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

It is surely beyond the bounds of plausibility that only one Habsburg general officer over this long period was born bourgeois. Thus, the existence of but one case in the literature makes it extraordinary in its own right: but the evidence here is equally extraordinary. Because Börner was an interesting case for nationalist military historians of the nineteenth century, the graveyards and parish records had already been searched by the time his very brief biography was written for the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. No evidence was turned up to correct the charming anecdote which incidentally recorded his humble origins, reported by a popular Vienna anecdotist of the eighteenth century. However, from quite a different line of research came the news that Börner, Prince Eugene’s favorite gunner, and the glorious commander of the artillery at the siege of Vienna, might have been a Mecklenburger noble. Al- phons von Wrede had from any reasonable perspective the last word when he chose to remain agnostic as to Bömer’s origins, but the intriguing role played in Mecklenburg politics by Börner’s second-in-command of 1683, Johann Maria, Freiherr Gschwind [or Geschwind] von Pöckstein (d. 1721) whose great-grandfather had commanded the artillery at the first siege of Vienna in 1527 and who can therefore be taken as a birth noble, at least suggests that Gschwind might have been a Mecklenburger and indicates where the confusion arose. It is probably going too far to say that Börner is the commoner and Gschwind the noble, but we can say that when we know more about the one, we shall probably be able to solve the mystery of the other. At least these explorations serve to bring home the rarity of a biographic source willing to admit the existence of a born-bourgeois general, and the extraordinary story of Gschwind himself, a military noble of ancient antecedents, who appears to have regarded the artillery as the family calling. The relationship between nobility and generalship, and that between the status of artillerist and noble, is more complex than has sometimes been allowed6.

Table 1 at the end of this article shows the birthdates of the generals in this sample. While members were born as early as 1620 and as late as 1698, the 1660-1665 birth cohort, “the Generation of 1683“, shows a remarkable numerical predominance. This phenomena is partially explained by the rapid military buildup in 1682-83, which naturally drew many young men in the prime recruiting years of 17-22, born

Grande dizionario enciclopedico. Torino 1966-1991; Valeri, Aldo (Ed.): I Condottieri e Generali del Seicento. In: Enciclopedia Biografica Bibliografica Italiana. Vol. 20. Roma 1943; Vlasák, Franz: Der altböhmische Adel und seine Nachkommenschaft nach dem dreissigjährigen Kriege. Prag 1866; Wurzbach: Biographisches Lexikon and Zedier, Johann Heinrich: Grosses vollständiges Universal- Lexicon. Vol. 1-64. Leipzig-Halle 1732-1750, reprinted Graz 1961-1964 and Lu do vici, Carl Günther: Nöthige Supplemente zu dem Grossen Vollständigen Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste. Vol. 1-4. Leipzig 1751-1754; only works actually used are cited; because of lingustic ambiguities, some German names included above are probably Germanised forms of Czech or Fleming names; Italians in the sample can be further broken down to 6 Milanese, 3 Neapolitan, 3 Piedmontese, and 2 Bolognese, plus two Veteranis, whose fief of Montcalvo may indicate Udinese or Milanese origin. T r u c c o, Dizionario, Vol. 12, p. 750.

6 Duffy: Fortress Warfare, p. 231; Barker, Thomas Mack: Double Eagle and Crescent. Vienna's Second Turkish Siege and its Historical Setting. Albany 1967, p. 254; Wrede: K. und k. Wehrmacht, Vol. 4, pp. 150 and 678f; Hughes, Michael: Law and Society in Eighteenth Century Germany. The Imperial Aulic Council in the Age of Charles VI. Woodbridge 1988, p. 67.

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