Fall of Empires/Franz Josef’s Armies
Austro-Hungarian Infantry
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2022

The striking power of the Austro-Hungarian Army – like all of the powers of 1914 – lay in its infantry. Given the crapulence of Austria-Hungary artillery at the outbreak of war, the infantry had to bear even more of the burden of combat than in other armies, and did so at the cost of horrific casualties even by the bloody standards of August 1914.

Austria-Hungary went to war with 48 infantry divisions and a collection of independent brigades. Of those divisions, 32 came from the Common Army and eight each from the national armies, the Imperial-Royal Austrian Landwehr and the Royal Hungarian Honvédség. That yielded sixteen three-division corps, each with two Common Army divisions and one from a national army.

On paper, a Common Army division had sixteen infantry battalions, in four regiments of four battalions each. A Landwehr or Honvédség division had a dozen infantry battalions, in four regiments of three battalions each; the national army regiments had switched from four to three battalions in 1908 to increase the number of divisions that would eventually be organized from them. In all three regular armies, the divisions followed a “square” pattern, with two brigades in each division in turn controlling two regiments each.

Even in August 1914, marching to the front from their mobilization centers, nearly every infantry division had multiple exceptions to the official tables of organization. Some regiments went to war with only three of their battalions, or with independent Feldjäger (light infantry) battalions attached in place of one or more infantry battalions. Some divisions had a third brigade, sometimes with both of its regiments, sometimes just one. A few brigades had a third regiment.

The Common Army fielded 102 infantry regiments in 1914, with another 35 from the Landwehr and 32 from the Honvédség plus four of Bosniaken. Each had its own recruiting district, with some districts reserved for mountain units and three regimental districts for the Imperial and Royal Navy.

Let’s have a look at Austro-Hungarian regular infantry (not including the huge array of special units) found in Infantry Attacks: Franz Josef's Armies and the core game, Infantry Attacks: Fall of Empires.

Infantry

An infantry battalion, whatever its service origin, had four rifle companies. Each company had a total of 240 men, divided into four rifle platoons. Each platoon in turn had four sections, each known as a schwarm. Thanks to the willingness of the respective parliaments to fund their own national armies at a higher standard than the Common Army, the Landwehr and Honvédség actually had a larger peacetime establishment than the Imperial and Royal companies – but a slightly smaller wartime strength (not enough to make a difference in game terms). Infantry battalions were numbered I through IV within their regiment (or I through III in the national armies), and infantry companies numbered 1 through 16 (or 1 through 12). Bosniaken, officially part of the Common Army except for their unique recruiting and uniform regulations, followed the Common Army’s organization.

All Austro-Hungarian infantrymen carried the Mannlicher M95 single-pull bolt-action rifle, a rugged weapon noted for its unusual single action; Austrian troops called it the Ruck-Zuck (back-forth). Also, in typically Austrian phrasing, a play on the sound it made when a round was chambered. Following the serial failures of previous candidates, the Ruck-Zuck underwent intense testing in the 1890’s, including a torture test of 50,000 rounds without lubrication, and passed easily.

The Ruck-Zuck, with its single-pull action.

That single pull allowed the rifleman to fire at a much faster rate than the standard double-action rifles used by just about all of Austria-Hungary’s allies and enemies. Before the war the Rifle School labored ceaselessly to establish the primacy of fire in infantry tactics, but in practice the 248mm (9.8-inch) bayonet became the true weapon. Austro-Hungarian infantry tactics called for frontal assaults delivered immediately upon contact with the enemy, but in open order, not closely-packed storm columns as in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War. The nuances went out the window and the infantry pressed forward shoulder-to-shoulder; at least the stoutly-made M95 made for a solid bayonet holder.

All three armies issued the M95 to their front-line forces in August 1914, with Honvéds (of course) carrying a rifle license-made in Budapest. In 1914, like rifle companies in other armies, the Austro-Hungarian organization included no automatic weapons, only rifles. Both officers and non-commissioned officers carried swords (of different pattern), while Bosniaken wielded a heavy fighting knife known as a handschar.

Machine Guns

In the Common Army and the Austrian Landwehr, each regiment had a machine-gun detachment; of four platoons in the Common Army and three platoons in the Landwehr, usually parceled out to the battalions but in rare instances held together to defend a particular location or lend weight to the point of attack. The Hungarian Honvédség made that practice part of doctrine, with the machine-gun platoon a formal part of the infantry battalion. The national armies organized their machine-gun detachments starting in 1908. By 1914, the Austrian Landwehr had all of their machine guns but some Honvédség battalions s till lacked theirs when they mobilized for war.

The standard Austro-Hungarian machine gun in August 1914, the Schwarzlose M.08, had been designed by a German, Andreas Schwarzlose, and chosen primarily because it was the cheapest of the competing designs. It was a standard weapon of the era: tripod-mounted, water-cooled and belt-fed with an 8mm cartridge. In Austro-Hungarian service, it had a hinged splinter shield to protect the crew, that could be lowered to give a clear field of view. Ammunition for the Schwarzlose machine gun and Mannlicher rifle were ordered and stored separately, but the cartridges were actually interchangeable. Each belt had 250 rounds, and came in a metal box with a convenient carrying handle.

An Austro-Hungarian machine-gun platoon had two of the weapons, each manned by a crew of three with five additional men to spot and to carry ammunition. The machine-gun detachment of four platoons totaled five officers and 157 men, with nearly half of them devoted to the ammunition train (beyond those in the platoons who were tasked with carrying extra belts). The machine guns themselves, when not deployed for battle, were transported by mules, with additional wagons for repair tolls and, of course, more ammunition – for all of its flaws, the Imperial and Royal Army knew logistics, and understood that automatic weapons were useless without spare barrels and plentiful ammunition.

When second-line Landsturm units began to appear at the front for extended periods, some of them were issued the older M.1893 Salvator-Dormus machine gun, which had never been used by the Imperial and Royal Army in large numbers. These platoons do not appear in Fall of Empires or Franz Josef’s Armies.

You can order Franz Josef's Armies right here.
Please allow an extra four weeks for delivery.

Sign up for our newsletter right here. Your info will never be sold or transferred; we'll just use it to update you on new games and new offers.

Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold. Leopold knows the number.

Want to keep Daily Content free of third-party ads? You can send us some love (and cash) through this link right here.