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This chapter discusses the ongoing conflict between France and Austria. Despite the Austrian army's mixed record against Napoleon, her forces were England's only reliable ally. The Austrian army was also the only instrument capable of containing Revolutionary France. The army continued to be in the forefront of every campaign and its ability to survive the hammer blows rained down upon it was a tribute to the long-lasting effect of reforms from a generation earlier. Barely was the ink dry at Campo Formio when Britain, Russia, Naples, and Turkey began to see the ambitions of Revolutionary France in an ever darker light. As these countries drew together, it was apparent that the key to any credible coalition against Napoleon remained to be Austria. After much promise of gold on the part of London, Austria formally signed a new alliance with Britain on 22 June 1799. This war would bring new areas of campaign for the French, notably in Egypt. But their continued obsession with the Rhine threatened Germany, which brought them inevitably into conflict with Vienna.

This chapter discusses the victory of Maria Theresa's armies against Prussia. Six years of war cost Austria nearly half a million men, but Prussian casualties were much higher. With two French armies crossing the Rhine, a Swedish army advancing on Pomerania, and a Russian force headed for East Prussia, the very existence of Frederick's kingdom became open to question. By the end of the war Prussia, both as a state and military machine, was a wasteland. Austria's armies, on the other hand, enjoyed a high reputation while the Empress came to be seen as a Mater Castrorum, Mother of War.

The army that Joseph II bequeathed to his successor was not as capable as the one he had inherited from his mother. His ceaseless meddling and obsession with state control had demoralized the army as much as it had all other walks of Austrian life. With Joseph's demise, the new Emperor Leopold appeared to usher in a period of domestic calm, free from foreign adventure. But one year before Joseph's death, Paris had erupted in revolution and, as Joseph had foreseen, its ripples were felt in his empire. This chapter discusses the war waged by France against Austria and the Austrian army's victories and defeats during the war.

This chapter examines the important contributions of the Belgian people, who hold the honor of having been the first to build barricades outside their country of origin. It notes that the Belgian's claim to that distinction goes all the way back to 1787 and the Brabant revolution, though that rebellion's ultimate lack of success explains why a further Belgian revolution, also the occasion for widespread barricade construction, was necessary in 1830 to establish definitively their nation's independence. It explains that the successful adaptation of this technique in the respective struggles against the Austrian and Dutch armies raises the question of why it was the Belgians who ended the French monopoly on the use of the insurrectionary technique. It determines the relevance of the two countries' close economic, political, linguistic, and cultural ties in determining the result.

This chapter starts by discussing the reform of the Austrian army. The keystone of this reform was the elevation of the Archduke Charles. Putting aside the petty intrigues and jealousies of the court, Emperor Francis appointed his brother “Generalissimus,” supreme commander, as well as President of the Aulic Council. Charles immersed himself in turning the Austrian army into a modern force, capable of holding its own against Napoleon. His reforms included the creation of the Landwehr (militia) and Reserveanstalt (reserve depot), which provided a source of manpower that could release regular soldiers for the front line once hostilities broke out; the adoption of a “corps” system of army organisation; strengthening of the Empire's light infantry capabilities; and the overhaul of the Austrian staff system. The remainder of the chapter covers the battle between the French and Austrians over the villages of Aspern and Essling.

This chapter discusses Austria-Hungary's entry into the Great War. The army was unprepared for a major conflict. Her troops had not fired a shot in anger for more than a generation. The lessons her opponents had digested—the British during the Boer War, the Serbs during the Balkan wars, the Russians during the recent Russo-Japanese War—had all been ignored by Vienna. On the outbreak of hostilities, the army had evolved into a predominantly infantry arm: 700 out of every 1,000 soldiers were infantry. Since 1906, Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf had enjoyed greater powers than his predecessors as Generalstabchef. While his remit had been extended to cover Landwehr and Honvédség forces as well as the Common Army, his staff lagged behind their German counterparts in terms of organisation, dynamism and ethos. The remainder of the chapter covers Austria-Hungary's provision of artillery support to the German army; the army's initial success in Galicia; the Russian recovery; Austro-Hungarian setbacks on all fronts; Serbia's invasion of Hungary; and the struggle for Przemyśl.

This chapter considers the state of the Habsburg army in the late 1850s. The Austrian army survived the trauma of 1848–49 thanks to the efforts of Radetzky, Jellači ć, and Windischgrätz. The terrible effects of nationalism did not eat away at the fabric of the army's ethos or organisation. But while the aftermath of 1849 appeared to show a Habsburg Empire at the summit of its military prowess, underneath lay hubris and complacency. Here was an army still capable of intimidating Prussia in 1850 by mobilising 450,000 men under Radetzky and forcing Berlin to sign the humiliating “Punctation” of Olmütz whereby Prussia's attempts to reorganise northern Germany under Prussian hegemony were comprehensively checked. Here was an army that still appeared to hold the Italian peninsula in its vice-like grip. Yet, on every front, factors were developing that would conspire to prevent the Habsburg armies from saving the dynasty's position in either Italy or Germany.

Aspern and Essling had given Napoleon a great shock. An army he had come to underestimate had proven capable of inflicting a substantial defeat on the Grande Armée. The Archduke Charles had tried out his new reformed war machine and it had been effective. While against any other general the Austrian army would have undoubtedly prevailed, it would have its work cut out against the greatest soldier of the time, as the following weeks would demonstrate. This chapter discusses the Battle of Wagram, one of the epic encounters to unfold on the stage of the Napoleonic Wars. With more than 300,000 men deployed it was, in 1809, the largest battle ever to have been fought in history. Like Aspern, it raged for the best part of two days and, as in that battle, all three arms of the Habsburg army fought superbly, making it a much closer contest than Napoleon ever expected.

This chapter focuses on the Habsburg forces' successful campaigns in Italy. Less than two weeks before Königgrätz, Vittorio Emanuele had declared war on Austria in accordance with his alliance with Prussia. Unlike in Bohemia, the formalities had been observed and the Italian monarch had dispatched an aide with a formal declaration of war to the Austrian headquarters in Verona where the Archduke Albert had taken up residence. The Southern Army of the Habsburgs was made up of many fine regiments. The Archduke commanded barely 75,000 troops against a foe of 200,000 equipped with more than twice the amount of artillery he could muster. Nonetheless, the Austrians managed to defeat the Italians at Custozza. The Austrian navy also defeated the Italians at Lissa, giving a morale boost to its traditions, which lasted for the rest of its existence.

This chapter describes the increased military intelligence activities spurred by the rivalry between Russia and Austria-Hungary over the Balkans. What had been the preserve of a few staff officers of the Generalquartierstab rapidly expanded scope and numbers as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Russia's increasing military intelligence activities against the monarchy resulted in increased cooperation between the Evidenzbüro and its German equivalent, the Imperial German Kundschaftdienst. This was evident in 1889 when a Russian spy, Wenzel Marek, stole the plans for the great Austrian Galician fortress of Przemyśl. Unaware of the degree of cooperation between the two organisations, he allowed himself to be tricked on to German soil where he was promptly arrested and handed over to the Austrians before he could dispose of the plans to the Russians. Marek's capture brought an instant Russian response. They rounded up 29 suspected Austrian agents, who were later executed. By the spring of 1913, the rising political temperature prompted statesmen in every European country as well as the in United States to conclude that war was imminent.

This chapter describes events following the Austrian army's defeat at Wagram. For the Austrian army, the defeat had been anything but traumatic. In many instances they had fought even better than they had at Aspern and Essling, proving that they had improved their abilities considerably since the days of Ulm and Austerlitz. Despite the French's “great victory” they were too exhausted to offer immediate pursuit; the Austrians captured more trophies and standards than the French. Most important of all, the Austrians had retreated with their army intact. True to his House and his cause, the Archduke Charles fought carefully so that his army could, in extremis, live to fight another day. Nonetheless, he prepared to mount a strong rearguard action at Znaim in Moravia, and to that end he drew up his reserve in a solid semicircle around the small Moravian town. The remainder of the chapter discusses the Battle of Leipzig and the defeat of the French.

This chapter describes events following the defeat of Napoleon. For the army the long peace of the 1830s meant that uniforms became reflective of prestige. In common with the British army at this time, the Austrian army adopted the new fashion of higher collars and headdresses. On the political level, the “Holy alliance” between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, established by Metternich, kept the peace of Europe, extinguishing any “progressive” legacy of the shattering events of the last two decades. The chapter discusses Metternich's conscription policy; the build-up to the revolutions of 1848 known as Vormärz (pre-March); the Hungarian crisis and the new Emperor Ferdinand; and the emergence of three distinguished soldiers who would ensure the survival of the House of Austria: Field Marshal Johann Josef Wenzel, Count Radetzky von Radec, Prince Windischgrätz, and Josef Jellači ć von Buzim.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, to explore whether the Habsburg' army's reputation for inefficiency, incompetence, general unreliability, and even cruelty, is at all justified. It asks: Can the view that the Austrian armed forces were consistently weak and poorly led compared to most of their opponents really be proven? Were they hopelessly outclassed against Frederick's Prussians, or doomed to be routed by Napoleon and later Moltke? Did the Habsburg armies offer, as one historian recently noted, ‘a truly lamentable performance’ in the First World War, crumbling and melting away? How did an army of so many disparate national elements hold together for so long? What was the secret of the Habsburgs' armies' ability to serve one family in organising the states of Central and Eastern Europe into a coherent and secure single entity whose prosperity and security have been so difficult to replicate in modern times? In the process of answering these questions, a commonly accepted narrative can perhaps be enriched by an unfamiliar perspective on many critical events in modern European history.

This chapter focuses on the reforms implemented by Maria Theresa's son Joseph. The great victories of the Seven Years War not only thwarted a coalition of attempts to annihilate Austria as a great power, but also gave Austrian arms a prestige unrivalled in Europe. There was no danger of complacency setting in, as in earlier times, because Joseph was a man in a hurry. Convinced that it was his destiny to modernise his empire and to prepare its armies for the challenges ahead, Joseph scorned tradition as he rushed ahead into radical reforms. No walk of life or entity or religious or racial group was immune from his reforming zeal, and the army and the Church were at the top of his list. His supporters noted that his keen intelligence saw what was coming and his haste was essential to ensure that the explosion about to occur in Paris in 1789 did not happen in Vienna first. His detractors, however, viewed this obsession to intrude into every walk of Imperial life as the misdirected energy of the greatest egotist of his age, in an admittedly competitive field.

This chapter describes the Siege of Vienna, which remains one of the great set pieces of Austrian and indeed European history. From a tactical viewpoint its significance lies entirely in the defensive brilliance of the Austrian Stadtkommandant, Ernst Rudiger Starhemberg, and the subsequent character of the city's relief by a multinational force. In terms of military prestige, its effects were more widely felt. Vienna had withstood an ordeal no major European city had ever experienced. Austria's role as a bulwark of Christendom was loudly proclaimed and its army celebrated for saving Europe from the Turks. The events of 1683 burnished the reputation of the Habsburgs' armed forces, giving them confidence to face the struggles ahead, especially to the east.

This chapter is an overview of the Jewish war graves in western Galicia. Jewish soldiers were part of the multinational Austrian army. They fought on all fronts of the First World War and were killed with their comrades in arms of other nationalities and religions, but if identified as Jews they were buried separately. In western Galicia, bloody battles between Austrian and Russian armies lasted until May 1915. There are hundreds of military cemeteries and military sections in parish cemeteries in this area. In spite of continuing war (there were battles in eastern Galicia and in Bukovina), a systematic burial of the dead at newly established cemeteries began. It was carried out by the War Graves Division (K. u. k. Kriegsgräber-Abteilung) established in the spring of 1915 and located in Kraków. Between summer 1915 and autumn 1918, the War Graves Division designed and constructed 365 cemeteries.

This chapter discusses the emergence of the Habsburg army, also known as the “Kaiserliche Armee” (Emperor's army)—a title that was fashioned in the extraordinary crisis of June 1619. Before that moment no one had thought of the Habsburgs' troops as the personal property of the sovereign. A few dramatic moments changed all that and thenceforth a bond was formed between soldier and monarch which endured for three centuries. The strength of this new relationship was quickly tested in the Thirty Years War. When that conflict threw up in the shape of Wallenstein the greatest warlord of his time, the issue of loyalty became critical. The dynasty was eventually able to rely on its soldiers to eliminate the threat. By the end of this period the Kaiserliche Armee was an undisputed reality.

Jonas Stenberg was born on May 29, 1894, in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father, Moses Sternberg, came from a family of woodworkers but had been inducted into the Austrian army. His mother, Serafin Singer, was the daughter of an instructor who gave classes in German, the “official” language, to recruits; coming from all corners of the imperial domain, these new soldiers might speak any one of a dozen tongues or dialects. Jonas's parents were unmarried when he was conceived, which scandalized both families. With grudging pride, von Sternberg cites less damning proof of his father's strength, such as the ability to lift a man by his heels and hold him out at arm's length.