Serbian government leaves Prizren

The British chronology of the war records under 23 November 1915 that the Serbian government left Prizren and went to Scutari in northern Albania. This was the last stage of the wanderings of the authorities, who since the beginning of November, when they left Kraljevo, had been moving from town to town ahead of the advancing troops of the Central Powers. Sources differ on the exact date of departure. According to the Serbian historian Andrej Mitrović, the Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić, and his ministers set out on 24 November and reached Scutari after four days. The king, the heir to the throne and the high command left the town over the following days.

The last capital

Prizren, an old town at the foot of the Šar Mountains, had belonged to Serbia only since the First Balkan War of 1912. It lay right by the Albanian border, far from the railway. After leaving Niš, the government and the diplomatic corps had stopped at Kraljevo, then for a week at Raška, and then at Mitrovica, from where they travelled south by special train. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith, who accompanied Serbian headquarters, states that the commander-in-chief’s staff reached Prizren on 17 November. Here were the old King Peter I, the heir to the throne and commander-in-chief, Prince Regent Alexander, the government, and the chief of staff, the gravely ill Vojvoda Radomir Putnik. Thousands of refugees also streamed into the town, as did French airmen, Russian, British and Greek doctors, and sailors from the Allied naval gun batteries at Belgrade.

The situation was hopeless. The attempt to break through the Kačanik gorge towards Skopje and the French had failed, and on 16 November the Bulgarians took Prilep and closed the last road to Greece. On 23 November the Germans and Austrians entered Priština and Mitrovica. According to the Austrian official history, Putnik issued the order that same day for a retreat across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro. Other works, including the American historian Richard DiNardo, date the final order to 25 November. Gordon-Smith wrote that the decision was taken on 24 November. Capitulation was rejected. Serbia had undertaken to her allies not to conclude a separate peace, and as long as the king, the government and the army remained free, the state existed.

Three departures

According to Gordon-Smith, the departure was spread over three days. First Pašić and the ministers set out with a military escort, the next day the king with his court and the Royal Guard, and on the third day Putnik with his staff, numbering, with the escort, more than 300 men and more than 400 horses. In the courtyard of headquarters soldiers burned the archives and staff maps. The shortest but very difficult route was chosen, the one a Serbian column had taken to the Adriatic in 1912. It led from Prizren to Kula Ljums on the Drin, the last village on the Serbian side of the border, and then along mountain paths through Spas and Pukë to Scutari. Cars, lorries and guns that could not be taken across the mountains were thrown into ravines or burned.

Vojvoda Putnik, suffering from asthma, had hardly left his room for two years. He could not ride, so soldiers carried him in a litter. According to Mitrović, the staff set out on 26 November and reached Scutari on 6 December. The Austrian official history states that Putnik arrived there on 7 December in a litter and the king in a cart drawn by buffaloes. The British history of the war published by Nelson, on the other hand, describes how the 71-year-old king crossed the mountains incognito, on horseback and on a mule, with a few officers and soldiers. The government had assembled there earlier, and the British chronology records that on 3 December the Serbian government and headquarters began to operate in Scutari.

Part of the army and crowds of refugees set out from Prizren together with the authorities. The main Serbian forces were meanwhile retreating from Kosovo through Peć and Montenegro. Prizren was taken at the end of November by the Bulgarians, according to most sources on 29 November, and according to the British chronology on 1 December. The great retreat of the Serbian army across the mountains to the Adriatic was only beginning.