BERKOVICH Ilya (Institute of Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
It is generally agreed that – as far as the Habsburg Monarchy was concerned – the Peace of Campo Formio (17 October 1797) was not intended to lead to a long term accommodation with Revolutionary France.[1] Suffice to say that despite the new treaty, the Austrian army was not scaled down for peacetime service. Infantry regiments on both the German and Hungarian military establishments were kept at wartime footing of more than 4,500 soldiers until the conflict resumed in March 1799.[2] A further element indicates that Austria set its sight on another war and hints at what one of the aims would be. While the Austrian Netherlands were formally ceded to the French at Campo Formio, the Habsburg military establishment of these provinces was retained. Known colloquially as ‘Walloons’, the five infantry and one cavalry Netherlandish régiments nationaux – together with smaller detachments of artillery, jägers and garrison troops – retreated with the rest of the Habsburg army after the defeats of 1794 and 1795. Austrian military records defined soldiers based on their place of birth. At a strike of a pen, Campo Formio was to make these men into foreigners. However, a special administrative category was made for them: Inländer Niederlander.[3] It is not only that the status of the Walloons remained on a par with that of other native-born troops: this choice of wording appears to suggest that the loss of the Low Countries was not yet seen as final, alluding to the desire that a new victorious war would enable the Habsburg Netherlandish army in exile to return home. Austria’s Walloon soldiers formally became foreigners only after the Treaty of Luneville (9 February 1801) forced the Habsburg Monarchy to concede to the permanent loss of the provinces.
Unlike the defeat of 1797, and although it did not lead to any additional territorial losses,[4] the disappointing results of the Second Coalition War prompted more serious soul-searching among the Austrian political and military elite. Archduke Charles, who was not only Austria’s most successful general, but also an outspoken opponent of new wars against France, was made minister of war. During the first period in which he was put in charge of the army (1801–1805), Charles worked primarily on improving the military administration, rather than the combat effectiveness of the Habsburg troops.[5] The six Walloon infantry regiments were among the first to be affected. Shortly after Luneville, it was decided to allocate these regiments with their own recruitment districts within the current borders of the Monarchy. The newest 6th Walloon Infantry Regiment (or 63rd Infantry Regiment) was to stay in Veneto as part of the reconstituted Italian military establishment of the Habsburg Army. The other five Walloon regiments, which had fought in the recent campaign in Germany, were to be posted to Galicia. The 38th and 55th Regiments were allocated to West Galicia (sometimes called ‘New’ Galicia’), namely the lands Austria had taken more recently at the Third Partition of Poland (1795). The remaining three regiments were sent to East Galicia, whose lands the Habsburgs had ruled since the First Partition in 1772. Surviving monthly reports of the 58th Regiment ‘Beaulieu’ and the 30th Regiment ‘De Ligne’ show that the units began their march eastward in early April 1801. The 58th Regiment arrived at its new headquarters in Stanislau (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) in June. The 30th Regiment took a longer march via Hungary taking garrison in Lemberg (Lviv, Ukraine) on 10 September that year.[6]
The transfer of the bulk of the former Walloon establishment into Galicia prompted the first major change of the monarchy’s conscription arrangements in 20 years. Formally enacted by Joseph II in 1781 in the German (that is Austro-Bohemian) part of the Monarchy, the Conscriptions- und Werb-Bezirks-System replaced a looser provincial conscription system (Landesrekruttenstellung) with clearly defined regimental recruitment districts. An exception to this new rule was the newly acquired lands of Galicia and Bukowina. Their area was subdivided into auxiliary districts for the German regiments. Galician conscripts were thus spread across more than 30 Austro-Bohemian infantry units. For example, in 1791 Galician conscripts made more than 40 per cent of the Private Soldiers of the 23rd Lower Austrian and 14th Upper Austrian Infantry Regiments ‘Preiß’ and ‘Klebeck’.[7] Originally, the decision to divide Galician conscripts among the entire German Establishment was based on the view that the population of these lands was untrustworthy.[8] The arrival of the Walloons in 1801 forced the Habsburg military authorities to put an end to that belief. Now Galicia was given its own military units for the very first time. To underscore that this affiliation was to be enduring, the most senior of the former Walloon units the 9th Line Infantry Regiment, whose proprietorship had been vacant ever since Count Clerfayt died in 1798, was given to one of the greatest local magnates, Prince Adam Casimir Czartoryski. In parallel, to make place for the new arrivals, the six Inner Austrian regiments (Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Goriza) lost their Galician auxiliary recruitment districts. This process was repeated again when the Habsburgs lost more lands in the west in 1805 with Tyrolean, Outer Austrian and Italian regiments all transferred to Galicia. In 1808, the majority of the remaining Galician auxiliary district were dissolved. The province was now to hold 12 full infantry regiments, together with another 12 battalions of the Moravian-Silesian regional command. While Austria’s defeats in the west remained the root cause of this change, the move of the Walloons to Galicia played a role in the region’s eventual military integration into the Habsburg Monarchy.
The transfer to Galicia has been commonly seen as the end of the régiments nationaux. General Gustave Guillaume, who wrote the first comprehensive history of the Walloon troops in Habsburg service, concludes his account with 1801 – as did Bruno Peeters in his important studies of the social history of the Walloons in several preceding issues of the current journal. Bruno Colson’s recent book on the subject reminds us of the numerous Walloon officers who choose to remain in the Austrian army and played an important role in the continuing wars against Napoleon, contributing a total of 52 generals.[9] However, it was not only the old military elite of the Austrian Netherlands which remained loyal to the Habsburg Monarchy. Using the manpower reports of the 1803 muster of the 30th Line Infantry Regiment ‘De Ligne’, the current article sets to examine the continuing Walloon presence in the former régiments nationaux. As we shall see, this included not only Prince De Ligne and the senior regimental officers, but also numerous subalterns, NCOs and Private Soldiers. Two years after the regiment was transferred to Galicia, about a tenth of its manpower were veterans of the former military establishment of the Austrian Netherlands. Even more interestingly, for each of these ‘Old’ Walloons, there was at least one soldier who can be termed as ‘New’ Walloon. These were natives of the Austrian Netherlands who enlisted after the last Habsburg troops left the province following the surrender of Luxembourg in June 1795. Also included in this group are the sons of officers and soldiers who followed their fathers’ footsteps by taking service as Cadets, drummer boys and Private Soldiers. Another major group among the New Walloons were recruits who came from the lands bordering the former Habsburg Low Countries. As denoted by their name, the Walloon troops were national regiments recruited among native subjects. However, as nearly every other military at that time the régiments nationaux were also willing to take foreign volunteers. Yet most of these foreigners were not landless mercenaries, but came directly from the neighbouring territories across the border: the Prince-Bishopric of Liege, the Imperial Abbey of Stavelot, the Dutch Republic, and – most importantly – France.[10] Men from these lands continued to be enlisted into the regiment long after 1795. Furthermore, their proportion among the regiment’s foreign-born soldiers indicates that there was a clear wish to supplement recruits from the former Habsburg possessions with foreign French and Dutch speakers. At least during the immediate aftermath of its re-classification as a Galician unit, Regiment ‘De Ligne’ was pro-actively trying to maintain its original human composition and regimental identity.
The source material for this article is the papers of the 1803 peacetime muster held on 12August 1803 by the 30th Infantry Regiment at its main garrison in Lemberg. This was not the first time the Regiment had been mustered since arriving in Galicia, but the papers of the previous muster held in Lemberg on 3 September 1802 do not survive. In preparation for the physical inspection of the regiment by the military commissary (Kriegscomissarius), extensive paperwork was prepared in advance. Each company received a folio size notebook with pre-printed tables. These were filled in by hand with a list of all men, from the captain to the last private soldier. In addition to the name and rank of every officer and soldier, each entry contains extensive personal information. The place of birth, age, religion, profession, personal status, the legal status of the wife (if relevant), and the names and ages of children (if any), were all meticulously recorded. The entry concluded with a concise summary of the man’s service itinerary. This provided the enlistment date and type, promotions, transfers between different units, and – if relevant – desertions and periods spent as prisoner of war. Altogether, the archival carton holding the 1803 muster of the 30th Infantry Regiment contains a total of 20 company notebooks: two for the grenadiers and 18 for the fusilier companies. The latter group was subdivided between the five staff companies, whose captainships were formally held as honorary appointments by one of the senior staff officers, and 13 companies led by a full captain (Wirklicher Hauptmann). There were two further much thinner notebooks: one for the regimental staff and one for the staff supernumeraries. Also included in these 22 notebooks are intake and outtake tables listing all changes to their manpower since the last inspection. Arranged by date, each individual entry recorded the name, rank and the way in which officers and soldiers joined or left the company. These parts of the table were then combined into a large spreadsheet called Mustertabelle which summed up all the changes to the regimental manpower.[11] With roughly 30 pages per each company notebook, the military clerks (Fouriers) of the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment produced more than 600 handwritten pages. Between them these cover the service records of 2,222 officers, NCOs, Private Soldiers, and non-combatant military personnel. Also included therein is basic information about the legal status of 375 of their spouses, and names and ages of 217 children. The rest of this article is based on that material. We will look at the numbers of Walloon veterans, as well as New Walloons who joined from 1795 onwards, the places from which they came, and the ranks and roles in which they served. Interestingly, the service records of the older veterans bear witness to the importance of the rank and file of the régiments nationaux in the initial success of the Brabant Revolution.
While analysing the paperwork of the 1803 muster, the service records of its Walloon soldiers were collated into a dataset table now available online on the open access depository Zenodo.[12] To qualify as ‘Old’ Walloon, an officer or soldier had to serve at any of the units of the Walloon establishment before the evacuation of Luxembourg. This includes not only natives of the Austrian Netherlands, but also any foreigner who served in a Walloon regiment before that date, irrespective of their land of origin. As they were part of the larger Habsburg army, the régiments nationaux also had a small number of native subjects from other parts of the Monarchy. To distinguish these two groups, and to underscore further important aspects of their military experience, the dataset table shows their years of service in different colours. Time spent with the 30th Infantry Regiment is marked with yellow for Habsburg subjects and brown for foreigners. Service in other units of the Walloon establishment is marked in orange for both groups. If the men also served in a different part of the Habsburg Army, these years are marked in red, and the annual fields of the table are left blank. Other colours employed in the table are black for men who deserted during the Brabant Revolution and light green for all other instances of desertion, marking the calendar year in which these occurred. Light blue shows particularly staunch Habsburg loyalists: taken prisoner by the Patriots in 1789-90, these officers and soldiers preferred to stay captive rather than change sides or leave service. When known, time spent with other military forces is marked with dark violet for allied armies, and with dark blue for Revolutionary France. All other colours are unique and their meaning is explained in the rightmost two columns of the table.
The same colour coding is used to mark the service years of New Walloons. However, the definition of whom to include in that category is narrower than for men who served before 1795. Native New Walloons included only officers and soldiers born in the former Austrian Netherlands or its enfants du corps. Foreign New Walloons were only those men who came from the lands directly adjacent to the former Austrian Netherlands: Liege, Stavelot, Holland and France. This is intended to distinguish native and foreign volunteers who came from the area where Walloon troops were traditionally recruited, and from the mass of Galician conscripts and foreign mercenaries who were regularly transferred into the regiment since it had separated from the Austrian Netherlands.[13] These soldiers had no links to the Walloon establishment, and therefore were not put into our database which is devoted solely to veterans of the original régiments nationaux or such foreigners who would have served in the Walloon regiments, in case the Netherlands had remained under Austrian control. Entries in the dataset are arranged by the rank which men held during the 1803 muster. Commissioned officers are entered first, starting with the senior staff officers, followed by captains (Hauptleute), captain-lieutenants of the staff companies, subaltern officers and cadets. Then come the non-combatant regimental office holders: staff officials, Fouriers, surgeons and Fourierschützen – the personal servants to the senior officers. The next group are the NCOs, starting with the senior staff members: provost, drum major and the regimental flag bearers (Führers). Then come the company NCOs: the sergeant majors (Feldwebel), corporals and Gefreyter. Private soldiers conclude the list. In addition to the grenadiers of the two elite companies and the fusiliers of the remaining 18 ordinary companies, this group includes the pioneers (Zimmerleute), the company musicians, and the Privat Diener of the subaltern officers. Unlike the captains, whose Fourierschützen were maintained by the regiment, the junior officers paid their servants from their own purse.
For each rank, entries of native Habsburg subjects are grouped first, followed by foreigners. Within these groups, the individual entries are ordered chronologically by the date on which the individual officer or soldier began his service on the Walloon establishment. In addition to the colour-coded years of service, each dataset entry contains additional personal details drawn from the regimental muster. For natives of the Austrian Low Countries, the place and province of birth are given. The land is referred in the muster as Niederlanden. Its provinces, as they appear on the muster, are Brabant, Flanders, Hainault, Limburg, Luxembourg and Namur. For all foreigners and for the few native Habsburg subjects who served with the Old Walloons, only the land of birth is noted. For officers, the dataset distinguishes between three groups: those commissioned directly into service, those who entered the army as cadets, and former common soldiers who rose from the ranks. For officers and men who were already in service during the Brabant Revolution, we try to distinguish between loyalists and patriots. When known, the place of enlistment of the New Walloons is given to determine how they came into service, as the regiment had no physical contact with its former homeland.
The total number of individual entries in the dataset is 431, divided roughly half-and-half between Old and New Walloons, with the latter group being slightly larger. This comprised a little under one fifth of the total regimental strength (Table 1).
Table 1: Walloons of the 30th Line Infantry Regiment ‘De Ligne’ (12 August 1803)
Even though the regiment had been separated from the Austrian Netherlands for over eight years, the presence of Walloon soldiers and other French and Dutch speakers in its ranks remained considerable. In 1803, the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment still had 254 native-born Austrian Netherlanders. When we look at the proportions within the different ranks, the prominence of the Walloons in what was supposed to be by now a Galician regiment was even more notable (Table 2).
Table 2: Old vs. New Walloons: Breakdown by Rank
Veterans of the former Netherlandish establishment completely dominated the upper ranks. Among the senior staff officers these were the colonel proprietor (Inhaber), the colonel commandant, the lieutenant colonel and one of the three majors. In a way, the holders of these four senior positions were representative of the upper echelons, not only of the Walloon establishment but also of the Habsburg officer corps as such. As a member of the high nobility, Prince Charles De Ligne, who owned the regiment since 1771, was commissioned directly as captain at the age of 15. The Colonel Commandant Johann van Dalvich, originally from Holland, was also commissioned directly but as an Unterlieutenant. Scion of a Walloon military family, his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Alphons Fusco de Mataloni, bought his commission as Unterlieutenant in 1774. 2nd major Anton Otto von Kirchberg was born in Bohemia and arrived at the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment as recently as 1801. However, by that point he was already a long-serving veteran of the Walloons having spent 13 years with the 55th Line Infantry Regiment, where he was allocated after graduating from the Wiener Neustadt Military Academy in 1778. Together with the 1st major, Prince Philipp zu Hessen-Homburg, and the supernumerary 2nd major, Ernest Graf Herberstein,[14] the staff officers belonged to the first tier of Habsburg officers. They obtained their commissions at young age, entering the army as lieutenants or even captains. While promotion in the Habsburg army was typically by seniority, these men had a substantial head start. In that period, the officer corps could be compared to a sand clock. The main barrier to advancement to senior rank was the promotion to a staff officer, as a Habsburg infantry regiment had between 13 and 15 captains but only one 2nd major. The sooner one started accumulating seniority as captain the higher were the chances to enter the bottleneck by becoming major. On the other hand, the Habsburg army did not have a cap on the number of generals, and these outnumbered the colonel commandants. If one became colonel in a reasonable age, active service or at least retirement as a general officer, were very possible. From the staff officers serving in the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment in 1803, Fusco de Mataloni and Hessen-Homburg rose to become generals, while Dalvich and Otto von Kirchberg were promoted major generals after their retirement.[15]
The captains and the subalterns of the 30th Infantry Regiment were more representative of the diverse social origins of the Habsburg officer corps. Of the 20 company commanders, 15 captains and five captain-lieutenants, seven were commissioned directly, ten entered the army as cadets and three were promoted from the ranks. The latter group included some of the regiments’ longest serving Walloon veterans. Franz Chaveux and Johann Groenvink entered the army as nine-year-old-boys during the War of the Austrian Succession. Both served over 40 years before being commissioned and it took another decade before they rose to Hauptmann. Johann La Fontaine who enlisted as a 14-year-old shortly before the start of the Seven Years War was commissioned much earlier, after only four years in the ranks. However, it then took him 28 years to become captain and he received no further promotion. Among the other veteran captains in the period during which the regiment was based in the Austrian Netherlands, two further important groups of Habsburg officers are represented by Carl MacElligot of Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland; and by Joseph Reichsgraf Sayn von Wittgenstein.[16] Among the captain-lieutenants were two French émigrés: Johann Xavierius Musseu who entered service as private cadet in 1791; and Louis Demolle who transferred into the regiment from the Condé Corps. This said, in 1803 half of the companies were still led by Netherlandish officers.
Of the 45 lieutenants, almost half of the Oberlieutenants and nearly every Unterlieutenant had affiliation to the original Walloon establishment or had joined as New Walloons after 1795. The most senior of the Oberlieutenants, Johann Vever entered the regiment before the end of the Seven Years War and was commissioned in summer 1790 while the war against the Belgian Republic was still ongoing. Two Oberlieutenants, Franz Meininger from Prague and Andreas Hirsch from Haubdorf [possibly Haugsdorf] in Lower Austria, both entered service as common soldiers and arrived in the 30th Infantry Regiment as transferees from the Green Loudon Freikorps. Other subalterns who originally served in the light infantry include Peter Gronenschild, who was commissioned directly into the Archduke Charles’ Legion (originally the ‘Limburg Volunteers’)[17] after raising 35 recruits at his own expense; French émigrés Anna Pierre Hitton and Leonard Lauretan served in the Bussy Jägers and the Tyrolean sharpshooters respectively; Jean Francois Montluissant from Bouvignes-sur-Meuse in the Province of Namur, and Carl Conens from Brussels, also served in the Tyrolean Sharpshooters; Baron Carl Ranszan from Münster Westphalia served in the Netherlandish Le Loup Jägers and then in the Galician Freikorps O’Donnel; and Peter Rappez from Mons, who served in the Archduke Charles’ Legion and the Le Loup Jägers. Another subaltern who served with the Le Loups was Unterlieutenant Lambert Petit. A soldier’s son, Lambert was drafted into the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment in March 1790 on behalf of the Estates of the Duchy of Luxembourg, one of the few occasions when the Austrian Netherlands had to raise conscripts.[18] Within less than four months, Lambert was made NCO and one year later he was promoted corporal. In April 1794, Lambert was transferred to the Le Loup Jägers where he agreed to start again as a private soldier. Within two months he was again promoted NCO before falling prisoner one day after the Battle of Flerus. Exchanged after two years in French captivity, Lambert served three more years with the Le Loups before transferring back to the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment in June 1799 as an officer candidate. This happened because his father, the Gold Bravery Medal holder Feldwebel Heinrich Petit, was recently commissioned from the ranks.[19] Therefore, as an officer’s son, Lambert was entitled to become k.k Ordinaire Cadet. This was the upper tier of cadets who were attached to the regimental staff and given preference for officers’ vacancies. Lambert was commissioned ensign in September 1799 and made Unterlieutenant in 1801.
Another Unterlieutenant who started as k.k Ordinaire Cadet was Johann Groenvink, the namesake of his father the captain. His younger brother Johann Anton began his service – also as staff cadet – four months before the 1803 muster. Recorded under his father’s entry in that year’s muster, a third brother, Felix, entered the regiment in 1804. Captain Johann Groenvink Senior did more than start a military dynasty. In 1818, the septuagenarian pensioned captain was granted hereditary nobility with the predicate ‘von Kronenhayn’. All his sons received that title. Johann Junior retired as captain in 1827 and settled in Lemberg where he died in 1841. Johann Anton rose to major and was pensioned as lieutenant colonel, before dying in Hungary in 1845. Felix was transferred in 1808 to another former Walloon unit, the 9th Infantry Regiment, from where he retired as captain in 1829, and died in Odenburg (Sporn, Hungary) in 1862.[20] As already noted, common soldiers who rose from the ranks were unlikely to advance above the rank of captain. However, securing a commission could begin a steady – if slow – move upward for one’s sons. To cite another example, the above mentioned Oberlieutenant Vever left the regiment in 1808 as a captain-lieutenant. His son, also Johann Vever, who served as ensign in 1803, entered the regiment in 1800 as k.k. Cadet and left in 1822 as Hauptmann.[21] Enfants du corps who were enrolled from the regimental boys’ school mirrored the experience of cadets whose fathers were officers with the regiment. They started their service sooner, therefore their chances of promotion were higher. Jacob Vanderschmeisse, the son of the most senior of the regimental flagbearers on the 1803 muster, was enrolled from the regimental school in 1805. Commissioned in 1814, Jacob was subsequently awarded a Silver Bravery Medal for his service as NCO and was pensioned as Hauptmann in 1842.[22] Three other Führers, Gossard, Page and Semester, had their sons serving with them, as did the provost Claude Woirgard, whose son Jacob was serving as corporal. Claude Zimmer and Alexander Knopp were two other Corporals who entered the Regiment directly from the school. Both were commissioned and their sons (in Knopp’s case also a grandson), continued serving in the 30th Infantry Regiment.[23]
Altogether, 15 of the veterans of the régiments nationaux and 21 New Walloons appearing on the 1803 muster, were officers’ and soldiers’ sons. The presence of such enfant du corps was to be long felt after the move to Galicia. However, for each enfant du corps enrolled after 1795, there were ten New Walloons. This included one captain-lieutenant and 12 subalterns of whom eight came from France, four from the Austrian Netherlands and one from Liege. Most of this group were either commissioned directly or admitted into service as cadets. Some, like captain-lieutenant Demolle, Oberlieutenant Hitton and Fähnrich Keppel had previously served in French émigré units or in the Habsburg light troops. Their arrival into the 30th Infantry Regiment is unsurprising. These were military migrants and exiles from old-regime France and other lands which the revolutionaries had captured. Among the New Walloons was a small number of non-combatants: two military surgeons and three Fourierschützen, the latter including a certain Heinrich Semester, most likely the son of the Führer Peter Semester and younger brother of Corporal Simon Semster. Far more interesting is the number of the New Walloons among the other ranks: 71 natives of the former Austrian Netherlands and another 111 men from neighbouring lands. To put these numbers into perspective, the combined sum of NCOs and soldiers from the entire Holy Roman Empire raised since 1795 and in service in 1803 was 149 men. The respective figure of all other foreigners among the rank-and-file, such as Poles, Russians, and Prussians, was 159 men. The New Walloons were thus the largest group of soldiers from outside the Habsburg Monarchy raised after 1795. This could not be the result of random recruitment efforts. During the Second Coalition War, the 30th Infantry Regiment was campaigning in southern Germany and did not come close to the Austrian Netherlands. Furthermore, enlistment of New Walloons continued after the Peace of Luneville. For instance, they provided over 40 percent of the 121 new common soldiers recruited since the muster of September 1802.
The summary service records in the company notebooks of the 1803 muster provide information about the circumstances of 68 individual enlistments from1800 onwards. Initially, the data is sketchy, but when place of enlistment in 1800 is given, it usually corresponds with the general retreat of the Austrian Army during that year. Among the first cases noted is that of Franz Leclerq, a native of Brussels, who enlisted in Offenburg on 9 January 1800, near the Rhine which separated the French and Austrian positions early that year. Iwan (more probably Jean) Buttlieu from Normandy was recruited on 16 February 1800 as a French POW. Another recruit, Heinrich Bücker, enlisted in Offenburg in May, but that autumn Johann Metriny and Jacob Dubois were recruited in Bohemia – in Prague and Eger respectively. Shortly before the end of the war, a Fleming named Franz Joseph was recruited in Mühlhausen, Thuringia. Another place mentioned by name is Pavia in Italy, where Pierre Joseph Tertus from Sedan in France was enlisted on 21st May 1800. Nine further New Walloons were raised in the Reich in 1801 from whom one (Nicolaus Lück from Liege) was recruited in Höxter, Westphalia. Substantially more evidence is available for 1802 and 1803. In addition to the place where the recruit was raised, many of the service records now gave the official enlistment rate (Werbgeld) under which a man was taken as well as the actual bounty (Handgeld) paid to him.[24] From 1802, nearly all New Walloons – Netherlanders and others alike – were raised in two places. More than three dozen were enlisted in Frankfurt on the Main; another dozen was recruited in the Austrian part of Italy in Veneto.
Nearly all recruits arriving from Frankfurt were allocated the standard Reichsrekrut rate of 40 Gulden. However, only a fraction of that sum was paid upfront to the recruit, as the Werbgeld also had to cover clothes and equipment the recruit might need and the costs of raising him (Spesen/ Umkosten). This also included money paid for middlemen who persuaded the man to come to the Austrian recruitment house (Anbringsgeld), whether by goodwill or deceit. The breakdown between the bounty and the recruitment costs of the Frankfurt recruits varied from case to case. Emerich Puny from Mons was one of the luckiest having received the full 40 Gulden for his enlistment. The veteran soldier Leonard Jansis, who previously served 16 years in 30th Regiment received 30 Gulden for his re-enlistment. Compare recruit Franz Derniak from Luxembourg who got a bounty of only six Florins and 40 Kreuzer. Raised on 16 May 1803, Alexander Arnoux from Brussels and Heinrich Vanhamme from Mechelen were paid 11 Gulden each. The remaining 29 Gulden per head were deducted for expenses. Frankfurt was the headquarters of the Habsburg recruitment network in the Holy Roman Empire. It was also an assembly point through which about a third of the recruits raised in the Reich passed on their way to Austria.[25] After 1801 it also lay close enough to the French border on the Rhine, but the eastern edge of the former Austrian Netherlands was still some 200 kilometres away. The fact that New Walloons comprised most of the Reich recruits cannot be a coincidence. One possibility is that the Imperial recruitment system operated a network channelling potential recruits from the former Austrian Netherlands to Frankfurt. This might explain the relatively high Anbringsgeld payments deducted from the enlistment rate of the New Walloons raised in Frankfurt. A likely alternative is that recruits raised along the Rhine were processed in Frankfurt; and former Netherlanders, as well as other French and Dutch speakers, were allocated to the Walloon regiments in Galicia.
Another source of New Walloons in 1802/3 was Veneto where the situation appeared to mirror that of Frankfurt. Ten recruits were raised in Verona, directly on the border with the Cisalpine Republic; another two – Anton Noire and Leopold Matteux – a little inland in Vicenza. Recruits raised in Italy were allocated the regimental recruitment rate of 15 Gulden for foreigners, of which the enlistees received roughly half as their bounty. Use of compulsion and deceit in recruitment is suggested by the desertion rates. Among the dozen recruits sent to Galicia, a third tried to desert. The total number of deserters among the New Walloons enlisted from 1800 onward was 43, of whom 18 came from the Austrian Netherlands and 25 from the neighbouring countries. This figure only covers deserters who were apprehended or reported back themselves. Between the musters of 1802 and 1803, the ‘De Ligne’ Infantry Regiment had 245 desertion cases. In the same period, 138 deserters were regained: 66 were apprehended by civilians, 29 arrested by the military authorities, and 43 returned voluntarily.[26] With overall retention rate of roughly 55 per cent of all deserters, there could have been as many as 40 additional New Walloons who successfully escaped from Habsburg service. That would make a gross desertion rate of well over one third among Walloons enlisted from 1799 onwards, and a net desertion rate of slightly under one fifth. Such figures suggest several factors including use of strong-arm recruitment methods, lack of efficient control mechanisms, and –particularly relevant in our case – the length of the march to join their regiments. Whether heading out from the Rhineland or Veneto, Lemberg was more than 1,200 kilometres away.
At first glance, this scheme of dispatching Netherlandish and French recruits to Galicia appears counterintuitive and wasteful. The Werbgeld for foreigners enlisted along the Galician border with Prussian and Russian Poland was 15 Gulden. A Habsburg subject enlisted directly by the regiment was allocated a lower enlistment rate of 10 Gulden a head. In both cases, up to two thirds of that enlistment money was deducted, leaving the volunteer with little more than the minimal bounty of 3 Gulden in cash, which the Habsburg army paid its native-born conscripts.[27] For the price of one Reichsrekrut, the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment could have taken several foreigners and local volunteers much closer to its headquarters. Let alone saving on transportation costs, even if these men had the same high desertion rates as the New Walloons, recruits from Galicia and its frontiers were much cheaper to raise and replace. Yet we see continuing effort to recruit soldiers from the former Austrian Netherlands several years after the move to Galicia. Whatever one thinks in terms of military efficiency, this could only be a product of an informed decision to maintain the Netherlandish element of the former Walloon regiment. Besides, the attempt to secure recruits from the former homeland might not be that outlandish after all. Even if we consider the highest gross desertion rates (net desertion losses were probably half that number), the regiment retained more than half of its New Walloons. Some of these were to become highly dedicated professional soldiers, not unlike the Old Walloons who chose to follow their regiment into exile. Until the of dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reichsrekruten enabled the Habsburg Army to maintain a layer of German-speaking NCOs and full-time professional soldiers. Their presence helped to counter strong regional identities in regiments whose rank and file was drafted from the same conscription district.[28] In 1801, Galicia finally received its own regiments, but their military leadership was kept in a hand of a group whose immediate loyalty lay outside the province.
A spectacular demonstration of what could happen if Habsburg regiments became too closely affiliated with their homeland was demonstrated by the régiments nationaux themselves. Although almost 15 years had passed since then, the 1803 muster of the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment bears witness to a dramatic episode when a significant part of its common soldiers turned against the Habsburg Monarchy. Scholarly treatments of the Brabant Revolution and the short-lived United Belgian States (États-Belgiques-Unis/ Verenigde Nederlandse Staten) tend to focus on political and intellectual history.[29] And indeed, the Belgian Republic (1789–90) offers a fascinating example of modern state–building in action, as the Estates of the former Austrian provinces tried to work out the government of their newly independent country. On the other hand, the military aspects of the revolution are mentioned in passing – or not at all – even in histories of the Habsburg army.[30] But failure to consider military history leaves us with a paradox. Before the outbreak of the uprising, there were at least 17,000 troops in the Austrian Netherlands, belonging to what were considered some of the best units in the Habsburg army. Surviving monthly tables for October 1789 confirm that, just as the fighting was about to begin, the 9th, 30th and 38th Walloon Infantry regiments were up to strength with more than 3,000 soldiers each.[31] Yet Imperial control of the province collapsed within a few weeks. When offered at all, explanations for this stunning initial success of the Brabant revolutionaries are unconvincing. In his otherwise excellent biography of Joseph II, Beales explains that Habsburg troops were few and inexperienced when fighting broke out. However, according to his own figures in the initial stage of the fighting, there were 18,000 regular Habsburg troops against a few thousand revolutionaries who had formed and begun training only a few months before.[32] Had the Walloons fought as one could expect considering their former and subsequent history, it is unlikely that the Belgian Republicans would have been able to embark so quickly and so smoothly on their political experiment.
In 1803, the ‘De Ligne’ Regiment still had in its ranks 142 veterans of the Brabant Revolution. The majority already in service when fighting broke out, but a few joined in 1790. For these the cut-off date is Falmagne (22 September 1790), the largest field battle of the conflict which also marked the start of military demise of the Belgian Republic. The cases of desertion noted in service records reveal an important reason why the revolutionaries were so successful (Table 3).
Table 3: Loyalists and Patriots of the 30th Infantry Regiment during the Brabant Revolution
None of the officers and regimental officials serving in 1789 were involved in the revolution as far as their records show. The same holds true for almost all NCOs other than Peter Geissen who deserted as a Corporal on 15th December 1789 shortly after the evacuation of Brussels. Among those who served as common soldiers, either in the ‘De Ligne’ or at a different Walloon unit, the situation was very different. A third of the rank and file deserted. The first to abscond were Peter Joseph Mayer and Johann Nürenberg on 25th November 1789. Two weeks later, as Patriot troops were approaching Brussels, the capital rose in revolt. Nearly all the deserters who were to leave the 30th Infantry Regiment during the Brabant Revolution did so after December 10. Most left on the day Brussels was abandoned on December 12th. Among the deserters were not only native Walloons but also about 30 per cent of the foreign common soldiers in the regiment. With much of its army melting away, the remaining loyalists could do little more than cling to the Fortress of Luxembourg. Furthermore, when Habsburg troops reinforcements arrived from the east, the Republican army fought well. At Falmagne, the Belgian troops demonstrated combat effectiveness more akin to that of regular troops rather than a patriot militia. Compared to records of other former Walloon regiments,[33] the 30th Infantry does not mention a single case of its men taking service with the Republicans. This point invites more research.
The 1803 muster roll of the 30th Infantry Regiment ‘De Ligne’ is another reminder that the Walloon presence in the Habsburg army did not end with the Peace of Luneville. If previous work has pointed to prominence of Walloons in the higher ranks, this article shows that Austrian Netherlanders were also active among the lower echelons. Furthermore, it makes clear that a pro-active attempt was made to maintain the Walloon and Francophone elements of the former Netherlandish units after 1801. With its slow pace of promotion and the tendency of sons to remain within their fathers’ unit, it would take the 30th Regiment another generation or more to become Galician. Lastly, the veterans of the Brabant Revolution who still served in 1803, are not a representative sample. They are survivors, and we cannot say whether or not former Patriots were likelier to follow the Habsburg army into exile after their land was occupied by the French. However, the experience of 1789-90 shows that the loyalty of the Walloon troops to the Habsburgs was not automatic. They could be equally loyal to their land.
[1] Martin C. Dean, Austrian Policy During the French Revolutionary Wars 1796–1799 (MHD Sonderreihe 3, Vienna, 1993), p. 106–20.
[2] See for example the monthly manpower reports (Standes- und Diensttabellen) for 1798 of the 1st (Moravian), 2nd (Hungarian), 3rd (Lower Austrian), 7th (Moravian), 21st (Bohemian), 23rd (Lower Austrian), and 31st (Transylvanian) Line Infantry Regiments: Austrian State Archives (ÖStA), Military Archive (KA), Musterlisten (ML) 71 ‘IR 1 (1798)’, 270 ‘IR 3 (1798)’, 483 ‘IR 7 (1798)’, 1756 ‘IR 21 (1798)’, 10.163 ‘IR 23 (1798)’, 2756 ‘IR 31 (1798)’.
[3] For example, when the 6th Walloon Infantry Regiment was formed by combining the Leib battalions of the remaining five Walloon regiments, the breakdown among its Private Soldiers was stated to be 545 Inländer Niederlander, 1,345 Inländer Galizier (i.e. Galician conscripts) and 433 foreigners. See ÖStA KA ML 5252 ‘IR 63 (1799-1800)’: Revisions-Tabelle (Turin 19 Feb. 1800). For more on the classification of different types of soldiers in Habsburg military records between 1781 and 1820, see: Ilya Berkovich and Michael Wenzel, ‘The Austrian Army’, in Bruno Colson and Alexander Mikaberidze (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars, Vol. 2: Fighting the Napoleonic Wars, (Cambridge: 2023), p. 107–11.
[4] William D. Godsey, ‘The Habsburg Monarchy 1787–1815: Continuity and Resilience in an Age of “Total War”’, in Pieter Judson and Mark Cornwall (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Habsburg Monarchy, Vol. 2 (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).
[5] Gunther E. Rothenberg, Napoleon’s Great Adversaries: The Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army, 1792–1814, (Bloomington, 1982), 66; Berkovich and Wenzel, ‘Austrian Army’, p. 117–8.
[6] ÖStA KA ML 2669 ‘IR 30 (1801)’ and 4951 ‘IR 58 (1801)’.
[7] ÖStA KA ML 996 ‘IR 14 (1791)’ and 10.119–20 ‘IR 23 (1791)’. For more on the Josephinian conscription system and the Galician auxiliary districts, see Ilya Berkovich, ‘Conscription in the Habsburg Monarchy 1740–1792’, in William D. Godsey and Petr Maťa (eds.), The Habsburg Monarchy as a Fiscal-Military State: Contours and Perspectives 1648-1815, (Proceedings of the British Academy ccxlvii, Oxford, 2022), p. 300–1, p. 310–11.
[8] Rothenberg, Napoleon’s Great Adversaries, p. 23.
[9] Gustave Guillaume, Histoire des régiments nationaux des Pays-Bas au service d’Autriche, (Brussels, 1877), p. 373–6. Bruno Peeters, ‘De ronseling van Recruten voor de nationale Regimenten in de oostenrijkse Nederlanden’, Revue belge d’histoire militaire, xxv (1983–4), 51. Bruno Colson, Belgians in the Habsburg Army: Regiments and Military Personnel of the Austrian Netherlands, 1756-1815, (Vienna, 2020), p. 143–9, p. 400.
[10] Christopher Duffy, The Austrian Army in the Seven Years War, Vol. 1, Instrument of War, (Rosemont, Illinois, 2000), p. 88–9; Colson, Belgians, p. 24. For the tendency of foreign volunteers to take service based on pre-existing regional and military ties, see Ilya Berkovich, Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe, (Cambridge, 2017), p. 37. For a convincing deconstruction of the landless mercenary myth, albeit based on material from an earlier century, look out for the important forthcoming title by Lucian Staiano-Daniels The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War (Cambridge).
[11] On the Austrian Musters and their accompanying documents, see Christoph Tepperberg, ‘Die Musterungs- und Standesakten der k. k. Armee am Beispiel der ersten Triester Marine 1786– 1797’, Scrinium, p. 38 (1988), 342–53; Berkovich, ‘Conscription’, p. 303–6.
[12] Ilya Berkovich, ‘Belgian Veterans in Galicia: Materials from the Muster Roll of 30th Walloon Line Infantry Regiment ‘De Ligne’ (12 August 1803)’ [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10056176, accessed on October 30, 2023.
[13] Emil Hailig von Hailingen, Geschichte des k. und k. Infanterie-Regiments Nr.30, (Lviv, [1896]), p. 119.
[14] ÖStA KA ML 2630 ‘IR 30 (1802)’: Staff Notebook Nr. 4, Supernumeraries Notebook Nr. 1.
[15] Gustave, Histoire, 322. Antonio Schimd-Brentano, Kaiserliche und k.k. Generale (1618-1815), (Vienna, 2006), p. 23, p. 33, p. 43 [online resource]; Antonio Schimd-Brentano, Die k. k. bzw. k. u. k. Generalität 1816-1918, (Vienna, 2007), p. 132 [online resource]. On complains about over-generalled see: Duffy, Austrian Army, p. 173–4; Rothenberg, Napoleon’s Great Adversaries, p. 22.
[16] For the importance of the Irish Wild Geese and the Imperial Nobility for the Habsburg Army, see: Duffy, Instrument, p. 106–9, David Hollins, Austrian Commanders of the Napoleonic Wars 1792–1815, (Elite ci, Oxford, 2004), p. 3. For more on Grenadier Captain MacElligot who eventually rose to major general, see Maurice G. McElligott, ‘Some Kerry Wilde Geese’, Kerry Archaeological Magazine, ii (1912–4), p. 215–20. Note that this latter source should be used with caution. Its author misread the handwriting in the archival sources by identifying Charles’ regiment as the 36th instead of 30th and put his entrny into service in 1770 instead of 1777.
[17] On this unit, see Alfons von Wrede, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht, 5 Vols. (Vienna: Seidel, 1898–1905), ii, p. 447.
[18] For another such example, see Guy Thewes, Stände, Statt und Militär: Versorgung und Finanzierung der Armee in den Österreichischen Niederlanden 1715–1790, (Schriftenreihe der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhundert 14, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, 2012), p. 138.
[19] Heinrich (in some records Johann) Petit was decorated for bravery after the Battle of Neerwinden in 1793. As of August that same year, the 30th Regiment had another NCO with the same surname: Silver Bravery Medal holder Corporal Barthalomé Petit. Dated 28 October 1789 in Brussels, the September 1789 monthly report tells that Barthalomé was awarded the medal on 25 August 1789. Interestingly, the official history of the 30th Regiment speaks of a Corporal Jean Petit who was awarded a Golden Bravery Medal for the defence of Diest in December 1789. The archival documents and the book cannot be reconciled. Nor is it known for which feat Barthalomé Petit was awarded the medal two months before the Brabant Revolution began: see the monthly reports in ÖStA KA ML 2657 ‘IR 30 (1788–9)’: September 1789; ML 2660 ‘IR 30 (1792–3)’: August 1793; ML 2665 ‘IR 30 1799’: August. Compare these with Hailig, Geschichte, p. 62–3, p. 447.
[20] ÖStA, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv, Hofadelsakten, Allgemeine Reihe 317.33; Hailig, Geschichte, 422; Der Adler, cxiii (1841), p. 737; Militär- Militär-Schematismus des österreichischen Kaiserthumes, (Vienna 1845), p. 586; Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift [hereafter ÖMZ], iii.9 (1829), p. 337; Armee-Nachrichten: Beilage zum ÖMZ (1 April 1862), p. 100.
[21] Hailig, Geschichte, p. 422, 465.
[22] See Hailig, Geschichte, 422; ÖStA KA ML 2637-8 ‘IR 30 (1818): Notebook 1st Fusilier Company Nr. 6.
[23] Hailig, Geschichte, p. 431, 470.
[24] On the type and size of the standard enlistment rates in the Habsburg army, see Berkovich, ‘Conscription’, p. 308–9.
[25] Wrede, Geschichte, i, p. 100–1. Michael Hochedlinger, Thron & Gewehr: das Problem der Heeresergänzung und die “Militarisierung” der Habsburgermonarchie im Zeitalter des Aufgeklärten Absolutismus (1740–1790), (Veröffentlichungen des Steiermärkischen Landesarchivs xlv, Graz, 2021), p. 322–6, p. 413–7.
[26] ÖStA KA ML 2630 ‘IR 30 (1802)’: Mustertabelle. On the pursuit of deserters in the Habsburg Monarchy and its outsourcing to civilians, see Berkovich, Motivation, p. 81–3.
[27] For enlistment rates along the Galician border, see Ilya Berkovich, ‘The Unlikely Case of the Jewish Mercenary Nathan Leibowitz (1777–1810)’, Mars & Clio (January 2023), p. 19–20.
[28] Berkovich and Wenzel, Austrian Army, p. 117–8.
[29] For a most recent example of such an intellectual history, see Jane C. Judge, The United States of Belgium: The Story of the First Belgian Revolution, (Leuven, 2018).
[30] Richard Bassett, For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619–1918, (New Haven, 2015), p. 180–1; Rothenberg’s Napoleon’s Great Adversaries, does not mention the Brabant Revolution at all.
[31] Colson, Belgians, 72–3. ÖStA KA ML 638 ‘IR 9 (1783–9)’, 2658 ‘IR 30 (1788–9)’, 10.215 ‘IR 38 (1789)’.
[32] Derek Beales, Joseph II Vol. 2: Against the World, 1780-1790, (Cambridge, 2009), p. 610–22. While mentioning the role of mass desertion in the collapse of the Habsburg army, Guy Thewes claims that the imperial troops in the Province were weak, see Stände, p. 45, 140.
[33] ÖStA KA ML 4924/5 ‘IR 58 (1817)’: 14th Fusilier Company Nr. 17 ‘Corporal Anton Combien’.