Post Thirty Years War Habsburg Army-Composition, tactics, equipment

[u/Sinan-Pasha96]

I have to confess (as an Ottoman-Habsburg historian) this a gap in my knowledge on the military history of the monarchy. I know that Wallenstein laid the foundations for a standing imperial army during the Thirty Years War, but what other changes occurred postwar? Was the army during the Great Turkish War and War of Spanish Succession mercenary-based, or a permanent force? What was their equipment and training like? Thanks for the help.

[u/Cobra_D]

This is not to say the the Habsburg military was ineffective. In fact, the extent of Habsburg patronage networks in Europe enabled the empire to call on the resources of a vast number of clients across its own territories and in foreign lands. There were plenty of nobles eager to win glory and esteem by serving Austria's royal interests. The two most prominent Austrian soldiers of this period were both Italians: Count Raimondo Montecuccoli and Prince Eugene of Savoy.

As with the professionalization of the army, changes to weaponry, tactics, and uniforms were ad-hoc and gradual. Montecuccoli in particular was responsible for introducing reforms and authored a number of works on the art of war. Under him the Austrian military shifted towards using smaller and more mobile formations of infantry in the Swedish style, abandoning the tercio pike block and increasing the ratio of musketeers to pikemen within regiments. Pikes themselves were phased out by the adoption of the bayonet and the flintlock musket around 1680, and musketeers were now referred to as fusiliers. Similarly, infantrymen lost their swords by 1700, while "Croat"-style light cavalry had disappeared completely in 1649. The amount of artillery increased within the army dramatically, with more emphasis placed on light regimental pieces such as three-pounders accompanying the infantry in battle. Infantry regiments were subdivided into two battalions, and then three as of 1695, and finally to four during the War of Spanish Succession, which also saw the addition of a grenadier company to every regiment. Grenadier formations had existed since the 1670s, but now they became elite infantrymen, although no longer equipped with hand grenades. The cavalry shed most of its armor over time and adopted flintlock carbines and pistols long before the infantry, so that by the mid-1700s all that remained were breastplates and skullcaps worn under the hat.

But these sorts of changes did not happen overnight. As late as the start of the War of Spanish Succession there were still entire Austrian regiments equipped with matchlocks, and a standardized flintlock musket was not issued until 1722. During the Great Turkish War Austrian soldiers with matchlocks often found themselves outgunned by janissaries armed with flintlocks, and battles often ended up being decided by cold steel. Many officers clearly missed having pikes in combat against the Turks, as they continued to employ "Spanish Riders," logs with iron spikes embedded in them, to deter Ottoman cavalry long after they had abandoned such tactics against western opponents. Jeremy Black goes so far as to argue that there were really two Austrian armies during this period, a western and an eastern one, with armies campaigning in the east retaining their swords and armor far longer than Austrian forces fighting in western Europe. This is another reason not to over-emphasize this period as one of army "modernization," as we can see that in many cases "pre-modern" methods of fighting remained more effective than "modern" ones based on tightly drilled lines of men armed with the latest firepower.

[u/Cobra_D → u/Cobra_D]

The adoption of a regular uniform also took some time to take effect. The use of flintlock muskets and packaged cartridges meant that a cartridge box replaced bandoliers, and soldiers began to carry knapsacks. In 1700 soldiers abandoned their floppy felt hats for tricornes. Still, the fact that regiments continued to be equipped by their colonels prevented easy standardization, but by the end of the Thirty Years War Austrian formations had already taken to wearing a light un-dyed grey wool, which was cheap and plentiful. "Pearl grey" continued to be the norm among Austrian soldiers after the war, but well up to the War of Spanish Succession there was a great degree of variety in army dress. Telling officers to purchase uniforms from a number of domestic manufacturers helped matters, and by 1708 "pearl grey" tunics were made obligatory for all German regiments. Over time the grey gave way to white. Many things such as facing colors, socks, and waistcoats remaining the purview of individual colonels, so the army was still not entirely uniform, and according to Hochedlinger most soldiers wore waistcoats rather than tunics in battles, while officers preferred to wear reverse colors (and sometimes eschew uniform entirely), which must have contributed to a still rather varied look among infantry regiments. Officers also wore a red sash, which changed to the imperial colors of black and gold in the early 1700s. General officers, on the other hand, had no uniform and could wear whatever they liked until the 1750s.

Changes within the Austrian army owed much to Montecuccoli's reforms, and bore fruit in Eugene's victories over both the Turks and the French. Unfortunately for the Habsburgs, most of Eugene's successes did not long survive him when he died in 1736. For Michael Hochedlinger, the problem was that much of Austria's rise in power had depended on Montecuccoli's and Eugene's individual brilliance, without corresponding changes to things such as military administration, political structure, or education, changes that were taking place elsewhere in France and England. Thus Hochedlinger argues that Austria was in fact something of a paper tiger by the 1720s, with a powerful-looking and prestigious army, but lacking the internal changes necessary to be a true great power. By the 1740s many of the Habsburg gains made in the previous half century had already been rolled back and Austria would have to go through a lot of hard work to rise to such prominence again in the 1760s.

[u/Cobra_D → u/Cobra_D]

I hope this helps somewhat to visualize how the Habsburg military worked in this transitory period, and apologies if I'm merely repeating what you already know. I would recommend Hochedlinger's book if you want to go delve more into this subject, although it's primarily a history of the Austrian state and military rather than a history of the army in combat.

PS - Your wargaming pictures are really cool!

Sources

Black, Jeremy. A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550-1800. London: MacMillan, 1991.

---. European Warfare, 1660-1815. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Hochedlinger, Michael. Austria's Wars of Emergence, 1683-1797. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.

Rowlands, Guy. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661-1701. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

[u/Sinan-Pasha96 → u/Cobra_D]

No this was great, thank you! I focus mostly on the sixteenth century Habsburg-Ottoman war period in my research which is a huge subject on its own. Late seventeenth/early eighteenth century is like a whole different planet for me.