Austrian Army and Navy
1792-1815

Artillery and Naval Personnel

by David L. Arneson



ARTILLERYMEN

Something like 150,000 artillerymen were in service with the Austrian Army in 1792 carrying out a wide range of duties. They served as gunners for all the battalion guns in all the regiments (about 20,000), garrisons in some fifty major and minor fortresses (20-30,000), as well as the normal artillery forces of the Austrian Army with 4 Artillery Regiments (20,000), 7 Mining and Sapping Cos. (1500), six Pontoon Cos. (1200), 3 Bombadier and Sapper Cos. (600); all in all some 70,000 first-line personnel.

The remainder were semi-active troops serving in every sort of garrison capacity. Their uniforms consisted of a black bicorn hat, brown coat, white or brown pants, knee-length black boots, white straps for canteen and cartridge case, with red trim on collars, cuffs and turnbacks. Guns were painted yellow on all the exposed wooden parts with black fittings and brass or iron barrels.

NAVAL PERSONNEL

There was no rank in the Austrian Navy beyond the rank of commoclore due to the small size of the Austrian fleet. The basic uniform of the officers was a white tunic and breeches with knee-high black boots and a black bicorn hat. Insignia of rank was worn on the sleeve in the form of gold knots. There were no Marines so far as is known. Total personnel was under 1,000 men with no ships in 1792, larger than a 14-gun brig. The sailors themselves were recruited from Austria's Italian holdings and this lessened their reliability to a great degree after the French seized large areas of that future country. After 1809 there no longer was an Austrian fleet or Merchant Marine as the French acquired all the Austrian coastline on the Adriatic.

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