From the very beginning the Albanians adopted an attitude of opportunism. They did not lift a hand directly to help the Turks. Had they so desired, they might have made impossible the investment of Janina by the Greeks. But nowhere, save in Scutari, did the Albanians make a stubborn stand against the military operations of the Balkan allies. Almost from the beginning, they had understood that the Powers would not allow the partition of Albania. They knew that the retention of Janina was hopeless after the successes of the allies during October. But they received encouragement from both Austria-Hungary and Italy to fight for Scutari.
The heroic defence of Scutari, which lasted longer than that of any of the other fortified towns in the Balkan Peninsula, cannot be regarded as a feat of the Turkish army. During the siege, the general commanding Scutari had been assassinated by order of Essad pasha, who was his second in command. Essad then assumed charge of the defence as purely Albanian in character. He refused to accept the armistice, and continued the struggle throughout the debates in London. Scutari is at the south end of a lake which is shared between Albania and Montenegro. Commanding the city is a steep barren hill called Tarabosh. With their heavy artillery on this hill, the Albanians were able to prevent indefinitely the capture of their city. Servians and Montenegrins found themselves confronted with the task of taking Tarabosh by assault, if they hoped to occupy Scutari. This was a feat beyond the strength of a Balkan army. On the steep slopes of this hill were placed miles of barbed wire. The assailants were mowed down each time they tried to reach the batteries at the top. As Tarabosh commanded the four corners of the horizon, its cannon could prevent an assault or bombardment of the city from the plain. The allies were unable to silence the batteries on the crest of this hill.
During the winter, the principal question before the concert of European Powers was that of Scutari. Austria-Hungary was so determined that Scutari should not fall into the hands of the Montenegrins and Servians that she mobilized several army corps in Bosnia-Herzegovina and on the Russian frontier of Galicia, at Christmas time, 1912. The New Year brought with it ominous forebodings for the peace of Europe. Diplomacy worked busily to bring about an accord between the Powers, and pressure upon the besiegers of Scutari. In the middle of March, it was unanimously agreed that Scutari should remain to Albania, and that Servia should receive Prizrend, Ipek, Dibra, and Diakova as compensation for not reaching the Adriatic, and the assurance of an economic outlet for a railroad at some Albanian port. The European concert then decided to demand at Belgrade and Cettinje the lifting of the siege of Scutari.
Servia, yielding to the warning of Russia that nothing further could be done for her, consented to withdraw her troops from before Scutari, and to abandon the points in Albanian territory which had been allotted by the Powers to the independent Albanian State which they intended to create. Servia had another reason for doing this. Seeing the hopelessness of territorial aggrandizement in Albania, she decided to denounce her treaty of partition, concluded before the war, with Bulgaria. To realize this act of faithlessness and treachery, she had need of the sympathetic support of the Powers in the quarrel which was bound to ensue. We see here how the blocking of Servia's outlet to the Adriatic led inevitably to a war between the Balkan Allies.
But with Montenegro the situation was entirely different. She had sacrificed one-fifth of her army in the attacks upon Tarabosh, and Scutari seemed to her the only thing that she was to get out of the war with Turkey. Perched up in her mountains, there was little harm that the Powers could do to her. Just as King Nicholas had precipitated the Balkan War against the advice of the Powers the previous October, he decided on April 1st to refuse to obey the command of the Powers to lift the siege of Scutari. From what I have gathered myself from conversations in the Montenegrin capital two months later, I feel that the King of Montenegro can hardly be condemned for what the newspapers of Europe called his "audacious folly" in refusing to give a favourable response to the joint note presented to him by the European Ministers at Cettinje. The Montenegrins are illiterate mountaineers, who know nothing whatever about considerations of international diplomacy. If their King had listened to words written on a piece of paper, and had ordered the Montenegrin troops to withdraw from before Scutari, he would probably have lost his throne.
So the Powers were compelled to make a show of force. Little Montenegro, with its one port, and its total population not equal to a single arrondissement of the city of Paris, received the signal honour of an international blockade. On April 7th, an international fleet, under the command of the British Admiral Burney, blockaded the coast from Antivari to Durazzo. While all Europe was showing its displeasure in the Adriatic, the Montenegrins kept on, although deserted by the Servians, sitting in a circle around Scutari, only twenty-five miles inland from the blockading fleet. On April 23d, after the Balkan War was all finished, Europe was electrified by the news that the Albanians had surrendered Scutari to Montenegro. The worst was to be feared, for Austria announced her determination to send her troops across the border from Bosnia into Montenegro. Such an action would certainly have brought on a great European war. For neither at Rome nor at Petrograd could Austrian intervention have been tolerated.
No Power in Europe was at that moment ready for war. Largely through pressure brought to bear at Cettinje by his son-in-law, the King of Italy, King Nicholas decided on May 5th to deliver Scutari to the Powers. The Montenegrins withdrew, and ten days later Scutari was occupied by detachments of marines from the international squadron. The blockade was lifted. The peace of Europe was saved.
The Treaty of London, signed on May 30, 1913, put Albania into the hands of the Powers. The northern and eastern frontiers had been arranged by the promise made to Servia in return for her withdrawal from the siege of Scutari. But the southern frontier was still an open question. Here Italy was as much interested as was Austria in the north. With Corfu in the possession of Greece, Italy would not agree that the coast of the mainland opposite should also be Hellenic. The Greeks, on the contrary, declared that the littoral and hinterland, up beyond Santi Quaranta, was part of ancient Epirus, and inhabited principally by Greeks. It should therefore revert logically to greater Greece. Athens lifted again the old cry, "Where there are Hellenes, there is Hellas." The Greeks were occupying Santi Quaranta. They claimed as far north as Argyrokastron. But they consented to withdraw from the Adriatic, north of and opposite Corfu, if interior points equally far to the north were left to them. An international commission was formed to make a southern boundary for Albania. Its task has is still open.