In 1876, the “Augsburger Postzeitung” published an article on page 424 citing of a report authored by English Vice Admiral Hay, who published it in the newspaper “Limes”, about Montenegrin atrocities against Albanian wounded troops. Details about the Montenegrins cutting off the enemies noses and mutilating bodies. Medical personel in Shkodër (Scutari) told Hay many details.
Cited:
“Montenegrin Atrocities: The English Vice Admiral Hay, who had just returned from a trip to Serbia and Turkey, wrote to the Limes and described horrific atrocities in Montenegro. The letter states that I traveled for a few days with a high-ranking and brave Russian officer who had served in Montenegro and Serbia for over a year.
He informed me that he had twice threatened to abandon his post in Montenegro because of the Montenegrin custom of cutting off their enemies’ noses, that he had counted over five hundred bodies on a battlefield which had been mutilated in this way, some while still alive, and that the Montenegrin leaders could not be persuaded to abandon the custom of paying their relatives according to the number of noses brought in.
I visited the hospital in Scutari and saw five cases of nasal mutilation and other barbarities. I also heard from the Christian doctors who showed me the facilities of this wonderfully run hospital that more than two hundred cases of nasal congestion were recently being treated in the Dardanelles Hospital and that they had learned that many other such cruelties had occurred, the victims of which had partly died as a result and partly had been saved in the field hospitals. This is the nation which the Czar did not know how to celebrate enough as a nation of heroes in his famous Moscow speech.”
Reference
Balkan Academia 