The Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army of the Napoleonic wars. Those endless white-coated masses that slog forward like "thick white cream." Not much of a inspiring sight; even the Russian's mix of stubborn bravery and senile incompetence are fun in comparison. Still, the Austrians march and die in every NBS release, including the newest. This guided tour of Field Marshal Melas's Army of Italy will hopefully make the soldiers of Kaiser Franz the Second (later the First) a bit more human.

The Austrian army was excellent by mid-18th century standards, but fifty years later it had a stale air about it. Even the Army's generals were old. Baron Michael Melas was more than twice as old as Napoleon, 71 to 31, and despite being an able commander with half a century of service under his belt, his time was running out. It should in fairness to old generals be remembered that Blucher was 74 (as well as quite insane) when he saved Wellington's butt at Waterloo. But while Blucher worked teamed up with the brilliant Gneisenau as well as a good staff, Melas' chief of staff, Baron Zachs, worked almost alone and made no secret that he regarded novelties such as light infantry and flexible formations as "useless." All this said, no one can blame the Austrian generals for being sloppy dressers. A quite unique set of regulations from 1798 kept higher officers dress in very strict order, in the field, as well as at court and at balls, ruling for instance that the gold lace on the bicorns of Field Marshals should be 3 inches wide, while Generals would have to do with only 2 inches.

Left

On with the show: starting on the left we have the dependable Field Marshal Karl Ott whose brilliant career came to an end at Marengo, despite the fact that he performed very well. Ott's left wing is headed by Major General Gottesheim's Advance Guard of the Left. The advance guard was in 18th century military practice a light combined arms-division meant to advance ahead of the army's main body, and since Melas' army had three wings, it had three advance guards.

As Gottesheim's cavalry, we find the Lobkowitz Light Dragoons, wearing green coats with light-blue lapels, cuffs and collars (what Napoleonic buffs call "facings") together with the slightly higher cavalry version of the Raupenhelm, the pseudo-ancient-looking helmet with brass front that most of the regular army wore. Gottesleheim's infantry was a battalion from the Fralich Infantry Regiment and a company of the Mariassy Feldjagers. The Fralich Regiment was a regular unit from Bohemia, wearing white coats with green facings and the obligatory Raupenhelm, while the Feldjagers was Italian volunteers, mostly from Piedmont, wearing blue coats with red facings. Note that among these thousand men we have at least four ethnic groups as well as both Catholics and Protestants. The Holy Roman Empire was diversified, to say the least.

Also under Ott we find the division of Field Marshal Vogelsang (literally: "Bird-song"), with two large white-coated regiments. They are Graf Stuart's and Furst Hohenlohe's, two Bohemian regiments with light yellow and pinkish facings respectively. All these regular line regiments, referred to as "German" as opposed to Hungarian or Slavonic, had two or three battalions (plus two constantly absent grenadier companies) and each battalion had six companies each. None of these companies was trained in light infantry tactics, such duties being left to assorted irregular units to perform.

Field Marshal Schellenberg's division was divided in two brigades, a quite new concept in the Austrian army, and for good measure Schellenberg also had the main portion of the Lobkowitz Dragoons under his command. In the brigades we have General Retz commanding the rest of the Fralich Infantry Regiment as well as Graf Mittrowsky's, the later Slovaks with crimson facings, and General Sticher running Graf J Colleredo's Bohemians with pale red facings and Baron Spleny's Transylvanians with dark blue facings and Hungarian breeches. The Empire's tough regular infantry from the more civilized parts of the "East" were distinguished by these tight sky-blue breeches decorated with black and yellow lace knots.

Right

And now to the right: meet Field Marshal O'Reilly, who commands the Advance Guard of the Right, and note that this 2,000-strong outfit seems to have been the army's entire Right Wing. (Being left alone seems to have been a talent of O'Reilly's; in 1809 he was left to surrender Vienna to Napoleon.) O'Reilly's infantry includes a company of the Mariassy Feldjagers and four regiments of Grenzers; Banal, Warasdiner, Ougliner and Ottochaner. The Grenzers were a kind of semi-regular border regiment supposedly to be used as light infantry, and in this case they were from Croatia and present-day Serbia. They wore a chaotic mix of regular white army uniforms and brown coats, spiced up with assorted "mountaineer chic" details such as Turkish-style hats, red capes and long nasty knives.

In O'Reilly's cavalry we find the Wurtemberg Dragoons, a regular unit wearing green coats with pink facings, teamed up with the Nauendorf and the 5th (Baron Ott's) Hussars. Note that these Hungarian units are the original Hussars, the Original and Best (at least when they felt like it) who had made the Empire's eastern frontier unsafe for nearly 100 years. Both these units wore green jackets and red breeches (but in different shades) as well as yellow and black plumes and ditto lace all over them. The 5th also had red shakos instead of black, at least on paper. And then finally the main body heralded by The Advanced Guard of the Center Column under Obest Frimont, one of the Empire's real warhorses. Frimont commands two squadrons of the Kaiser Dragoons or the Kaiser Franz Cuirassiers or the Kaiser Light Dragoons, a confusion resulting from a constant reshuffling of titles as well as designations during the period. Some of these changes it took an expert to tell by comparing coat buttons, some involved swapping coat colors (green, white or gray), and others getting a metal chest-plate and higher pay. Still the doctrinal changes were minimal.

While usually both numerous and very well horsed, Austrian cavalry constantly suffered from poor leadership and tactics. The Kaisers were teamed up with the Goguelas Mounted Jagers, a Frei-Corps (volunteer or irregular or both) unit formed from an assortment of odd minor cavalry units, including some Royalist Frenchmen, dressed in gray with dark green facings. Frimont's infantry was the Bach and Am Ende Light Infantry Battalions, Germans and Italians in gray with poppy-red facings, as well as the main body of the Mariassy Feldjagers. The Light Infantry Battalions were an unsuccessful attempt to convert unruly Frei-Corps units and hard-to-recruit Grenzers into light infantry of the French model. But giving a backwoodsman a cool hat did not make him a good skirmisher and the whole project was scrapped the following year.

After this chaos Field Marshal Kaim's division is a bliss of simplicity. Here are the regular infantry regiments again; good, solid troops. The Grand Duke of Tuscany's Infantry Regiment from around Vienna had claret facings; Furst Franz Kinsky's Infantry Regiment from Bohemia, steel-green; and Archduke Joseph Franz's Infantry Regiment from the Empires (all but lost) Dutch-Flemish lands, deep green. Take care to note that the names Knesevich, De Briey and Lamarseille that these units go by in the game are no mistakes, just the name of the acting "brigade" commanders.

Field Marshal Hadik's Division is a likewise clear-cut affair. But the main body of the Kaiser Dragoons as well as the Karaczay Dragoons spices things up. The Karaczay Light Dragoons wore green coats with red facings. (They are elsewhere referred to as being Chevau-Legers, but rest assured that no one rode up to them one day and said: "you guys are going to be Chevau-Legers from now on," expecting illiterate cavalrymen to act differently because they were called "light horse" in French.) Hadik's infantry regiments are a bit tricky to identify due to the practice of naming and renaming regiments as commanders bought or sold them. Bellegarde's brigade included the Jellacic and Archduke Franz Anton regiments, both probably Hungarians, and St. Julien commanded the Wallis Regiment, probably identical to the later Lindenau and later still (when someone realized that naming regiments after the current commander was not just hard on historians), I.R 29, a Moravian (Slovak) outfit.

Field Marshal-Leutnant Morzin's division was the army's reserve, the united grenadiers. Each line regiment had two elite grenadier companies distinguished by odd-looking bearskin-caps called "armchairs" by the French. It was a common 18th-century practice to gather all the grenadier companies of the regiments at hand into elite Grenadier Battalions and these battalions were quite permanent units, the closest thing to a proper "Kaiser Guard" Austria had. The battalions in Morzin's Division (Hohenfeld, Piret, Weher, Weissenwolf, Fiquelmont, Ters, Gorshcen, St. Julien, Pertussy, Mercaolin and Stentsch) accounted for some 60% of the grenadiers in the whole Austrian army, while some grenadier companies from the line regiments present at Marengo were absent. Being the army reserve, Morzin also commanded most of the army's pioneers except for a few detachments parceled out to the advance guards.

Field Marshal Elsnitz commands Melas' cavalry. The Archduke John and Liechtenstein Light Dragoon regiments were large regular units in green with orange and black facings respectively that spent most of the most of the day at Marengo hurling themselves at the unimpressed Consular Guard west of Villanova. The detached 7th (Liechtenstein) and Erdady Hussar Regiments were as colorful as parrots. The 7th wore mainly light blue dress but had a grass-green shako to spice things up, while their colleagues wore dark green, but with red trousers and black shakos. These shakos were forced on the hussars in 1798 so they may still have worn old and battered, but distinctly hotter, fur-caps of different sorts. Remember that being an exotic hussar was a sure thing with the ladies 200 years ago, and shakos did not really go well with that wild horseman image.

Other Services

Finally, we have the "other services." The Austrian artillery was well equipped, but suffered from being used to closely support individual regiments and was therefore basically out of the higher commanders' control. The crews wore knee-long brownish coats and carriages were painted ochre (a very important note for those of you just about to redesign your Marengo counters). It is worthwhile to note that the Austrians had organized a very modern Handlanger Korps (wearing basic artillery uniform, but with sky blue collars instead of red) that was to supply the artillery crews with extra muscle, craftsmen and close protection, something that had previously been provided by infantry detachments. On the other hand there was no permanent train organized, the supply being managed by civilian contractors.

That was the tour. I am endlessly grateful to Stefan Ekstram and Jerry Malone for helping me putting this together. Enjoy, and good luck against the First Consul.