Serbian government in Scutari

The British chronology of the war records under 3 December 1915 that the Serbian government and headquarters began to operate in Scutari in northern Albania. The date does not mark the day of arrival. According to the Serbian historian Andrej Mitrović, Prime Minister Nikola Pašić and the ministers, who had set out from Prizren on 24 November, reached Scutari four days later. The heir to the throne, Prince Regent Alexander, crossed the mountains even faster. The staff of the high command moved much more slowly, because it was carrying the sick Vojvoda Radomir Putnik in a litter. According to Mitrović and Putnik’s Serbian biographers it reached the town on 6 December, and according to the Austrian official history on 7 December. At the beginning of December Scutari was thus in effect the temporary seat of the authorities of a state whose entire territory had already been occupied by the enemy.

In a town held by Montenegro

Scutari was not a Serbian town. It belonged to Albania, but since June 1915 it had been occupied by the Montenegrins, and it was governed in the name of King Nicholas I by Vojvoda Božo Petrović-Njegoš. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith, who crossed the mountains from Prizren to Scutari, wrote that the Montenegrin authorities had learned of the Serbian retreat into Albania only a day or two earlier and had not had time to prepare. In any case, Montenegro itself had for months been short of food, because Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats were intercepting the ships carrying maize to its port of Bar.

Meanwhile thousands of people were pouring into the town, on one side over the mountains from Prizren, on the other along the Montenegrin road through Peć and Andrijevica. Gordon-Smith described soldiers in rags and in sandals caked with mud, women in men’s clothes, starving oxen and horses that could barely stay on their feet. All the barracks and private houses were quickly taken, and after a few days bread ran out. The inhabitants, Albanians and Turks, watched it all in silence and with growing resentment. Every day before noon an Austrian aeroplane appeared over Scutari and dropped bombs on the barracks and the area around the Italian consulate. On the first day there were killed and wounded. Gordon-Smith believed that the raids, the first on the town since the beginning of the war, were meant to turn the inhabitants against the Serbs.

Rescue only from the Allies

The Serbian government had nothing with which to feed either the army or the refugees. As early as 20 November Pašić had asked the Allies to deliver food and supplies to the Adriatic ports. When the first columns reached Scutari, however, they found neither ships nor stores there. The government set up a special committee to buy and distribute food, and the army started bakeries, but there was still too little bread. Soon after the Serbs came the British Adriatic Mission, whose task was to feed, equip and rebuild the Serbian army in Albania. According to Gordon-Smith, Italy stood in the way, claiming that it could not guarantee the safety of transports across the Adriatic. The Austro-Hungarian fleet from Kotor did indeed threaten ships in the small Albanian ports, and the port nearest Scutari, San Giovanni di Medua, was particularly exposed.

On its arrival the staff began to gather the shattered army. According to Gordon-Smith the soul of this work was one of Putnik’s closest associates, Colonel Živko Pavlović. The soldiers were quartered in barracks and, when these filled up, in camps on the hills behind the town. Contact was also made with the units that had crossed through Debar to Elbasan, and they were concentrated around Elbasan, Tirana and Kavajë. The main forces of the army, marching through Montenegro, began to reach Scutari only in the middle of December.

Putnik’s departure

On 7 December, the day after his arrival, Putnik reported to Pašić on the state of the army. According to his Serbian biographer Savo Skoko, he advised that if the army was to leave Albania, it would be best to ship it to Salonika to join the Allies. He himself was at the end of his strength and asked for several months’ leave to restore his health. The Regent agreed the same day, and on 8 December the vojvoda was relieved of his post as chief of staff of the high command. General Petar Bojović was appointed in his place, according to some sources as early as 8 December, according to others only in January 1916. Putnik left Scutari at the end of December and at the beginning of January 1916 sailed for Italy. The Serbian government moved from Scutari to Brindisi in the middle of January 1916, when Austria-Hungary was already occupying Montenegro, and then settled on Corfu.