April 1913 the hunger-stricken besieged Shkodra

Abstract

At the beginning of April 1913, the defending army of Shkodra, under the command of General Esad Pasha Toptani, was running out of food, while the civilians were starving to death with a daily death toll of more than 30 people. The dire situation hadn’t spared the Catholic priests and stigmatine sisters who were at risk of starvation. They were saved by Shkodra’s defense commander, Esad Pasha Toptani, who shared the soldiers’ daily food intake with the civilians until the end of the war 1.

According to Hortense von Zambaur, around April  20th,  the city food depots were empty. The terror of starvation became threatening day by day; the poor lived off the slaughtered animals’ blood and grass2.

The Austrian government made diplomatic attempts to import grain to Shkodra. The Foreign Minister, Berchtold, instructed Rear-Admiral, Njugovan, to propose to the International Fleet Admiralty Council to conduct an investigation whether the city was surrounded at the four points and whether it was possible to bring amounts of food from outside. He also assigned the same task to the ambassador in Cetina.