Fall of Empires/Franz Josef’s Armies
Austro-Hungarian Infantry, Part Two
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2024

Beyond the line infantry of three more or less separate regular armies, Austria-Hungary – in keeping with every other Imperial institution – fielded a bewildering array of other units, many of them filling a role very similar to that of the infantry.

That arose from two sources. First, the power of tradition. Austria-Hungary’s more conservative elements – which definitely included the military establishment, the court and much of the government’s senior levels – was firmly in the grasp of historicism. This way of thought held that history was vital and alive, and one could garner valuable present-day lessons from it. In such a society, tradition held great power. The Army might be made up of more than a dozen nationalities, speaking more than a dozen languages, but they could all come together to rally around the symbols of the past. Those symbols represented an ancient Empire and an ideal of unity, a direct counter to the nationalism festering across Europe in the last decades of the 19th Century and first decade and a half of the 20th.

Second, Austria-Hungary was less wealthy than its rivals, and less willing to extract capital from its rapidly-growing economy for military purposes. The Dual Monarchy conscripted and trained a far lower proportion of its young men then any of its allies or rivals, and it didn’t maintain a structure of reserve or second-line units once the two national armies (the Imperial-Royal Austrian Landwehr and Royal Hungarian Honvédség) were elevated to the same regular status as the Common Army in 1908. When war came, the men who should have been inducted into those units and trained in peacetime were herded into ad hoc units, handed a black-yellow armband and a fifty-year-old rifle, and sent out in waves to die for their Emperor or King.

Let’s have a look at a few of these units, found in Infantry Attacks: Franz Josef's Armies and the core game, Infantry Attacks: Fall of Empires. We’ll address Austria-Hungary’s unique mountain warfare establishment in another installment.

Feldjäger

For centuries, Austrian armies had deployed light infantry, called jägers (“hunters”) and usually raised from foresters, hunters and gamekeepers on a temporary basis. These became regular battalions during the Napoleonic Wars, and the Feldjäger battalions were among the few Austrian units to come out of the 1866 Austro-Prussian War with their reputation enhanced. Trained to fight in open order and rely on marksmanship rather than massed fire, usually they had instead been used as elite assault infantry to spearhead the storm columns formed by the brigades to which they were attached. In a few instances, brigade commanders had instead taken advantage of their riflery to great advantage.

Afterwards, the Army proved reluctant to do away with them even as it became accepted that future battles would be waged by infantry fighting in open order and deploying their marksmanship rather than their bayonets. If the line infantry fought like jägers, did the army need separate jäger battalions? Of course it did. The Feldjäger received recruits from the Dual Monarchy’s mountainous areas, the ones that didn’t raise dedicated mountain units, and helped even out the number of conscripts sent to regiments as population growth gave some districts more men than their assigned units could absorb.

The Feldjäger retained their prestige, attracting the best newly-commissioned officers from the military academy and the cadet schools. They also received the first pick of each recruiting class in their district. What they lacked was a coherent role in the new model of warfare.

In August 1914, the Common Army had 32 Feldjäger battalions, one of them of Bosniaken. Previously, three battalions had been incorporated into the Kaiserjäger regiments. Each battalion had four jäger companies, organized just like the rifle companies of line regiments. Like the rifle companies of the infantry regiments, the troops were armed exclusively with the M95 Ruck-Zuck, with no automatic weapons.

A Feldjäger battalion also included a machine-gun platoon with two weapons, just like those of the infantry regiments. Four Feldjäger battalions had three field companies, as they were called, with the fourth company mounted on collapsible bicycles. The cyclist company had its own machine-gun platoon in addition to the battalion platoon, with two trucks attached the allow the machine-gunners to keep up with the cyclists.

Pre-war organizational charts gave each Common Army division a Feldjäger battalion, but in practice they were assigned to brigades just like infantry battalions. The Landwehr and Honvédség did not include Feldjäger battalions; these formations were unique to the Common Army.

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Landsturm

Once the Landwehr and the Honvédség had been upgraded to first-line status, Austria-Hungary no longer had a second-line reserve force. The Landsturm contained older men who had passed out of their reservist obligation, and those who had never been called to the colors (having drawn lucky draft numbers) and were no longer eligible to be called (having reached the age of 34).

Established in 1887, when the Landwehr and Honvédség still filled the role of second-line forces, the Landsturm had no formal organization beyond small officer cadres for seventeen regiments (later increased to nineteen) in Austria and 32 (increased by one when war broke out) in Hungary. Because it took the place of the two national armies as a militia force, it was administered by the two national defense ministries rather than the Common Army.

Austro-Hungarian Landsturm men. Galicia, 1915.

The Landsturm took what was left over after mobilization: the old dark blue uniform tunics replaced in 1907, or sometimes no uniform at all but a back-and-yellow armband instead. The fortunate ones received the M.88 or M.90 Mannlicher repeating rifle, the less-reliable predecessor of the M.95, or the M.14 “Mexican Mauser” confiscated from an order placed by the Mexican government for licensed Mauser rifles (most of these went to the Imperial and Royal Navy and its brigade of Marines). The rest carried the Werndl M.1867 single-shot breechloading rifle, a black-powder weapon adopted in the wake of the disastrous Austro-Prussian War. The Werndl fired a massive 11mm bullet that would stop an elephant but the rounds could not be carried in great numbers (and also, unlike modern rifle ammunition, set off a massive cloud of blinding, telltale black smoke when fired). Ammunition supply was further hindered by the single-shot nature of the rifle; soldiers tended to grab a handful of rounds from their cartridge box and place them on the ground next to them for easier access rather than fiddle with the box’s cover after each shot. When they moved, the rounds would often be left behind on the ground.

Landsturm companies followed the Landwehr/Honvédség tables of organization, at least nominally. They seldom had enough officers for all of the positions within a company, and with the entire Imperial and Royal military establishment hurting for qualified non-commissioned officers there were few to spare for the Landsturm. The men had never been organized into formations during peacetime, many had no military training, and they were led by small cadres of officers already rejected for service in regular formations. They had no artillery support, no machine guns and no logistical, medical or engineering services, yet they attacked with notable enthusiasm, which simply added to the casualty lists. Committing them to combat in August 1914 was a criminal act. Yet it happened anyway, thanks to the hubris and vainglory of Franz Conrad von Hötzendorff.

March Battalions

Each regiment in the Common Army and Honvédség – but not the Landwehr – formed replacement battalions at their home station, to train new recruits to fill losses in the ranks. They would then be formed into March battalions, regiments and brigades for dispatch to the front (with Landwehr replacements marching along with their Common Army comrades). At the front, these March units would be dissolved and their men distributed to their parent regiments – unless the higher commands (corps or army receiving them) chose to commit them directly to combat.

In August 1914, that’s exactly what happened with only rare exception. Despite the massive losses suffered by the line regiments in the early days of the campaign, the March brigades were committed directly to combat instead of replenishing the battered battalions of the infantry divisions.

The troops of the March battalions were young men, for the most part, and in August 1914 chiefly reservists who had been surplus to the regiment’s needs when it marched off to war. So they usually had at least some military training, plus uniforms and weapons – March battalions almost always included a platoon of replacement machine-gunners complete with their machine guns. What they didn’t have was any unit cohesion, and not many officers to lead them. As such, they died in droves went sent into combat. They had no artillery support except whatever guns a nearby division might choose to lend them.

March units appear in Franz Josef’s Armies (but not in Fall of Empires); they use the same pieces as Landsturm infantry.

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Infantry Attacks Package
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      Fall of Empires
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      Winter’s Battle
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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 a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his dog, Leopold. Leopold enjoyed eating bugs and editing Wikipedia pages.

Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.