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A Secret Austro-Hungarian Plan to Intervene in the 1884 Timok Uprising in Serbia: Unpublished Documents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Scott W. Lackey
Scott W. Lackey
Affiliation:
Assistant Historian, Combined Arms Command, Ft. Leavenworth, KS 66027
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Extract

IN DECEMBER 1883, Habsburg political and military leaders met in crisis session to discuss the situation in Serbia. Serious rioting threatened to. topple the friendly government of Prince Milan Obrenović, which two and a half years earlier had concluded a secret agreement in Vienna that made the country a dependency of the Habsburg Monarchy. The Serbian war ministry had rushed troops from the large Belgrade garrison to the troubled areas and had placed the two battalions that remained in the capital on a war footing in an attempt to ensure continued calm. Alarmed by these drastic measures, an Austro-Hungarian crown council, although not obligated to do so under existing treaties with Belgrade, authorized the commitment of Habsburg military forces should unrest escalate to revolution in Serbia.

Type
Documents
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 23 , January 1992 , pp. 149 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1992

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References

1 See the report of the Austro-Hungarian military attáche in Belgrade, reprinted as Document 2 in this article.

2 See, for example, Petrovich, Michael Boro, A History of Modern Serbia, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 402–44Google Scholar. See also the following works on diplomatic history: Jelavich, Barbara, The Habsburg Empire in European Affairs, 1814–1918 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 125–26Google Scholar; Langer, William L., European Alliances and Alignments, 1871–1890 (New York: Knopf, 1931), 328–29Google Scholar; Bridge, Francis Roy, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1866–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 402–3Google Scholar.

3 See Letter, Haymerle to Franz Joseph, Vienna, June 28 1881, HHStA, P.A. I, Karton 456, Liasse V, Verhandlungen mit Serbien 1881–1886. Pribram, Alfred F. published the Austro-Serbian agreement of June 1881 in his Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921), 53–61Google Scholar.

4 See Langer, Alliances, 326–27. See also Trivanovitch, Vaso, “Serbia, Russia and Austria during the Rule of Milan Obrenovich,” Journal of Modem History 3 (06 1931): 439CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Serbia, with Austrian support, ultimately gained another fifty square miles of territory at the Congress of Berlin in addition to what had been acquired under the San Stefano settlement.

5 Pirochanats did finally wrest an assurance from the Austrian government that the MilanHaymerle agreement did not prohibit Serbia from concluding nonpolitical agreements with other powers without Austrian knowledge. See Langer, Alliances, 329.

6 See Beck's comments on Serbia in his memorandum of March 1884 concerning the war plan vs. Russia, K.A., Generalstab, Operationsbūro (Op.B.), Karton 670, Fasz. 7.

7 See Beck's memorandum of March 28, 1882 concerning the steps Austria-Hungary would take in the event of complications with Serbia, K.A., Generalstab, Op.B., Karton 693.

8 See Beck's memorandum concerning deployment preparations for 1883, Vienna, November 11, 1882, K.A., Generalstab, Op.B. Karton 669, Fasz. 4.

9 See Bridge, Sadowa to Sarajevo, 140.

10 In 1880, Serbia signed a convention with Austria-Hungary providing for the construction of a railroad between Vranja on the Turkish border and Belgrade, where it would link up with the Austrian rail network. See Langer, Alliances, 326.

11 See Petrovich, History of Modrn Serbia, 427–28; see also Bridge, Sadowa to Sarajevo, 140–41.

12 See Petrovich, History of Modern Serbia, 428.

13 See the crown council protocol of January 17, 1879, K.Z. 23, R.M.R.Z. 225, HHStA, P.A. XL, Karton 291.

14 See the crown council protocol of October 13, 1879, K.Z. 124, R.M.R.Z. 242, HHStA, P.A. XL, Karton 291.

15 For the original ministerial debate over the construction of the Zenica-Sarajevo railroad, see the ministerial council protocol of June 22, 1880, K.Z. 79, R.M.R.Z. 266, HHStA, P.A. XL, Karton 292. The Hungarians charged that the railroad was being built solely for military purposes and refused to bear the total costs for its construction even though the new line would connect only with the Hungarian rail network. Taaffe, desirous of minimizing costs for a railroad that would be of very little value to the Austrian half of the Monarchy, forced both the Hungarians and the military men to accept the cheaper narrow-gauge construction. In 1914, only one single-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad would link Sarajevo with the rest of the Monarchy.

16 See Bridge, Sadowa to Sarajevo, 141–42.

17 Kállay had written a history of Serbia and had served as the Austro-Hungarian minister to Belgrade between 1868 and 1875. He left the foreign service to become the editor of the Budapest newspaper Kelet Nepe (People of the East), where he continued to call for the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary. He was convinced that the aspirations of Ristic and the other Serbian nationalists in the region posed a threat to Habsburg control over its Slavic territories. For a good contemporary assessment of Kállay's views on Bosnia-Herzegovina, see von Mollinary, Anton Freiherr, Sechsundvierzig Jahre im österreich-ungarischen Heere 1833–1879, vol. 2 (Zürich: Verlag Institut Orell Füssli, 1905), 307Google Scholar.

18 See the 1882 Austro-Hungarian war plan against Serbia, Generalstab, Op.B., Karton 693. Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Austro-Hungarian military leaders considered Montenegro, not Serbia, to be the greatest security threat on the southern borders of the Monarchy. Beck had greeted the 1881 agreement primarily because Serbian neutrality would allow the full concentration of the Fifteenth Corps at Sarajevo against the Montenegrins, who, it was estimated, could mobilize an army of 30,000–40,000 men in four or five days. See Beck's memorandum on the war plan against Russia, K.A., Generalstab, Op.B. Karton 670, Fasz. 7.

19 Beck proposed to form the Ninety-Fifth Infantry Brigade at Semlin from four battalions of the Fourth Corps. In addition, he advocated that another four battalions from the Thirteenth Corps area be deployed along the Drina River border between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. See Documents 3 and 4.

20 According to the war ministry instructions, the envelope containing the documents reprinted here could be opened only by the head of the ministry's presidium or by the war minister himself.

21 True, Austria-Hungary and Russia faced different problems. Austria-Hungary's dilemma centered on propping up a friendly, but unpopular, government. In 1886, Russia sought to overthrow King Alexander of Battenberg, but showed no inclination to use military force to achieve that end. Ultimately the tsarist government relied upon disloyal officers within the Bulgarian army to oust Battenberg. See Kennan, George F., The Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 189–92Google Scholar.

22 This and the documents that follow were all found in the Vienna Kriegsarchiv file 76–23/1 ex 1884 of the imperial war ministry presidium. The original file copy of the document had been sealed for the past 105 years and had to be opened by archive officials for use by the author. Also included in the file (but unpublished for reasons of space) were detailed orders of battle drawn up by both the war ministry and the general staff. These differed somewhat as can be seen from the war ministry's reply to Beck's dispositions (Document 4). The war ministry estimated the cost to mobilize the forces at Semlin listed in its order of battle at 84,959 gulden in one-time and another 98,803 gulden per month in ongoing expenditures.

23 The protocol of this session of the common ministerial council cannot be found in the files of the Austro-Hungarian foreign ministry, which kept stenographic records of the council's proceedings. This passage is the only mention of the meeting that survives.

24 The following passage was stricken from the rough draft of Bylandt's report to the emperor: “Der gesammte Mehr-Aufwand wūrde demnach 105.159 fl. an einmaligen Auslagen und 122.403 fl. an fortlaufenden Auslagen (per Monat) betragen.”

25 According to the 1880 Militärschematismus, Hermann Pinter was a captain first class in the general staff and was supposedly assigned to “special duty.” Beck must have indeed considered Pinter an extraordinary officer given his rapid promotion from captain to lieutenant colonel within three years.

26 Word illegible. My best guess is Viehkataster (census of livestock).

27 Unfortunately the copy of this note that survives in the war ministry files contains no exact reference to the author agency. It is also unsigned and undated. It was most likely prepared in either the presidial or the fifth departments of the imperial war ministry, the latter being the section responsible for the evaluation of general staff plans and proposals.

28 The Verzekhniβi, unpublished for reasons of space, listed the units regularly scheduled for transfer to and from Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1884. Two infantry battalions from the Twelfth Corps (Siebenbürgen) area, scheduled for redeployment within the Monarchy, would not be replaced. The Eighth Corps (Prague) would also reclaim one of its Jäger battalions from the occupied territories. Overall, the war ministry estimated that the normal transfer schedule would reduce the number of troops within Bosnia-Herzegovina by 1,000 men.