Although the men traditionally bore arms and some had volunteered in the Austrian Navy—there being a major naval base at Kotor—they had never been obligated to serve in the army.[3] Despite the opposition raised by the new order, in his initial reports the Dalmatian governor, Feldmarschalleutnant Johann Ritter von Wagner, insisted that the situation was under control.[3] Because the Kotor district was cut off from the rest of the empire by Ottoman Sutorina, and because of the poor state of its roads, the Austro-Hungarian navy had the large task of ferrying all 10,000 reinforcements.The Compromise of 1867 with the Hungarians was "widely considered as a sell-out of the South Slavs" and the Krivošije revolt engendered sympathy among the empire's Croats.[4] Friedrich von Beust, Chairman of the Ministerial Council, blamed the Italians for smuggling arms to the rebels, although no evidence of such trans-Adriatic shipments was ever found.
Map of Montenegro, Herzegovina and the Kotor district of Dalmatia from 1862
Armed Krivošije tribesmen, woodcut from
Světozor
magazine (5 June 1878)
Monument in
Crkvice
dedicated to rebels of the Krivošije Uprising