Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (106 page)

In the summer of 1911 an American reporter, who was seeking a scoop on the current Albanian crisis but had heard of King Nikola’s love for poetry and plays, obtained an interview at the ‘Biljarda House’ by announcing that he was a New York literary critic. Fighting had flared on the nearby frontier, but ‘Nikita’ was not going to miss an opportunity to discuss literature. ‘There is no vanity so deep’, the reporter remarked, ‘as that of authorship’:

The King soon joined me – a fine, old, sturdy gentleman turned seventy, with rugged features, a coarse mouth, and a good forehead. A heavy moustache lent picturesqueness to a massive face, lit up by shrewd and rather kindly eyes… Nikita seemed oblivious of his Ministers… He plunged into literature, [speaking] in faultless French – the French of a professor… He touched on Lamartine, and eulogised Chateaubriand. From poetry we passed on to drama.

‘Yes,’ said the King, ‘I have written plays myself. The best known, produced in the Royal Theatre here, is a drama called the “Empress of the Balkans”. The heroine was suggested by my wife.’

I knew nothing of the ‘Empress’, but it seemed courteous to inquire if the King would not like to have the work performed in France or England or America. The question seemed to change Nikita instantly from the ruler of a brave and restless land into an author… He gave me a copy of his play in Montenegrin (which resembles Serb or Russian). He also favoured me with his autographed photograph.

Being now in high good spirits, he obliged me quite spontaneously with his opinion on the impending crisis. To my distress, I found that he had resolved to avoid war, for the time, and to drop the Albanian cause.
³⁴

The Balkan Wars – wars of liberation from the Ottoman Empire, complicated by conflicts between the liberated for the spoils – erupted the very next year notwithstanding, and Montenegro found itself in a cauldron of swirling conflicts in which stronger parties always held the initiative. King Nikola plunged into the fray alongside Serbia. He still had his lyrical foreign admirers:

He speaks as straight as his rifle’s shot,

As straight as a thrusting blade,

Waiting the deed that shall trouble the truce

His savage guns have made…

Stern old King of the stark black hills,

Where the fierce lean eagles breed,

Your speech rings true as your good sword rings –

And you are a king indeed!
³⁵

The First Balkan War of 1912, in which several states participated against the Ottomans and Montenegro fired the first shot, ended the age-old dominance of the Ottoman Empire. The Second Balkan War of 1913, in which 10,000 Montenegrin troops were sent to the Bulgarian Front, ended with Montenegro winning a common border with Serbia. But it also led to disputes with the Great Powers. King Nikola had captured the Albanian port of Shkoder (Scutari) in defiance of Western advice, only pulling out after vociferous Austrian protests.
³⁶
Vienna viewed Montenegro as a Russian surrogate.

As if on cue, as soon as peace was declared, King Nikola’s play,
Balkanska Carica
, was published in London in an English translation. A signed portrait of the author faced the title page:

THE EMPRESS OF THE BALKANS: A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS

BY NICHOLAS I PETROVITCH-NIEGOSH,

KING OF MONTENEGRO

Adapted from the Servian…

London

(Eveleigh Nash)

1913

The text was preceded by a detailed ‘Description of the Characters’, one or two quite recognizable:

PRINCE EEVAN, the Ruler of Montenegro, age 70 – a majestic old man, a warrior and a stern ruler, but kind-hearted.

PRINCE GEORGE
, the Heir-Apparent, age 26 – young and strong, very polite and kind, and of a quiet disposition.

PRINCE STANKO
, the second son, age 24 – strong and very ambitious: vigorous, fearless and brave, but of changeable moods, easy to persuade.

VOIVODA DEHAN
, age 65 – old, but bears his age well, being full of life: a great hero and warrior, yet not vain.

VOIVIDA PERUN
, Prince Eevan’s guest, age 60.

DANITZA
, Perun’s daughter, aged 20 – a firm character and very patriotic: in love with Stanko: full of pluck, very resolute, and of pleasant manners.

IBRAHIM AGA
, Envoy of the Sultan, aged 50 – slight and medium height, dark yellowish complexion, and cunning looking, full of compliments and a very deceitful character.
³⁷

The time of the action is given as ‘the end of the Fifteenth Century’. The American, who had brought the original text to London, thought that the royal drama lacked ‘imaginative charm’. ‘It did not make me very anxious to adapt the play for Broadway,’ he wrote. ‘It had been written in fair verse, under the influence of Schiller, [but] had no “punch”… It might have proved the germ of a good musical comedy.’
³⁸
Unfortunately, musical comedy was the image which Europeans as well as Americans continued to have of Montenegro:

There was a whiff of the Middle Ages about King Nicholas: his insistence on leading his troops into battle, his dispensing of justice under an ancient tree, and the magnificent medals he awarded himself and his friends… His capital, Cetinje, was merely a large village, the Bank of Montenegro a small cottage, and the Grand Hotel a boarding-house… [The king’s] new palace was more like a German pension, with the royal children doing their homework in folk costume… and the King sitting on the front steps waiting for visitors. Franz Lehár used Montenegro as the model for
The Merry Widow
.
³⁹

Lehár’s operetta, first performed in Vienna in December 1905, was a popular sensation in the years before the Great War; between 1907 and 1910 it received nearly 800 performances in London alone. In the libretto, the scene of action is barely disguised as the Principality of ‘Pontevedro’, and its capital as Letigne. The Pontevedran ambassador is Baron Zeta, his first secretary – Count Danilo, and his assistant – Njegus. ‘Vilya’s Song’ is presented as an ‘old Pontevedran melody’:

Vilja, O Vilja! Du Waldmägdelein,

Fass’ mich und lass’ mich

Dein Trautliebster sein.

(‘Vilya, O Vilya, you forest maiden, / take me and let me / be your own truest love.’)
⁴⁰
If Europeans thought about Montenegro at all before the war, most of them would have done so in terms of Lehár’s happy romp.

Montenegro’s story is well illustrated on its early postage stamps. The first issue of the Montenegrin post office, from 1874, was inscribed exclusively in Cyrillic and shows the head of Prince Nikola. A commemorative issue in 1893 marked the 400th anniversary of Montenegro’s oldest surviving printed book, and another in 1896 the 200th anniversary of the hereditary state of the
vladikas
. In 1910 a coronation issue appeared, and was followed by a set of definitive designs which showed the king sporting traditional regal headdress and which proved to be the country’s last.
⁴¹

*

In August 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo took place within thirty miles of the Montenegrin frontier, and fighting was started by the Austrian attack on Serbia. The Montenegrins rushed to bolster Serbian resistance, declaring war against Austria, only to find themselves caught up in a long and bitter conflict. They also hoped, as the Serbs did, to obtain hefty slices of the Adriatic coast and of northern Albania; indeed they were formally promised important acquisitions, including Dubrovnik, during negotiations preceding the Treaty of London (1915) which brought Italy into the war on the Allied side. But the outcome of the fighting was less favourable. In 1916–17 the Serbian army was forced to retreat, conducting a long march over the mountains into Albania, and eventually taking refuge on the island of Corfu. As the Austrians surged forward, Montenegro was cast into intense distress.
⁴²
At the Battle of Mojkovac in January 1916, the Montenegrin army made great sacrifices to enable their Serbian allies to escape, but their own country fell into enemy hands, and King Nikola was persuaded to go into exile in France. He left his kingdom to a plight that was as ambiguous as it was perilous. After complicated negotiations, he reached an agreement with Vienna whereby the royal administration and the authority of the clans would be left in place under the overall control of an Austrian commander. These negotiations in their turn provoked not only the unintended capitulation of the Montenegrin army but also a bitter split within the Montenegrin government-in-exile. Andrija Radović, who had served a further spell as prime minister, parted company with the king permanently. The exiled monarch was rapidly losing control of his destiny.

In the remaining years of the war, as Austrian power faded, political ferment accelerated. One part of Montenegrin opinion was drawn to the ‘Yugoslav Idea’, the scheme whereby all the southern Slavs – Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Slovenes and Macedonians – would join together to form a common state. Another part gave more attention to the ‘Pan-Serbian Idea’, which proposed that the existing Kingdom of Serbia should be expanded to draw in all ethnic Serbs, including those living in Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia. Crucially, though the concept of a united Yugoslavia and that of a ‘Greater Serbia’ each had their enthusiasts, they were not necessarily incompatible. Such, indeed, was the view of Andrija Radović. Henceforth, Monternegro’s best-connected politician contacted Serbia’s exiled government and made common cause with them.

The wider diplomatic framework was also changing shape. In 1914 Montenegro’s interests had been protected by Russia, and by Russia’s ally, France. After the Treaty of London, however, Italy entered the equation and King Nikola shared Italian aspirations for territorial reconstruction in the Adriatic region, as did Radović. Then in 1917 the Bolshevik Revolution knocked Russia off the chessboard; the French duly drew closer to Serbia; and Italian plans for the Adriatic lost Western support. The Americans, in particular, were opposed to the Treaty of London, which they saw as a wicked example of the old secret diplomacy. King Nikola was losing his international friends.

According to one witness, ‘the Austrian occupation was not a brutal one’; at least in its first phase. ‘Not a child was killed, not a woman violated.’
⁴²
Yet matters soon deteriorated. The Montenegrin army’s capitulation spread dismay, and the exiled government gave contradictory explanations. For example, it issued a declaration stating that the agreement with the Austrians had only been made to gain time; that the King was urging resistance, and that nobody had the right to negotiate an armistice, let alone make peace.
⁴³
As a result, many of the king’s loyal subjects were unclear as to whether they should co-operate with the occupying forces or not. The Austrians ordered the internment of all adult males as a precaution. This sparked acts of defiance, which in turn provoked reprisals. Austrian soldiers were shot, and the offenders were hanged. Worst of all, the clans broke ranks. Montenegrins started to skirmish with Montenegrins. As the international conflict drew to a close, civil war was looming.

Thanks to the Austrian occupation and King Nikola’s exile, Montenegro played little part in the rapidly moving but ill co-0rdinated plans to create a united state of Yugoslavia. The principal protagonist in this venture was a Dalmatian Croat, Ante Trumbić (1864–1938), sometime mayor of Split, further up the Adriatic coast from Kotor. Trumbić’s Yugoslav Committee had been launched in London, working closely with the scholar R. W. Seton-Watson and his journal
New Europe
; but in 1917–18 it was engaged in its key task of finding suitable Serb partners in order to outflank the alternative project of a Greater Serbia. On 17 July 1917, in conjunction with the slippery Serb politician Nikola Pašić (1845–1926), sometime mayor of Belgrade, Trumbić signed the Corfu Declaration, which envisaged a future Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Declaration named the House of Karadjeordjević as the future ruling dynasty, and it made no mention of Montenegro. This was ominous. And Pašić proved himself to be thoroughly unreliable. Seton-Watson said of him: ‘The old man changes his mind every few hours, and cannot be trusted for five minutes with his word of honour or anything else.’
⁴⁴
Pašić was soon indicating that the Corfu Declaration had been a passing dalliance, and as late as July 1918 appeared to be paying attention exclusively to pan-Serbian aspirations. ‘Serbia’, he told Trumbić opaquely, ‘internationally represents our nation of three names.’