Principality of Montenegro

The Principality of Montenegro was the secular mountain state of the southeastern Adriatic, living from 1852 to 1910 round Cetinje over the Lovćen massif. Three centuries of prince-bishops ended when Danilo II laid down the mitre, married, and wrote himself knjaz and gospodar of Montenegro and the Brda in his Code of 1855. Tribes elected war; the 1858 victory at Grahovac forced the Porte to draw a border, and Nikola, succeeding his murdered uncle in 1860, played the great game for fifty years against Turks and Austrians alike: Russian subsidies, the 1876 war beside Serbia and Russia, Berlin's 1878 recognition with Bar, Ulcinj and the Nikšić highlands added. The perper minted from 1906, the 1905 constitution promised a parliament, schools and a Cetinje theatre rose above the valley, and in 1910 Nikola lifted the principality into a kingdom. Nine thousand square kilometres of rock, honour and tobacco reached statehood's top step.