The Habsburg Monarchy has received much historiographical attention since 1945. Yet the military aspects of Austria’s emergence as a European great power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have remained obscure. This book shows that force of arms and the instruments of the early modern state were just as important as its marriage policy in creating and holding together the Habsburg Monarchy. Drawing on an impressive up-to-date bibliography as well as on original archival research, this survey is the first to put Vienna’s military back at the centre stage of early modern Austrian history.
Russia's emergence as a Great Power in the eighteenth century is usually attributed to Peter I's radical programme of 'Westernising' reforms. But the Russian military did not simply copy European armies. Adapting the tactics of its neighbours on both sides, Russia created a powerful strategy of its own, integrating steppe defence with European concerns. In Russia's Wars of Emergence, Carol Belkin Stevens examines the social and political factors underpinning Muscovite military history, the eventual success of the Russian Empire and the sacrifices made for power.
In the late spring of 1718 near the village of Pozarevac (German Passarowitz) in northern Serbia, freshly conquered by Habsburg forces, three delegations representing the Holy Roman Emperor, Ottoman Sultan, and the Republic of Venice gathered to end the conflict that had begun three and a half years earlier. The fighting had spread throughout southeastern Europe, from Hungary to the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese. The peace redrew the map of the Balkans, extending the reach of Habsburg power, all but expelling Venice from the Greek mainland, and laying the foundations for Ottoman revitalization during the Tulip period. In this volume, twenty specialists analyze the military background to and political context of the peace congress and treaty. They assess the immediate significance of the Peace of Passarowitz and its longer term influence on the society, demography, culture, and economy of central Europe.
The Sinews of Habsburg Power explores the domestic foundations of the immense growth of central European Habsburg power from the rise of a permanent standing army after the Thirty Years' War to the end of the Napoleonic wars. With a force that grew irregularly in size from around 25,000 soldiers to as many as half a million in the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Habsburg monarchy participated in shifting international constellations of rivalry from western Europe to the Near East and in some two dozen, partly overlapping armed conflicts. Raising forces of such magnitude constituted a central task of Habsburg government, one that ultimately required the cooperation of society and its elites. The monarchy's composite-territorial structures in the guise of the Lower Austrian Estates -- a leading representative body and privileged corps -- formed a vital, if changing, element underlying Habsburg international success and resilience. With its capital at Vienna, the archduchy below the river Enns (the historic designation of Lower Austria) was geographically, politically, and financially a key Habsburg possession. Fiscal-military exigency induced the Estates to take part in new and evolving arrangements of power that served the purposes of government; in turn the Estates were able in previously little-understood ways and within narrowing boundaries to preserve vital interests in a changing world. The Estates survived because they were necessary, not only thanks to their increasing financial potency, but also because they offered a politically viable way of exacting ever-larger quantities of money, men, and other resources from local society. These circumstances would persist as ruling became more regularized, formalized, and homogenized, and as the very understanding of the Estates as a social and political phenomenon was evolving.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Maps -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Glossary -- Introduction: The belated great power -- Modest Origins - the Habsburg Monarchy During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century -- 1. The domestic foundations -- The question of terminology -- The territorial and administrative configuration of the Habsburg Monarchy -- Limited absolutism: the provincial Estates -- Economy -- Finances -- 2. The primacy of power politics -- The instruments of foreign policy -- From domestic to foreign policy: the Habsburgs and the Reich after 1648 -- Geopolitical challenges and responses -- 3. Home defence -- Feudal levy and peasant militia in the Austro-Bohemian lands -- Hungary -- The Military Border (Militärgrenze) -- The contribution of the Reich -- 4. The standing army -- Origins and growth -- The High Command -- The officer corps -- Military administration -- Artillery -- Technical branches -- The guards -- Weaponry -- Military industries -- Uniforms -- Quarters and provisions -- Soldiers' families and the baggage train -- Military justice -- Religion -- Medical service and disabled soldiers -- Tactics, strategy and the primacy of logistics -- Austria's 'age of heroes' 1683-1733 -- 5. The Turkish War 1683-1699 -- The Kuruc rebellion -- The siege of Vienna -- The Habsburg counter-offensive -- 6. The Nine Years War 1689-1697 -- The 'reunions' -- The French invasion of Germany -- From stalemate to peace -- 7. The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714 -- The Spanish inheritance -- The Italian peninsula -- Germany -- The Spanish Netherlands -- Spain -- The peace treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden 1713-1714 -- The Rákóczy rebellion 1703-1711 -- 8. Renewed expansion -- The Turkish War of 1716-1718 -- Trade expansion.
The Treaties of Carlowitz (1699) presents studies on the Lega Sacra War of 1683-1699 against the Ottoman Empire, the Peace treaties of Carlowitz (1699), and the legacy of the conflict for Modern Europe, the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire.
The Peace of Westphalia (1648), ending the Thirty Years' War, resulted in the rise of the modern European states system. However, dynasticism, power politics, commerce, and religion continued to be the main issues driving International politics and warfare. Dr. William Young examines war and diplomacy during the Age of Louis XIV and Peter the Great. His study focuses on the later part of the Franco-Spanish War, the Wars of Louis XIV, and the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the West. In addition, the author explores the wars of the Baltic Region and East Europe, including the Thirteen Years' War, Second Northern War, War of the Holy League, and the Great Northern War. The study includes a guide to the historical literature concerning war and diplomacy during this period. It includes bibliographical essays and a valuable annotated bibliography of over six hundred books, monographs, dissertations, theses, journal articles, and essays published in the English language. International Politics and Warfare in the Age of Louis XIV and Peter the Great is a valuable resource for individuals interested in the history of diplomacy, warfare, and Early Modern Europe.
This edited volume explores conscription in the Napoleonic era, tracing the roots of European conscription and exploring the many methods that states used to obtain the manpower they needed to prosecute their wars. The levée-en-masse of the French Revolution has often been cited as a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’, but was it truly a ‘revolutionary’ break with past European practices of raising armies, or an intensification of the scope and scale of practices already inherent in the European military system? This international collection of scholars demonstrate that European conscription has far deeper roots than has been previously acknowledged, and that its intensification during the Napoleonic era was more an ‘evolutionary’ than ‘revolutionary’ change. This book will be of much interest to students of Military History, Strategic Studies, Strategic History and European History.
Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.
