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Updated: August 24, 2024
I was summoned to the palace, and received by the whole royal family, who were very gay, and did not conceal the fact that they expected and wanted war, and bade me go to Podgoritza, where the Queen's cousin, General Yamko Vukotitch, was in command of affairs. The details of the insurrection I have told in my book, The Struggle for Scutari.
Podgoritza I found greatly changed. The outer world had rushed in on it. The tobacco factory dominated the town. "God willing, we shall burn it down!" said the populace cheerfully. True, it employed many hands, but they complained the pay was low, though they admitted that the girls had never earned anything before. In truth, regular work was a new thing in Montenegro.
My preconceived opinions about political conditions in Montenegro were largely based on the knowledge that shortly after the signing of the Armistice a Montenegrin National Assembly, so called, had met at Podgoritza, and, after declaring itself in favor of the deposition of King Nicholas and the Petrovitch dynasty, which has ruled in Montenegro since William of Orange sat on the throne of England, voted for the union of Montenegro with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
The strength of its purely Albanian nature is shown by the fact that whereas in Nikshitch, Podgoritza, and Spuzh the Moslems, Serbs and Albanians, were stripped of all their property and expelled wholesale to starve as very many did the Montenegrins did not dare interfere with the large and hostile population of Dulcigno and have in no way succeeded in Slavizing it: The Dulcigniotes still ask for re-union with Albania.
Baron de Kruyff, Dutch correspondent and head of the Foreign Journalists Society which visited Podgoritza in 1911, told me that when he left Montenegro in June King Nikola, on hearing he was going to Sofia, asked him to convey a letter thither, addressed to a private individual, and to open it on crossing the frontier.
"But what mattresses?" replied the harbour-master. "I was sent to get mattresses," said the captain, "and here I wait till they come." This was a nuisance, nobody had said anything about the mattresses. "I shan't go till to-morrow anyhow," said the skipper. "I think we'd all better go back to Podgoritza and come again to-morrow," said the man in charge. "We don't move from here," said Jo, firmly.
I delighted the heart of the bimbashi by a baksheesh of half a napoleon, which so astonished him that he hardly knew how to express himself, after all his bitter words and unkind intentions. I was later convinced that if the Turkish authorities had known who I was, their old enemy in Crete, we should not have come out alive from Podgoritza.
We had no further adventure on the road, and early in the afternoon arrived at Podgoritza, an ancient Servian city, much dilapidated and very picturesque, taking lodgings at an inn kept by a Christian, a rather creditable establishment but absolutely empty of guests.
His force of 2500 men was then blockading the little fortress of Medun, a remotely detached item of the defensive system of Podgoritza, and on the next day he set out for his post.
We rolled on to Podgoritza, arriving at two o'clock in a steady downpour. Podgoritza seemed unaware of our arrival. The streets were empty, and the Prefect's offices were tenanted only by the porter, a Turk, who remarked that the Prefect was taking his siesta, and seemed to think that was the end of it.
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