ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |146 pages
Modest Origins – the Habsburg Monarchy During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century
part |52 pages
Austria's ‘age of heroes' 1683–1733
part |62 pages
The crisis of a great power 1733–1748
part |134 pages
Reform – revenge – aggression
part |45 pages
The revolutionary challenge 1789–1797