In June 1920, Italian soldiers barricaded themselves inside Vlorë, a coastal city they had occupied since the First World War. They were not facing a conventional army. Outside their lines were about four thousand Albanian volunteers, many of them poorly armed, some carrying only sticks and stones. The Italians had artillery, machine guns, and the advantage of fortified positions. What they did not have was reinforcement, or orders, or any clear reason to stay. The Bersaglieri regiment in Italy had refused to deploy to Albania. Communist agitation was spreading through the Italian ranks. And malaria was killing them faster than the Albanians were.

Italy's claim to Vlorë rested on a secret wartime promise. In 1915, before entering the First World War, Italy had signed the Treaty of London with Britain, France, and Russia. In exchange for declaring war on Austria-Hungary, Italy would receive territorial gains at the war's end, including full sovereignty over Vlorë and the island of Saseno, which sat at the mouth of the bay. When the war ended in 1918, the Italians held the city. Most of the rest of Albania had already thrown off Italian occupation. But Vlorë remained in Italian hands, and Italy's prime minister, Francesco Saverio Nitti, wanted more: he sought a League of Nations mandate over the entire country.

The Albanians would not accept it. On 4 June 1920, when the Italian general Settimo Piacentini refused to hand over Vlorë to the Albanian government, the National Defense Committee formed in Tirana. Its leader was Qazim Koculi. He recruited volunteers, and a military commander named Ahmet Lepenica gathered them into a fighting force. Among them was the Banda e Vatrës, an Albanian military unit that had been formed in the United States and had crossed the Atlantic by ship for twenty-three days to reach the Albanian coast. The volunteers came from the city and the countryside, swelling to over ten thousand irregular fighters. They had one advantage: the Italian soldiers were trapped, isolated, and dying of fever.

The Albanians attacked four times over two months. On 5 June, 6 June, 11 June, and 24 July, they pressed against the Italian lines around Vlorë. The Italians repelled each assault. But the stalemate was unsustainable. In Rome, Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti saw no profit in holding a fever-stricken city against a population that had already chosen independence. On 2 August 1920, Italy and Albania signed the Treaty of Tirana.

The treaty was stark. Italy recognized Albanian independence within its 1913 borders. It renounced its mandate ambitions, its protectorate, and its occupation of Vlorë. Italian troops would withdraw. Prisoners would be exchanged. What Italy kept was Saseno, the island at the bay's mouth, and diplomatic protection over Albania to shield it from partition by other powers. Giolitti explained his choice plainly: what mattered was that Vlorë could never become a base against Italy. Saseno secured the bay. The mandate would have been an enormous liability without profit. Better to leave and keep influence.