Seite - 344 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

344 Under Surveillance regarded this war as being ‘their own’, to a large extent placing political and social de- mands lower down on their list of priorities and willingly accepting austerity measures and, above all, also bad news. This also was in stark contrast to the soldiers of numerous other parts of the Empire, particularly those from the Bohemian crown lands. The Prague ‘House Regiment’ Up to the end of 1914, 950 people were arrested in Bohemia due to political offences, of whom 704 were transferred to the military courts, while 46 newspapers were closed and 32 associations were disbanded.806 One particularly extreme case related to 65 incidents that were processed before the military court of the military command in Kraków at the end of 1914. The defendants, who came from Moravia, were accused of supporting the ‘creation of an independent state on a pan-Slav basis with the assistance of enemy countries, particularly of Russia’. By the end of 1914, five death sentences had been passed, with 22 convictions, some with severe penalties. The Governor of the Margraviate of Moravia, Baron Oktavian Regner von Bleyle- ben, was of the view that the majority of the Czech population of Moravia continued to be ‘filled with untainted patriotic feelings.’ A month later, however, the governor- ship of Brno (Brünn) intensified the surveillance measures and issued a circular decree threatening that homes of suspects would be searched, that meetings would be strictly monitored and that action would be taken against the dissemination of false news. This notwithstanding, at the end of January 1915, it was reported that 170 persons were be- ing questioned by the Landwehr Divisional Court for Vienna due to the dissemination of Russian proclamations. This was the so-called ‘Rennenkampf Proclamation’ with which the Czechs had been summoned in September, October and November 1914 to receive the Russians as liberators ; Bohemia, Upper Lusatia and Silesia, as well as Slovakia, were to be ‘liberated’. Those who had passed it on risked a great deal. On 11 May 1915, the court reached its judgement. Six of the accused were sentenced to death by hanging, while one was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment, and three to ten years. Only 23 were acquitted of the charges in full.807 In the interim, the circles had already long been identified from which those who were considered to be agitators in the general sense were being recruited : teachers and clerics, editors and officials work- ing in legal chambers. It was no different in Bohemia, where the civilian and military authorities also acted as communicating vessels. In Pilsen, stones were thrown at the troops of Infantry Regiment No. 48, who were on protection duty, and people shouted at a captain, calling him ‘Hungarian pig’. A possibly unpatriotic mood was reported from Rokycany (Rokitzan), with a disloyal mood, albeit of a more socialist nature, from Kladno. In Ústí nad Orlicí (Wildenschw-