Page - 933 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Brigadier von Bolzano is Missing 933 of absence with waiting charges, were rehabilitated or at least reactivated and found a new use limited to the duration of the mobilisation. Many of the posts that had to be filled lacked the appeal of serving with the troops, but the prisoner of war camps, the bridgehead garrisons, the city commands, etc. also required generals. It was of course the isolated cases that attracted attention every so often. The ab- solute figures nonetheless paint an impressive picture. When Emperor Franz Joseph was still alive, there were three full generals and 95 lieutenant generals who had been relieved ‘for official considerations’.2251 Very few had been retired all of a sudden, since in that way at least appearances were kept up. Some were placed at the ‘disposal of the Supreme Commander’. Their number was added to in 1917 by one field marshal, namely Archduke Friedrich. Six generals had fallen in battle, four of them in 1914. Nine generals had been taken prisoner by the beginning of 1917 ; one of them had killed himself in May 1915 in Russian prisoner of war captivity.2252 Highborn generals who were elderly or were no longer (or had actually never been) fit for service at the front were disposed of by giving them honorary posts, such as Major General Count Georg Wallis, who became President of the Swords Commission and was to adjudge in the Vienna War Archives about the decorations to be conferred for active services in war, or Brigadier Count Miecisław Ledochowski, who became the commander of a medical transport. The Imperial and Royal Guards also provided a vast field for confer- ring honourable ranks and impeding indignities. But did it even make sense to attend to the ancient and high nobility in a special way ? Its members of course continued to be powerful and, in part, extraordinarily wealthy people. But they had played a minor role in military matters for a long time and increasingly so in political affairs. Of those who had reached the rank of general, Count Karl Auersperg, 77 years of age, was Guards Captain of the Imperial and Royal Trabant Life Guards, Count Karl Huyn Governor of Galicia, Count Albert Lónyay also Guards Captain in the Trabant Life Guards, Prince Zdenko Lobkowitz, Adjutant General of Emperor Karl, Prince Alois Schönburg-Hartenstein Commander of the Mobile Troops on the Home Front and then Commander of the 6th Army, and Count Herbert Herberstein, Adjutant General of Archduke Friedrich until the end of 1916 and then Commander of the 6th Cav- alry Division. The Schwarzenbergs were the only family with a great military tradition, who provided with Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg, the Commander of the ‘Kaiser- jäger’ Imperial Rifles Division, a high-ranking troop commander, but no Colloredo, Fürstenberg, Harrach, Hohenlohe, Khevenhüller, Windisch-Graetz, no Traun, Kinsky, Laudon, Esterházy, Apponyi, Széchényi, Palffy and whatever they were called, was to be found among those who still held a front command. As commander of the small cruiser Novara, Johannes Prinz von und zu Liechtenstein was the only naval officer from the high nobility who held a noteworthy command. Abensberg-Traun, Hardegg, Hoyos, Montecuccoli, Radetzky, Thun-Hohenstein, Waldstein, Festetics, Batthhyány,