History of Military Border: 1780-1790

Rothenberg's The Military Border in Croatia, 1740-1881

Period: 1780-1790
Chapter 4: The Military Border and Joseph II: 1780-90

Key Family History Connections / Information of Interest:

• Attempt made to lighten the number of men kept on active military duty.  Doesn’t improve economic conditions.
• Emperor forms alliance with Russia and gets in war with Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. 
• First systematic census of men completed in 1770.  

[NOTE: The Udbina area is located in Lika which was located in the Karlstadt generalcy.  Any references to these larger units provides insights into life in the Udbina area.]

Quotes from Chapter:

“On November 29, 1780, Empress Maria Theresa died and Joseph II became sole ruler of the Habsburg Empire…. Influenced by the then fashionable doctrine of the separation of powers, he unsuccessfully tried to resolve the perennial conflict between maximum military utilization of the Grenzer and amelioration of their economic circumstances by dividing the military border administration into separate civil-economic and military branches.  At the same time, he played throughout his reign with schemes for the conquest of new provinces, and abandoning Maria Theresa’s hostile attitude toward the Orthodox Church, and in alliance with Orthodox Russia, he tried to make the military border the base for an expansive Balkan policy.” (Page 61)

“After the conclusion of the War of the Bavarian Succession, during the years 1780 to 1782, the Hofkriegsrat, frequently prodded by the emperor, carried out another reorganization in the tactical framework of the border regiments… While the entire male population remained liable for service, it was now divided into `enrolled’ and `supernumerary’ Grenzer.  Selection for enrollment or assignment to supernumerary status was governed as much by the needs of the economy as by military considerations  `The guiding principle,’ so an imperial directive ordered, `is that selection be made with the least damage to the economy.’ The number of men on active duty was materially reduced, for now only one man out of three was actually enrolled.  The enrolled Grenzer were divided into three categories.  The first category performed cordon guard and other routine duties and receive a basic annual allowance of twelve gulden, the so-called Diesntconstitutivium, which normally was credited against landtax owed by the families.  The second group, considered temporarily on furlough, was available as reinforcement whenever needed and receive an allowance of four florins.  The third group received no pay, but was trained in the use of arms and expected to take over local defense and other duties after the first two categories had departed on active service with the field army. “ (Pages 61-62)

“This purely military reorganization, however, failed to improve the economic circumstances of the Grenzer.  Especially in the Karlstadt and Banal regiments, the authorities were face with the problem of a subsistence economy that always hovered on the margin of acute want and abject poverty.  In 1783 and again in 1784 crops failed entirely in the Lika and Ottoschatz Regiments and there was a poor harvest in all of Croatia.” (Page 63)

“As early as 1770, Joseph II… introduced a systematic census, a general Conscription, of all male inhabitants in the Austrian lands.” (Page 64)

[SIDENOTE: I have only looked at the records available in the Croatian State Archives.  These start in 1820.  My hope is to eventually see whether older records are available in Vienna.]

“Since 1781 the emperor had maintained an alliance with Catherine of Russia, designated in part to bolster the status quo in Europe, but aimed primarily toward a partition of the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans.  As conceived, the agreement looked more profitable to Catherine than to Joseph, but the emperor hoped to utilize it to acquire great parts of Wallachia, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and possibly even the Venetian possessions in Istria and Dalmatia… The emperor reconfirmed the alliance during a visit to the Crimea early in 1787, and when in August of that year the much provoked Porte declared war against Russia, he entered the conflict in the spring of 1788 in accordance with his treaty obligations.”

Links to the posts for the various time periods (each covered in a chapter of the book):
1500-1740
1740-1756
1756-1780
1780-1790
1790-1809
1804-1814
1815-1847
1848-1859
1859-1871
1871-1881