[2] The Austro-Hungarians faced significant problems in holding on to the territory, as the Montenegrins and their Russian allies aspired to take control of the Bay and Austrian rule was not universally accepted by the area's inhabitants.

The Austrians responded to the uprising by building a series of fortifications around the Bay of Kotor and at strategic points further inland, and strengthening existing fort, including the one at Vrmac.

The fort is reached via a military road built by the Austro-Hungarians that runs over the top of the ridge from Troica to Gornja Lastva in Tivat municipality, or alternatively via a winding path that leads up the mountainside from Muo, a suburb of Kotor.

Its position was chosen to enable it to support the outlying Fort Gorazda on the other side of the Troica pass and the Škaljari Battery to the south.

Surrounded by an unreliable population that unabashedly gravitates toward Montenegro, our troops in the Bocche will be confined to fortified places and the area that their cannons control the moment Russian ships appear in the Adriatic Sea.

The main guns were housed in armoured casemates, with howitzers and observation turrets in steel cupolas made by Škoda Works in Plzeň.

[4] By the outbreak of the First World War it was the most modern fortress in the vicinity of the naval base at Kotor and was the centre of the Austro-Hungarian Third Military District's defences.

The war made such an undertaking impossible and the five officers and 177 men stationed at Vrmac found themselves the target of heavy bombardments from Montenegrin territory, from weapons of up to 24 cm (9.4 in) calibre.