Austrian Army during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
The Imperial-Royal or Imperial Austrian Army, during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, was the armed force of the Habsburg monarchy under its last monarch, the Habsburg Emperor Francis II, composed of the Emperor's army. When the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, it assumed its title of the troops of the Austrian Empire under the same monarch, now known as Emperor Francis I of Austria.
Command and organisation
High Command
Prior to Archduke Charles reforms, the Austrian High Command was highly centralised and characterised by an inefficient bureaucracy. Decision-making was slow and there was a lack of clear lines of responsibility. The Hofkriegsrat was the supreme military administrative and command authority of the Habsburg Monarchy. It had been established since the 16th century and had both administrative and operational functions. It was a collective body consisting of several officers and civil servants. Decisions were often made in long meetings, which in practice led to delays. The Court War Council controlled the organisation of the army, supplies, recruitment and strategic planning.After the defeat at the Battle of Marengo, Charles was appointed President of the Court War Council in 1801 and began a comprehensive reform that extended to the structure of the High Command and the entire army organisation. Archduke Charles separated the administrative role of the Court War Council from the operational leadership of the field armies. The Court War Council remained responsible for organisation, supply and recruitment, while operational command was transferred to the respective field commander. In addition, he reformed the General Staff by introducing the office of Chief of the General Staff.
The 1757 regulations had created the, and, and after changes in 1769, a permanent staff of 30 officers was established under the director, Franz Moritz von Lacy, which would be expanded in wartime with junior officers. The Grosse staff was divided into three: First, the intrinsecum, which handled internal administration and directing operations; secondly, external activities, including the pioneers; thirdly, the inspection service, which handled the issuing of orders and prisoners of war. Alongside the general staff was the general adjutant, who led a group of adjutant staff selected by the army commanders to handle the details of internal administration and collating intelligence, and answered to the commander-in-chief. The Chief of Staff became the chief adviser to the commander-in-chief and, in a fundamental move away from the previous administrative role, the chief of staff now undertook operational planning, while delegating the routine work to his senior staff officers. Staff officers were drawn from line units and would later return to them, the intention being that they would prove themselves as leaders during their time with the staff. In a battle or when the army had detached corps, a small number of staff would be allocated to the column commander as a smaller version of headquarters. The senior man, usually a major, would be the chief of the column staff and his principal task would be to help the commander to understand what was intended.
On 20 March 1801, Feldmarschalleutnant Peter Duka von Kadar became the world's first peacetime Quartermaster general at the head of the staff and the wartime role of the chief of staff was now focused on planning and operations to assist the commander. Archduke Charles, himself produced a new, on 1 September 1805, which divided the staff into four departments:
- Geheime Kanzlei des Erzherzogs Responsible for drafting all reports and relations to the Emperor, imperial proclamations, correspondence with the Court War Council, allied and enemy powers and censorship of military writings.
- Operations-Kanzlei Responsible for all operational matters, intelligence, registration and collection of all military files.
- Detail-Kanzlei Responsible for compiling rank and service tables as well as army orders and proclamations.
- Armee-General-Commando Responsible for commissariat, transport, military and financial matters. Also responsible for rations, transport and packing.
Recruitment
Enlisted men
was implemented across the Hereditary and Bohemian lands in 1781, based on population rolls from each regiment's district. The conscription regime applied to all able-bodied men within the age range of 17 to 40 years, with those in the 18 to 26 age group being selected for enlistment first. Exemptions from this obligation were granted to a range of individuals, including nobles and priests, as well as most skilled workers, such as miners and employees of licensed factories. Additionally, numerous townspeople and all free peasants and their eldest sons were exempt. Consequently, the burden of conscription fell primarily on the younger sons of peasants and the urban proletariat. Service was for a challenging 25 years, with the exception of bakers and equipment suppliers, who enlisted for three years. Prior to 1802, release was only possible in the event of complete incapacity, or through inheritance, purchase or marriage, with the requirement to run a property or business, conditional upon the district providing a substitute.Officers
The officer corps, which came from different ethnic groups and social classes, reflected the character of the Habsburg state. As the local nobility refused to be centralized in the early days of the standing army, the Habsburgs often entrusted the supreme command to foreign military personnel and mercenaries. However, most of the officers came from the Habsburg lands: German-Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Italians, Croats and Walloons. The nobility rejected military service, as the reforms had removed many financial incentives and changed the nature of the profession, and specialized knowledge became a prerequisite for leading armies that were too large to be entrusted to inexperienced individuals, regardless of their talents, courage or wealth.Most members of the nobility were unwilling to submit to military discipline and acquire technical skills through hard work. Maria Theresa was therefore forced to open her military academies to the sons of the impoverished lesser nobility as well as to commoners, generally the sons of serving officers and civil servants. Future officers entered the academy at juvenile age and were accepted into the cavalry or infantry after four years of training. Training at the engineering academy lasted eight years and focused on vocational subjects. Despite these measures, the number of graduates from the two academies, around 60 per year, was insufficient.
Branches
Infantry
At the outset of war in 1793, the army numbered fifty-seven line regiments, and Seventeen Grenzer light infantry regiments. By 1793 there were 57 line infantry regiments, two garrison regiments, one garrison battalion and 17 border infantry regiments. Like the officers, the infantrymen came from all parts of Austria. The German regiments consisted of two field battalions of six fusilier companies each and one garrison battalion of four companies. Including a detachment of gunners and infantry to operate the three 6-pounders issued to each battalion, the nominal strength was 4,575 men all ranks. The Hungarian regiments consisted of three field battalions and one garrison battalion with a strength of 5,508, again including the allocated 'line' artillery.In 1792 neither type was at full strength. Fusilier companies with a war establishment of four officers and 230 men usually had only three officers and 120 men. In addition, each German or Hungarian regiment had a grenadier 'division', two companies considered elite units, dressed in high and heavy bearskin hats, which were often combined with other divisions to form composite grenadier battalions commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Grenadier regiments consisted of two field battalions of six companies each, with a regimental headquarters, 256 sharpshooters armed with an over-and-under rifle and an artillery detachment with three 3-pounders. When the regiments left for foreign service, a local reserve was left, organised into two, divisions.
Light infantry
The Grenzers formed the basis of the light infantry in the Austrian Army. Though primarily used as border troops to reinforce the Military Frontier, the Austro-Ottoman border, in war time, at least 1-2 battalions of a Grenzer regiment would be detached from the regiment in order to join the frontlines and serve as vanguards. These Grenzers performed consistently well in every battle they participated in, with many French soldiers regarding them highly and considering them the only "warlike" units in the Austrian Army. Even Napoleon did not hesitate to use some Grenzer regiments after his victory over Austria in 1809. In 1808, IR64 was broken up and its nine divisions formed the rifle-armed cadre divisions, which were each augmented by two divisions of carbine-armed troops to form the nine new Jäger battalions.Cavalry
During the War of the First and Second Coalition, the Austrian cavalry demonstrated unrivalled superiority over their French counterparts. However, by 1809, any such notions of supremacy had been severely dispelled. While the Austrian cavalry's tactics and training remained static, the French had developed a cavalry capable of functioning collectively. The majority of the Austrian cavalry was distributed in a dispersed manner to the various infantry formations, which resulted in numerous instances of their being overwhelmed by superior enemy numbers at the point of attack. While the individual components of the Austrian cavalry, such as the cuirassiers, dragoons, chevau-légers and uhlans, retained their combat effectiveness, the lack of coordination among these forces severely impeded their operational effectiveness. The inherent limitations of the prevailing command system impeded the full expression of the cavalry's lethal potential, and the implementation of successive reorganisations proved ineffective in rectifying these deficiencies.The recruitment of cavalrymen followed a similar modus operandi to that employed for infantrymen. The stipulation that they should have been drawn from the ranks of those who had already completed their infantry training was largely ignored. Cavalry regiments, notably those of Hungarian units, frequently had a surfeit of prospective recruits. This phenomenon was reflected in the financial incentives offered to enlisting men in the smaller south German states, which constituted a significant portion of the Austrian army's manpower. Specifically, an infantry recruit received 35 florins, while a cavalry recruit received 29, thereby underscoring the preference for the mounted arm among the broader pool of potential recruits.