Pictured: King Zog next to Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Fascist foreign minister.

Quoting Alan Cassels’s Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy, pages 336–7:

The Pact of Rome had moved Yugoslavia away from her partners in the Little Entente and from the entente’s patron, France. The breakdown of the Italo‐Yugoslav rapprochement automatically sent her in the reverse direction. More specifically, the Rome pact had been employed by the Belgrade government to resist pressure from Prague and Paris to sign a treaty of friendship and arbitration with France. With the decline of the Pact of Rome, Belgrade gravitated toward a treaty with France.

Since the terms of an agreement had been drafted as early as March 1926, the surprise is that it took so long after the Pact of Tirana to come into formal existence. Apparently Briand, the pacifier, tried as long as possible to include Yugoslavia and [Fascist] Italy in one treaty with France. But Mussolini consistently maintained his resistance to any such pact.⁵⁵

An exclusive Franco‐Yugoslav accord was ultimately signed on November 11, 1927, and [Rome] responded on the 22nd with the second Treaty of Tirana. The latter was a defensive alliance, serving to formalize rather than add to [Rome’s] far‐reaching commitments to Zogu implied in the first Tirana pact.⁵⁶ In reality, for [Rome] and [Belgrade] the parting of the ways had been reached in November 1926.

Albania proved to be the testing ground of relationships, not only between [Fascist] Italy and Yugoslavia but also between Mussolini and the Palazzo Chigi. Where Corfu had appeared a passing aberration which the professional diplomats had been called in to correct, Mussolini’s Albanian policy evolved slowly and the disparagement of the old guard’s opinion became a permanent feature.

Yet it must be admitted that the professionals brought much of this on themselves. In trying to exploit Fascism for nationalistic ends they were playing with fire; in the Adriatic they were burned. Here the Anglo‐Italian entente did not act as a shield behind which the professionals could shelter. More specifically, they encouraged Mussolini in Fiume at the risk of alienating Belgrade.

What consistency was there in the position that Fiume was a lawful target of [Fascist] expansion but not Albania? After all, [Rome’s] special interest in Albania had the stamp of international approval. Not surprisingly, some of the career diplomats themselves rejected this logic and followed Mussolini all the way in his Adriatic imperialism and challenge to Yugoslavia. Even the tactic of promoting Croatian separatism received at least consideration among some [Fascist] diplomats.

Those who occupied the Durazzo legation tended ultimately to enter into the spirit of colonial competition and to urge Mussolini on to quicker and deeper penetration of Albania. Marquis Durazzo in 1924 and Baron Aloisi in 1926 were notable in this respect. In Rome, Lojacono encouraged Mussolini, although eventually his own Albanian recommendations were rejected. These enthusiasts were perhaps a minority within the Palazzo Chigi to begin with, but their numbers would grow with time and the Duce’s apparent successes.

Thus Mussolini’s forward policy in the Adriatic not merely widened the gulf between himself and the old guard, but caused a clear division among the Palazzo Chigi officials themselves.

Curiously, the most complete description that I’ve found on this treaty was not in a book about fascism, but in Miller William’s The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, 1801–1927, pages 575–6:

As the sequel of the Italo‐Albanian “pact of friendship” of 1926, on November 22, 1927, a further treaty of alliance for 20 years with [Fascist] Italy was signed, by which each party pledged itself to support the other “with all its military, financial and other resources” in case of a war not provoked by it. An annexe provided that in such case [a Fascist] officer would be commander‐in‐chief in Albania.

Nine [Fascist] officers were appointed to introduce the Balilla system into the schools; 42 more formed an Italian Military Mission, as compared with the eight members of the British Gendarmerie Mission, 50 per cent, of the budget was spent on the army, and [Fascist] engineers constructed strategic roads to the Jugoslav frontier. But the official statement that “the policy of Italy in no way menaced the integrity or independence of Albania” satisfied the British Foreign Secretary, who re‐called his Minister for having exceeded his duty.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)