Page - 52 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

52 Two Million Men for the War and military successes was kept alive among the troop bodies. Above all, the feeling was conserved of being a European peacekeeping power of the first order. However, aspi- rations and reality were not necessarily compatible. The two territorial armies, on the other hand, constructed their own traditions, the Honvéd more so than the Landwehr. Despite general conscription, only around every fourth male citizen of Austria-Hun- gary actually served.94 Half of them simply fell through the cracks, as unfit or exempt. Of those among the male population of the Dual Monarchy who were then actually approached for military service, only around half received military training. In other words, of those liable for enlistment, only 22 to 29 per cent actually complied.95 This corresponded approximately to the compliance rate in Italy. The rate in Russia was 37 per cent, whilst the German Empire achieved around 40 per cent and France even 86 per cent.96 In France, one citizen among 65 was a soldier, in Germany one in 98, in Austria-Hungary one in 128. In France around 8 per cent of the population took to the battlefield in 1914, in Austria-Hungary only 2.75 per cent.97 This imbalance was only partially the consequence of numerous exceptional regulations. The main difference resulted from the fact that the Dual Monarchy did not provide the necessary funds to exploit its military strength to a greater extent. During the originally three-year period of service (until 1912) following general conscription, later reduced to two years except in the cavalry and the mounted artillery, around a third of those conscripts actually drafted served in the Imperial and Royal Army and in the Navy, which was also part of the Common Army. The others served in both territorial armies or were sent to the reserves following eight weeks of basic train- ing and were counted thereafter among the ‘replacement reservists’, from which the Landsturm (reserve forces) were to be formed or replacements for the Common Army and the two territorial armies were to be taken in the event of war. During the last year of peace, 159,500 recruits were available to the Imperial and Royal Army and an addi- tional 7,260 men for the Bosnian-Herzegovinian troops, who were separately counted, as well around 25,000 men each added to the Imperial-Royal Landwehr and the Im- perial Hungarian Honvéd.98 After completing their active military service, the soldiers were transferred for a further nine or ten years to the reserves until they reached a total service period of twelve years. At this point they were in ‘reserve’, were transferred to the Landsturm and until their 42nd year could be called up, at least theoretically, only in the event of mobilisation.99 The Habsburg Monarchy was divided into sixteen military territorial districts, which were simultaneously corps areas and constituted the supreme military replacement au- thorities. The corps commands were thus responsible for the formation of the Imperial and Royal Army and the two territorial armies within their areas of command. On the basis of this organisational framework and with the available men 110 Imperial and Royal infantry regiments and 30 Imperial and Royal light infantry battalions could