Pirzio Biroli proclaimed to his soldiers in April 1942:

The fable of the buono italiano must cease! The Italian soldier is above all a warrior. He who does not wish to understand the generosity of a friendly hand will now feel the force of our fist…Let there be no pity for whose who cowardly kill our brothers and show no quarter for those who shoot our comrades and make war prisoners in contempt of international conventions. Show these barbarians that if Italy is the master and mother of civilization, it also knows how to punish with the inexorable laws of justice … Do not let the misery of the people whose land you occupy today move you to pity. The Montenegrin peoples have wished this misery upon themselves … He who hates Fascism hates Italy.²⁹⁸

At the same time Pirzio Biroli announced that for every Italian officer killed or wounded, fifty Montenegrins would die.²⁹⁹ “The whole country is in revolt,” he told Pietromarchi. “Men of fighting age should be sent to concentration camps.” Pietromarchi agreed; “We should have done this sooner.”³⁰⁰ The “Lion of Gondar” had indeed roared.³⁰¹

— Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia, 1941–1943, pgs. 96–7