of the army, should lay down their own lives on the dreary
hills that barred them from the town. It was hardly necessary for
Nikita to allude to the wealth that would be theirs if they could gain
possession of this outlet to the Adriatic. There in the plain at the
end of the lake was the glittering white town, and if they could have
seen themselves as clearly and their own inadequate resources, they
would have refrained from the attempt. The minarets of Scutari, raised
like so many warning fingers, failed to warn them. Their equipment was
such that munitions and other supplies were frequently carried up to
the lines by women--on the Bardonjolt no less than eighty of these
were killed and wounded in one day. When the Serbs in October pushed
through Albania to the Adriatic they offered to assist in the taking
of Scutari, but Nikita shook his head. And it was not until some time
after this that he accepted the co-operation of three batteries of
Krupp guns, which had been meanwhile taken from the Turks at Kumanovo.
But the Montenegrin army was not only handicapped by its lack of
resources; the Crown Prince, who commanded a division, actually
instigated a revolt among his own men. He had promised the Austrian
Minister, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, that the Montenegrin army would
not enter Scutari, and the Government could only put a stop to
Danilo's intrigues by invoking the aid of General Potapoff. The Turks
were not wasting their time; they employed Austrian engineers to
strengthen the fortifications, and thus the task had become far more
difficult when finally the Montenegrin Court party availed itself of
Serbian reinforcements. In more ways than one they were badly needed
by the brave but ill-disciplined soldiers. "It is wonderful," they
said to Major Temperley,[70] "their troops do not fire until an
officer gives the word." Primitive men and a venal commander--according
to Dr. Sekula Drljevi[vc], who was Minister of Finance and Justice,
Prince Danilo is alleged to have remembered, just before his country's
entrance into the War, that money could be made on the Vienna Bourse
by judicious selling and, after the declaration of war, by purchasing.
The professional financier who on this occasion, thanks to his
knowledge of the Montenegrin royal plans, is alleged to have realized,
with his friends, the sum of 140 million francs, was no less a person
than Baron Rosenberg, whose subsequent operations in Paris at the
beginning of