Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (107 page)

Following the Corfu Declaration, Radović surfaced in Switzerland, where he established the Central Montenegrin Committee of National Reunification. The extent of his support cannot be gauged, but one should note that the nation which he aimed to reunite was not Montenegro; it was the nation of all Serbs wherever they lived. For practical purposes, he was campaigning against Montenegro’s restoration.

Inside Montenegro, therefore, confusion reigned. Contact with the exiled king had virtually been lost. There was no Montenegrin radio service, the telephones were controlled by the Austrians, and the illiterate majority of the population could not make sense of the few foreign newspapers that crept past the censors. The Yugoslav project was left in the hands of distant outsiders. There can be little doubt that the Montenegrins, like most Europeans, were expecting change. They knew that King Nikola’s chief patron, the Russian tsar, had been overthrown, and that parts of his Empire, like Ukraine, had broken away. But for the most part they were waiting patiently for the king to return and for the international situation to stabilize.

The last fortnight of the war caused the greatest confusion of all. On 28 October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the Emperor Charles withdrew from government, and the Austrian occupation forces pulled out from Montenegro. In all the great cities of the dying Empire – in Vienna and Budapest, in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Prague, Lemberg and Sarajevo – national committees sprang up to demand the formation of new states. Then, on 4 November, revolution broke out in Berlin. The Kaiser abdicated, German forces on the Western Front retreated, and the Central Powers, which had appeared invincible only six months earlier, cracked. The Western Allies, ‘who were not expecting victory when it came’,
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emerged triumphant. They dictated the terms of the Armistice of 11 November, and announced that a general Peace Conference would convene in Paris on 31 January. Montenegrins were not the only ones to wonder what the fast-moving events would bring.

At the very end of the Great War, in the interval between the Armistice and the start of the Peace Conference, Montenegro was hit by the cruellest of blows. The war had apparently been won. The country was freeing itself from the Central Powers. As a member of the victorious Allies, it was looking forward to receiving its due rewards. Yet a completely different scenario arose. A hastily convened meeting of a ‘Grand National Assembly’ calling itself the
Skupština
voted in favour of union with the nascent Yugoslav kingdom. Executive decisions passed immediately to Belgrade. King Nikola lost his throne. His kingdom, a Serbian Sparta only eight years old, was put out on the mountainside like a Spartan child, and left to die in its infancy. It was the only Allied state to disappear from the map.

The sequence of events whereby Montenegro lost its statehood deserves closer examination. After all, the standard procedure for an occupied Allied country would have seen the state and its territory restored as soon as victory was assured. Belgium, for example, which had been occupied by Germany between 1914 and 1918, was fully restored to the king of the Belgians and his government at the end of hostilities. Albert I made his triumphal re-entry into Brussels on 22 November 1918, two days before the ‘Grand National Assembly’ of Montenegro convened. Allied declarations had consistently bracketed Montenegro with Belgium and Serbia as countries whose restoration was guaranteed. What in 1918 made Montenegro different?

The collapse of Austria-Hungary in October 1918 left a vacuum in the territories which the Royal and Imperial Army had occupied. In Montenegro, no provision was made for an orderly transfer of power. The Montenegrin army had no time to reconstitute itself. After the capitulation of January 1916, some of its units had handed in their arms to the Austrians and disbanded; others had left the country and were serving under Serbian command. All the Balkan allies were subordinated in theory to the French General Franchet d’Espérey in distant Salonika; the western part of the Balkan theatre had been entrusted to his deputy, General Venel. Yet little direct control could be exercised and few military resources could be spared for the Montenegrin backwater. The coastal region was assigned to the French or to British and Italian units brought in by sea. The mountainous interior was assigned to the Serbian army, the only substantial ground force in the region, while the eastern border districts were infiltrated by Serbian ‘irregulars’. In short, in the weeks both before and after the Armistice, no coherent Montenegrin formation was on hand to defend Montenegro’s interests.
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The standing of the Montenegrin monarchy was definitely diminished. King Nikola’s wartime actions had provoked a wave of criticism. Some denounced him for treating with the enemy, others for deserting his country or betraying the Serbs, and a few for ‘behaving like a despot’ or for living well off Allied subsidies. He had quarrelled with some of the politicians, and calls for his abdication had emanated from his own entourage.
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Yet there had been no concerted campaign in the country to remove him, still less to abolish the institution of monarchy; a deal with the king’s Serbian relatives was still on the cards. A measure of qualified sympathy for the king can be found in an unexpected source. Milovan Djilas (1911–95), later one of Tito’s comrades and prisoners, and himself a Montenegrin, remembered the episode from his childhood. ‘There had actually been no betrayal,’ he wrote. ‘What could [the king] have done?… [He] did not betray the Serbs. If he betrayed anything – and he did – it was the Montenegrin Army and the Montenegrin state.’
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As for relations between the House of Petrović-Njegoš and the House of Karadjeordjević, little was known in public. The kings of Montenegro and Serbia were both old men; both were looking to the younger generation; both had been forced into exile, Nikola in Antibes, Petar in Corfu; and both hoped for co-ordinated policy. Crown Prince Aleksandar of Serbia, Nikola’s grandson, was a key figure; he was already the acting Serbian regent, and was obviously ambitious. In London in 1915, he had been the first person ever to talk about ‘our Yugoslav people’
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– though such sentiments did not necessarily indicate ill will to his grandfather. A highly impractical scheme floated by Radović foresaw the Montenegrin and Serbian dynasties reigning over Yugoslavia jointly, with a Petrović and a Karadjeordjević taking turns to mount the throne. Nobody took the idea seriously.

Montenegro’s isolation was increased by tensions in neighbouring Albania, which was the subject of acute international disagreements. The Serbian army had laid waste to large parts of northern Albania in late 1918, devastating over 150 villages in the Drin valley. The depredations were encouraged by the French, who wanted post-war Serbia to be strong and were hatching a plot to partition Albania. In order to undermine a fragile government in Tirana, an insurrection was then fomented among the Catholic Mirdite clan, which was to declare its mountainous retreat to be an independent republic. Far away in Paris, a French-dominated committee announced that Albania was to be partitioned (according to the provisions of the Treaty of London), while the United States recognized Albanian independence and received an Albanian ambassador to Washington. This complicated dispute distracted attention from developments elsewhere.

Inside Montenegro, two opposing political camps were forming but with no established forum in which to compete. The pan-Serbian camp inspired by Radović was pressing both for unification with Serbia and for the creation of a Yugoslav state under Belgrade’s leadership. It assumed that Montenegro’s pre-war constitution had lapsed, and sought to achieve its end by imposing its own unilateral procedures: a classic case of self-styled democrats impatient of democratic methods. The rival royalist camp aimed to restore the Kingdom of Montenegro first and to address the Yugoslav issue later. Its sympathizers, though badly organized, probably represented majority opinion; they certainly reflected the stated intentions of the Allied Powers.

It is worth quoting Clause 11 of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points of April 1917, which had gained the adherence of both Britain and France, and which was widely seen to embody the guidelines of Allied policy. ‘Romania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated,’ it read, ‘occupied territory restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel.’ Further: ‘International guarantees should be entered upon for the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states.’
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From this, it is clear that the Allied leaders intended to restore the statehood of all their Balkan allies and to secure it by treaty.

In the circumstances of November 1918, however, there was no question of ‘friendly counsel’ or a level political playing field. The Serbian army, which had marched into the void left by the Austrians, gave its backing to the pan-Serbian group in Montenegro, which immediately set up a so-called National Council, together with a Provisional Executive Committee to organize elections to a ‘Grand National Assembly’. The plan was masterminded by Radović. The country’s political class as a whole were given no chance to compete on equal terms. The king and government were still abroad; they commanded no independent troops and few officials; and the effective influence of their supporters outside Cetinje was minimal.
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From his French exile, King Nikola issued a decree on 12 November, the day after the Armistice, for convening the Montenegrin parliament or
Skupština
; but his loyal subjects had no way of implementing it.

So far, no fundamental disagreement had arisen over the joint Yugoslav project. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians and Montenegrins had all felt the weight of Austrian rule or occupation, and all saw the benefits of future co-operation. A Yugoslav state suited the purposes of the Western Allies, who saw it as a desirable replacement for Austrian influence, and the smaller nations were enthusiastic. King Nikola himself had expressed his willingness to join. He was thinking, no doubt, of a federal Yugoslav state modelled on the German Empire, in which several reigning monarchs had retained their separate crowns. Here was an issue on which ‘friendly counsel’ was certainly needed.

Montenegrins, therefore, had many worries. It was not clear how Montenegro’s territory was to be fully restored, or how the Yugoslav project might be realized. Disagreements were always in the air; pessimists might have despaired. Yet it was a great relief to hear that the Armistice had been declared, and a comfort that Montenegro was accepted as one of the victorious allies. In such circumstances, small nations are naturally inclined to put their faith in the benevolence of the Great Powers; Montenegro, it appeared, was not in so sorry a pass as Hungary or Bulgaria, which had backed the wrong side.

The Serbs, in contrast, would have spotted several major obstacles from the start. Time, for them, was of the essence. If they were to realize their dream of a state in which Serbia would play the same dominant role as Prussia played in Germany, they had to act quickly. In particular, they had to forestall their principal partners and rivals, the Croats, who were still extricating themselves from the old Austro-Hungarian institutional structures. The outcome of the Peace Conference and its deliberations was uncertain. The Serbian delegation would be in a far stronger position if preliminary arrangements to Serbia’s liking were put in place in advance.
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The Serbs were equally concerned about the future of their monarchy. One might have expected the monarchists of Serbia and Montenegro to act in harmony, if only to keep the republicans at bay. After all, King Petar I of Serbia was King Nikola’s son-in-law, had lived in Cetinje and shared a very similar background. He, too, had been educated in France; he was a graduate of the military academy at Saint-Cyr, and had served (as ‘Pierre Kara’) as a French officer during the Franco-Prussian War. The two monarchs were of the same age and of the same outlook and had a very great deal in common. But there lay the problem. There were generals and courtiers in Belgrade who regarded the House of Petrović-Njegoš as a dangerous challenger. They had brought King Petar to the throne in 1903 through a murderous military
coup d’état
, and were fearful of something similar happening again. Moreover, their king was sick, and had ceded his prerogatives to his Montenegrin-born son. In the race for the throne of Yugoslavia – there were no kings in Slovenia or Croatia – the Montenegrin dynasty was the Serbians’ only serious competitor.

In addition, Serbia was a landlocked country. There were four possible directions in which her promised ‘access to the sea’ could be projected: over Croatian territory to the north-west, over Albanian territory to the south-west, over Greek territory to the south, or directly over Montenegro. Greece and Croatia were strong enough to resist. Albania was in turmoil. Montenegro offered the easiest target.

At the turn of October 1918 the stalled Yugoslav project had suddenly come to life. Another National Committee appeared in Croatian Zagreb on 29 October, announcing the creation without warning of a ‘State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs’. Its president, Dr Anton Korošec, was a Slovene who had been active in the imperial
Reichsrat
in Vienna, and its vice-presidents were a Croat and a Serb from Croatia. Its putative territory was made up exclusively of lands from the dying Habsburg Empire – the Serbs in its title referring to inhabitants of Bosnia and Hercegovina, not of Serbia or Montenegro. Nonetheless its appearance opened up opportunities which the exiled government of Serbia could not ignore. Nikola Pašić immediately saw the chance of building a ‘Greater Serbia’ within a still larger Yugoslavia, and he sought a swift encounter with the politicians from Zagreb. Korošec was equally eager to do business with Pašić, because conflict was looming with Italy over the Adriatic littoral from Trieste to Dubrovnik. (In a last act of Austro-Hungarian desperation, Korošec had been handed control of the entire Royal and Imperial Fleet.)