Defenders of the Danube.

• Author: Hay, William Anthony
• Position: Austrian imperial army - Book review

Richard Bassett, For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619-1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 616 pp., $45.00.

The reputation of the Austrian imperial army, unlike its Prussian counterpart, does not command much historical respect. In Joseph Roth's great 1932 novel Radetzky March, which chronicles the rise and fall of the Trotta family, the decay of the Habsburgs is intimately linked with the collapse of the army. During the Battle of Solferino in 1859, Lieutenant Trotta, a Slovenian subject, saves the emperor's life. He is promptly ennobled for his heroic act. Every Austrian schoolboy is taught to revere him. But by the third generation, the family has gone to pot. The grandson, a cavalry officer, exemplifies none of the martial values of his forebears. Instead, the depressive young gentleman, stationed on the border with Ukraine, spends his time drinking, gambling and womanizing.

In his superb new book, For God and Kaiser, Richard Bassett examines the central role the imperial army played in Austria. While this fighting force was undeniably in dire straits by 1914, he argues that it has gotten something of a bum rap. For several centuries, it displayed a remarkable capacity to adapt and innovate. Bassett believes that the army expressed the idea that dynastic, cultural and economic relations were more important than national identity. Indeed, the army became a remarkably successful tool for state formation and provided cohesion even as nationalism became a greater force. Hence the last emperor, Charles I, remarked in 1918 that "all the peoples of the monarchy have found a common home in the army."

Bassett quite rightly opens with the crisis in 1619 that almost toppled the Habsburgs from power. Ferdinand II, who had inherited the Austrian branch of the Habsburg lands Charles V divided in 1556, faced a revolt by Protestant nobles in the Holy Roman Empire. The Bohemian magnates confronted Ferdinand, only to retreat when the arrival of loyal cavalry prevented them from compelling the emperor's submission to their demands. The incident forged a bond of mutual support between the Habsburgs and their army. The army existed first and foremost to secure the dynasty. Duty shaped what became a Habsburg way of war that emphasized resilience over risk and used strategic depth to recover from initial defeat. No commander would risk the destruction of his army, lest such defeat endanger the dynasty. Instead, defensive tactics or strategies served offensive ends. War always remained at the service of politics to reinforce diplomacy.

Besides saving Ferdinand, the incident marked a notable turn in the struggle between Protestants and Catholics in Central Europe. As the Reformation divided Europe, Ferdinand preferred seeing his lands burnt to a cinder to tolerating Protestantism in his domains. Bohemia-now the Czech Republic--was determined to resist. Other territories stood on the brink of open rebellion. Ferdinand had few troops that he controlled directly. Catholic princes cared little more for his authority than their Protestant counterparts did. Necessity compelled him to find commanders willing to raise an army from private funds. Their victories provided the means to make the new system work even as Ferdinand's treasury ran empty.

The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) began when rebels in Prague elected the Protestant Frederick as king of Bohemia. It quickly became a wider conflict, but an imperial victory over Protestant forces at the famous Battle of White Mountain regained Bohemia for the Habsburgs. Captured land enabled Ferdinand's commander Albrecht von Wallenstein to forge an army that resembled the condottieri of the early Italian Renaissance. Wallenstein's ambitions to establish a realm of his own ended in his assassination, but the force he built pledged its loyalty to the Habsburgs. Like Catholic religious orders promoting the Counter-Reformation, it had a distinct international flair. The army also developed innovative tactics and an effective system of finance and supply. A service nobility loyal to the Habsburg dynasty emerged among officers who took lands and titles. The...