The Habsburg Monarchy has received much historiographical attention since 1945. Yet the military aspects of Austria's emergence as a European great power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have remained obscure. This book shows that force of arms and the instruments of the early modern state were just as important as its marriage policy in creating and holding together the Habsburg Monarchy.
Drawing on an impressive up-to-date bibliography as well as on original archival research, this survey is the first to put Vienna's military back at the centre stage of early modern Austrian history.
Introduction: The belated great power; Part 1 Modest Origins - the Habsburg Monarchy During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century; Chapter 1 The domestic foundations; Chapter 2 The primacy of power politics; Chapter 3 Home defence; Chapter 4 The standing army; Part 2 Austria's 'age of heroes' 1683-1733; Chapter 5 The Turkish War 1683-1699; Chapter 6 The Nine Years War 1689-1697; Chapter 7 The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714; Chapter 8 Renewed expansion; Part 3 The crisis of a great power 1733-1748; Chapter 9 Diplomatic reverses and military defeats; Chapter 10 Squaring the circle or how to administer and defend a territorial giant; Chapter 11 The War of the Austrian Succession 1740-1748; Part 4 Reform - revenge - aggression; Chapter 12 The modernization of the Habsburg Monarchy in the age of Enlightened Absolutism 1740-1790; Chapter 13 Army and society; Chapter 14 The Seven Years War 1756-1763; Chapter 15 Peacetime expansion in the East 1764-1775; Chapter 16 Streamlining the Habsburg Monarchy; Chapter 17 The Russian maelstrom; Chapter 18 State crisis and recovery; Part 5 The revolutionary challenge 1789-1797; Chapter 19 From 'military promenade' to life-and-death struggle 1789-1794; Chapter 20 In search of compensations 1792-1795; Chapter 21 False Hopes 1796-1797 |Prospect;
