Hero of the Habsburgs

BIOGRAPHY: Radetzky: Imperial Victor and Military Genius By Alan Sked IB Tauris, 262pp. £25

FIELD MARSHAL Count Josef Radetzky von Radetz is chiefly known today for the lively Radetzky March, composed in his honour by Johann Strauss the Elder. That he is less celebrated than his contemporaries Napoleon and Wellington is probably accounted for by the demise in 1918 of the Austrian Habsburg empire he served so well for an incredible 72 years. Throughout his lifetime Austria was a great European power. Its large army was a core imperial institution. Alan Sked, in this excellent, scholarly biography, makes a strong case that Radetzky was the best soldier the Habsburgs ever produced and, Napoleon excepted, the foremost military commander of the 19th century. Like Napoleon, his military concepts were mobile, offensive warfare; flexible planning; advancing by column; reliance on artillery; and striking the enemy at the weakest point, preferably by surprise. On at least two occasions he powerfully influenced the course of European history.

Radetzky was born into a Bohemian military family in 1766. Orphaned as a child, he fulfilled only with difficulty his ambition of embarking on a military career. The army, he said, became his true home. His sharp mind, fresh thinking, energetic campaigning and reputation for courage ensured his rapid promotion. He was also bookish, with a keen interest in cartography, and always an ardent, if frustrated, military reformer.

The loss of the Grande Armée in Russia in 1812 opened the way for Napoleon’s enemies to move in for the kill. Austria, his most resilient foe, led the alliance, with Prince Schwarzenberg as supreme commander and Radetzky as chief of staff. However, they had to work with the other allied generals and endure the interference of the emperor, the tsar and the king of Prussia, who all joined the campaign accompanied by numerous advisers. Schwarzenberg complained that he was “surrounded by the feeble-minded, all sorts of fools, eccentric schemers, intriguers, asses, babblers, criticasters; in short, vermin in countless numbers gnaw at me and torment me to the marrow of my bones”.

Despite his outspokenness, he was surprisingly good at diplomacy, leaving Radetzky to get on with the detailed planning of the operations of 1813-4, a task he performed superbly. Three armies wore down the French but, prudently, avoided attacking Napoleon himself until they could unite to defeat him at the three-day battle of Leipzig, where more than 500,000 combatants were engaged. France was invaded, and Napoleon forced to abdicate. Physically shattered by his endeavours, it took Radetzky three years to recover from the war.

After a decade of routine peacetime duties, in 1831 he was appointed to command the Austrian army in northern Italy, where Lombardy and Venetia were part of the Habsburg lands. He dealt forcefully, and reasonably successfully, with the nascent Risorgimento, although dubious about the efficacy of repression.

In 1848-9, in his 80s, he twice defeated, with clinical professionalism, invasions of Lombardy by the opportunistic king of Piedmont-Sardinia. (The first victory was the occasion of Strauss’s anthem.) Contemporaries felt he had prevented revolution, and in Sked’s view “had he not triumphed, the European balance of power would have been overthrown . . . and European war between the powers made all but inevitable”. Radetzky was dead by the war of 1859, when Piedmont, with French military support, finally secured Lombardy, followed in 1866 by Venetia.

One can only speculate about whether “Father Radetzky” could have saved Austria from ultimate defeat in Italy, but it seems unlikely. He sired eight children in a loving marriage, marred only by his wife’s extravagance, which caused him periodic financial difficulties, to which the cost of maintaining his five sons as army officers and his own lavish entertaining also contributed.

Austro-Irish officers play a part in the Radetzky story. His first active service was under the ageing Field Marshal Frantz Lacy in the Austro-Turkish war of 1787-91. Count Laval Nugent of Westmeath organised the army corps sent to reinforce him in Italy in 1848. Count Max O’Donell von Tyrconnell was deputy governor of Lombardy. Important men in their time, the Austro-Irish, like Radetzky himself, are now largely forgotten.

Harman Murtagh is a visiting fellow at Athlone IT and president of the Military History Society of Ireland