Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 46. (1998)

LUND, Erik: The generation of 1683: Habsburg General Officers and the military technical Corps, 1686–1723

THE GENERATION OF 1683:

Habsburg General Officers and the military technical Corps, 1686-1723

by Erik Lund

Introduction

This article is an inquiry into the social role and composition of the artillerist and engineer generals of the Habsburg general officer corps during the War of the Spanish Succession and the conflicts which immediately preceded or followed it, from 1683 to 1740. However, in order to place that corps in its larger context, it also includes a prosopographic profile of the whole Habsburg general officer corps of this period: or, to narrow the sample slightly, at least those promoted between 1686 and 1723. The second portion of this study is necessary because there has never been a thorough prosopographic study. In itself this is not surprising, for as late as the 1950s, little was known of the social makeup of any of the armies of the old regime. Further, this deficiency was so well addressed in the French case by Andre Corvisier in his L’armée frangaise (1964), and “Les généreaux de Louis XIV et leur origine sociale,“ (1959), as to remove some of the urgency from parallel studies of the Habsburg case. This was especially true because Corvisier’s “little known corps of famous individuals“ retained a degree of cosmopolitan character which strongly suggested that its more common features could be extrapolated to other European armies. While Corvisier’s findings could not be directly applied to the Habsburg case, several limited studies, including Thomas Barker’s investigation of the family makeup of Habsburg army commanders, Christopher Duffy’s study of holders of the Cross of Maria Theresa, Jean-Michel Thiriet’s examination of the wills of Habsburg officers, and studies of the Bavarian officer corps in 1704 cited by John Stoye tended to suggest that they could be confidently extrapolated to the Habsburg case. Further, these authors built up a formidable consensus on the regional and confessional origins of the Habsburg officer corps. Not surprisingly, the results presented below will confirm that the inferences drawn by these authors are correct1.

1 Corvisier, André: L’armée franyaise de la fin du XVIIe siécle au ministére de Choiseul. Vol. 1. 2. Paris 1964 and Les généreaux de Louis XIV et leur origine sociale. Paris 1959. Influential studies of the composition of the officer corps will be found in B a r k e r, Thomas: Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism. Habsburg Models. In: Journal of European Studies 4 (1974), p. 35; Duffy, Christopher: Army of Maria Theresa. The Armed Forces of Imperial Austria. Newton Abbot 1977, pp. 65-68; Dufly’s survey is drawn from Hirtenfeid, Jaromir: Der Militär-Maria-Theresien-Orden und seine Mitglieder. Vol. 1. 2. Vienna 1857, Vol. 1, pp. 32-748; Vol. 2, pp. 1363-1718 and 1763-74. Thiriet, Jean-Michel: Com- portement et mentalité des officiers autrichiens au XVIIIe siécle. In: Mitteilungen des Österreichischen

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