declared that he wished, “and I am convinced that my whole faithful people in Montenegro wishes the same”, that Montenegro should enter the Yugoslav community with honour. The most important sentence, however, concerned the form of the state. The King wanted the Yugoslavs to organise themselves “into a Yugoslav confederation in which each will retain his rights, his faith, laws and customs and in which no one will be able to impose precedence”. The appeal also greeted the reviving independence of the Czechoslovaks and “the much-suffering Poles”, and ended with cheers for Wilson and the Allies. Beside the King’s signature were those of the ministers of his government in exile, headed by the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evgenije Popović.

The manifesto was an attempt to save the throne of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty. Since early 1916, when after the fall of his country he had left for Italy and then France, Nicholas I had been losing the Allies’ confidence. Serbia accused him of a secret understanding with Austria. His former Prime Minister Andrija Radović, who had urged him in vain to unite with Serbia, founded in 1917 the Montenegrin Committee for National Unification, financed by the Serbian government. In the Corfu Declaration the Serbs and the Yugoslav Committee drew up a plan for a common kingdom under the Karađorđević sceptre without asking Montenegro’s opinion. Among the great powers the King was now supported only by Italy, ruled by his son-in-law Victor Emmanuel III, who was hostile to a strong Yugoslav state on the Adriatic. The King presented the idea of a confederation in which Montenegro would be an equal member as a Yugoslav one, but to his opponents it was a way of preserving a separate state and the dynasty.

The appeal did not change the course of events. At the end of October units of the Serbian army under Colonel Dragutin Milutinović entered Montenegro, and at Berane an executive committee was set up to prepare unification with Serbia. On 26 November the Great National Assembly it convened in Podgorica deposed Nicholas I and proclaimed the union of Montenegro with Serbia, and a few days later both became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The King did not recognise these decisions. He never returned to his country and died in exile at Antibes in 1921.