Principality of Albania

The Principality of Albania was the Balkan monarchy that existed from 1914 to 1925, headed by Wilhelm, Prince of Albania. The land had been Ottoman since about 1478, until the First Balkan War ended in the Treaty of London of May 1913, which made the principality. The Great Powers picked Prince Wilhelm of Wied, a nephew of the queen of Romania, to rule the new state, and on 21 February 1914 eighteen Albanian delegates for the eighteen districts formally offered him a throne he accepted. Inside Albania he was styled king, so as not to seem lesser than the king of Montenegro. Wilhelm landed at his provisional capital of Durres on 7 March 1914 with his family, guarded by an International Gendarmerie under Dutch officers, but fled the country on 3 September after the Peasant Revolt raised by Essad Pasha, never renouncing his claim. The principality lived through the First World War and the quarrels over Albanian independence at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and 1920. In 1925 the monarchy was abolished and the Albanian Republic, a parliamentary republic and dictatorship that lasted to 1928, was proclaimed in its place.