L. Eysturlid: The Formative Influences,
Theories and Campaigns of the
Archduke Carl of Austria (2000)

Book Review

by David Hollins, UK

143pp (Greenwood Press, USA) USD 73.95

This was only the second work in English about the Archduke and it was perhaps unusual in that it looked at a major Continental personality in terms of a specific and rather intellectual aspect of his personality – before even a full biography or campaign history has been published. Here Eysturlid (now a history lecturer at a US university) attempts to distil the extensive writings of the Archduke Charles into a brief, but systematic, analysis of how he thought on military subjects.

Given the lack of an existing biography, this author sensibly starts with a potted biography of the Archduke’s life before diving into the intellectual, military and theological influences upon him, which produced a man of a very Catholic, conservative and Stoic outlook, resigned to acting as duty (and consequently, his brother the Emperor) required.

Then Eysturlid considers how these influences affected the Archduke’s approach to tactics and then more extensively on strategy. It is perhaps hardly recognised today that the Archduke had a considerable standing in the early 19th century, although his reluctance to embrace total war meant that he was soon eclipsed by both Jomini (as the synthesis of Napoleonic warfare) and then Clausewitz (as the god of Prussian militarism and total war).

That reputation was primarily based on the Archduke’s work, Grundsätze der Strategie, which in two volumes drew the lessons of his victorious 1796 campaign in Germany and sought to create a mathematical system of strategy from it. In addition, Charles was the first to have defeated Napoleon at Aspern-Essling in 1809 and throughout the military reform period lasting for much of the first decade of the 19th century, Charles had overseen the publication of a series of regulations designed as handbooks for each level of the army.

Eysturlid thus runs quickly over some tactical approaches before looking at greater length at Charles’ views on strategy. Having looked at everyone from Tacitus to more contemporary authors such as Lloyd and the Archduke’s mentor, Lindenau, in the Influences section, Eysturlid seeks to shoe-horn Charles’ views into the 18th century structured approach to war, itself born of the scientific philosophy underlying he Enlightenment.

This section unavoidably becomes rather technical, but this author pitches at a level which should make it possible for anyone familiar with basic concepts to follow. However, whilst the Arch-duke had a mathematical analysis when writing most of his own work post-1813, Eysturlid only hints at the wider influences on the Archduke.

His great hero, Prince Eugen, victor over the Turks and French a century earlier, goes unmentioned - and yet after Aspern, Charles wrote “I have manoeuvred on this plain as against the Turks”, a reference both to the formations used and the battle being fought over a river crossing as Eugen’s great victory at Zenta had been. Eysturlid also hints at the major limitation on the Archduke – Austria was militarily weak and could not mobilise its resources as France was doing. The Empire was on the defensive to retain its existing position.

Contrary to the popular view, the Archduke understood total war, that Austria could not halt it by military means alone and that it could only have one of two outcomes. It is something the world abandoned after 1945, yet even very recent authors seem to think that anyone in the Napoleonic period, who did not embrace total war, was somehow antiquated.

Eysturlid acknowledges the significant influence of the Austrian historian, Dr Rauchensteiner and the well-known author, Dr Gunther Rothenberg. Both are revisionists to the perhaps over-patriotic image of the Archduke portrayed by authors around 1900 such as Criste, Angeli and John. Nevertheless, in taking their version of the world, Eysturlid (along with the other modern authors he mentions) has failed to grasp two key background areas of this subject.

The first is the world in which Charles was living. The second is that Charles was a physically weak man and thus tended to delegate as much as possible – the development of the new regulations and the concepts in the Beiträge manuals for junior officers certainly bore his name, but they are not direct reflections of his own tactical thinking. (Most of the Beiträge were in fact issued after Charles fell from office).

As the Archduke wrote “I am not a drill master, but I can see when something is going wrong”. Whilst Eysturlid acknowledges the influence of Lindenau in Grundsätze der höheren Kriegskunst (written for the senior commanders), he rather misses the claims of Mayer to part-authorship and the presence of the manuscript among Mayer’s Nachlässe papers in the Vienna Kriegsarchiv.

The most frequent contradictory claim made by many modern authors has been that in producing a series of works as instruction for the army, Charles was somehow seeking to restrict his commanders to a set of rules and remove initiative. This sits strangely alongside the modern use of operational manuals in all organisations, civilian and military. You can only teach a subject in a structured way, but the Archduke’s end aim was best summed up in his comment that his intention with the formalised corps system was that his commanders would know what he wanted just from the look on his face.

Delegation was quite normal for Charles and indeed the whole Austrian army – but this is a point missed by many recent authors too. The Austrian army was well advanced in its development of the chief of the staff as the key support to the CinC – Charles had several throughout his campaigns from the very able pairing of Schmitt & Mayer in 1796 to the incompetent Prochaska in April 1809.

It was Schmitt and Mayer who devised the 1796 campaign plan; Mayer had created the initial plan for the advance from Bohemia in 1809, but was brushed aside by the Court, who forced Prochaska and a serious change of plan on Charles. Thus, Eysturlid has used an incorrect analysis – he confuses the actions in the 1796 campaign with the Archduke’s analysis written nearly 20 years later.

In his book, Charles was trying to make sense of the campaign with hindsight – but that is very different from the actual thinking, which drove the campaign at the time.

An interesting work, which contributes quite a lot to what will hopefully be a growing debate about the main leaders in the run-up to 2009 in particular. Unfortunately, its price will be something of a deterrent to many buyers. Well worth a read, bearing in mind its limitations.

Book Reviews

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