Noli’s supporters blamed the Rustemi murder on Zogu’s Mati clansmen, who continued to practice blood vengeance

After the walkout, discontent mounted, and in June 1924 a peasant-backed insurgency had won control of Tirana. Noli became prime minister, and Zogu fled to Yugoslavia.

Fan Noli, an idealist, rejected demands for new elections on the grounds that Albania needed a “paternal” government. In a manifesto describing his government’s program, Noli called for abolishing feudalism, resisting Italian domination, and establishing a Western-style constitutional government.

Scaling back the bureaucracy, strengthening local government, assisting peasants, throwing Albania open to foreign investment, and improving the country’s bleak transportation, public health, and education facilities filled out the Noli government’s overly ambitious agenda.

Noli encountered resistance to his program from people who had helped him oust Zogu, and he never attracted the foreign aid necessary to carry out his reform plans.

Noli criticized the League of Nations for failing to settle the threat facing Albania on its land borders

Under Fan Noli, the government set up a special tribunal that passed death sentences, in absentia, on Zogu, Verlaci, and others and confiscated their property.

In Yugoslavia Zogu recruited a mercenary army, and Belgrade furnished the Albanian leader with weapons, about 1,000 Yugoslav army regulars, and Russian White Emigres to mount an invasion that the Serbs hoped would bring them disputed areas along the border.

After Noli’s regime decided to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, a bitter enemy of the Serbian ruling family, Belgrade began making wild allegations that the Albanian regime was about to embrace Bolshevism. On 13 December 1924, Zogu’s Yugoslav-backed army crossed into Albanian territory.

By Christmas Eve, Zogu had reclaimed the capital, and Noli and his government had fled to Italy. The Noli government lasted just 6 months and a week, and Ahmet Zogu returned with another coup d’état and regained the control, changing the political situation and abolishing principality.