The 1914 Army of Montenegro
The postage stamp sized kingdom that fought for every hill in world war one
Montenegro began the war as the poorest equipped of all of the 1914 armies but never faltered, and often outfought its enemies.
The tiny mountain kingdom of Montenegro was the smallest of all combatants in the Great War. The population of the Balkan country was placed at some 500,000, many times less than any of the other 1914 powers. It only gained full independence from Ottoman Turkey in 1910. The country did not keep a standing army and thus had no peacetime strength, the only professional soldiers being a small volunteer training cadre. The country, however, lived on a war footing, with each man carrying a personally acquired Gasser heavy revolver at all times by order of the king. The army was set to be mobilized within a period of 48 hours through the use of flag and lamp signals being sent from hill to hill. Every reserve Montenegrin soldier was given his weapons and equipment to keep with him at home and be prepared to report at a moments notice with his own change of clothes and short term supply of foodstuffs.
The army was arguably the worst equipped army on the continent. It was perhaps the only army in Europe at the time that had no horse cavalry, due both to a shortage of horses and unsuitable terrain. The kingdom in 1914 had the very bad roads (almost impassible in many cases except in single file) in a region known for poor roads. There were only 26 miles of Railway in the entire country at the time. The army's rank and file were not issued uniforms, with men showing up on mobilization wearing a blend of civilian clothes accented with the occasional bandolier. Officers wore a uniform patterned on the tsarist Russian army of the time. Artillery, pulled by oxen was limited to about seventy pieces of a dozen different Italian and English makes dating to the 1850's. Montenegro was an ally of the Tsarist Russian Empire who donated most of the army's weapons. In 1902, 44,000 artillery short swords, 30,000 Berdan breech loading rifles, and 25,000 Smith & Wesson 44 caliber revolvers were given by the Russians to their Montenegrin allies. The fact that all of these weapons had been withdrawn by Imperial Russia as being obsolete was of little concern. A small shipment of more modern Mosin nagant bolt action rifles was sent just before the war.
Mobilized strength of the army was some 50,000 men organized in 59 battalions of light infantry and 16 independent forty man ‘scouting units’. The officer corps was made up of seven hundred officers, elected by local tribal lots and votes, etc for service in the army. No military academy existed at the time in Montenegro but some officer training was done in Serbia and Russia. The army was in particular lacking in the region of medicine with not a single military doctor, dentist, or veterinarian of any kind held on the rolls. The Commander-in-Chief was King Nikola and the army Chief of Staff was General Bozidar Jankovic
This force took the field on July 29, 1914 and met the Austrian army in combat. It was a seasoned group of mountain fighters, with the rank and file having just fought against the Ottoman Turks in the 1912-1913 Balkan wars. Albanian nationalists took advantage of the Austrian invasion and launched their own incursion into Montenegro in August 1914. This forced the Montenegrins to fight a war on both ends of their tiny kingdom at once. It is not known how many casualties the hardy fighters took, but what is known is that they gave their last full measure, being wiped out in battle against a combined German, Austrian and Bulgarian force in the closing months of 1915. On 25 Jan 1916 in a meeting at the ‘Lokanda’ hotel, still standing and now known as the ‘Grand Hotel’ in Cetinje, the last unit of Montenegro's army lead by Gen. Becic surrendered to Austrian General Von Weber after seeing 17 months of constant combat.
The country effectively was erased from the map of Europe until the 1990’s.
Source Armies of the Balkan States 1914-1918, complied by the General Staff of the Royal Army, published by the Imperial War museum 1996.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
