August 9, 2009

Today I went to the Heeresgeschichtliche military museum to and visited both the upper stories with their emphasis on the Turkish invasion and Thirty Years War as well the lower floors that described WWI and WWII.  Upon entering the museum, I saw the Hall of Strategists, a series of hallways with the statues of Austrian generals throughout history.  I only recognized one or two of these generals but the room was nonetheless an exciting to see.  The statues describe below their feet the different battles they participated or orchestrated.  Again, much of these descriptions were very vague for me, being that Austrian military history is only referenced at specific times throughout our course, but I have a great affinity for military history so I’m not complaining that much.  After leaving the first room, I ascended the stairs to the Turkish exhibit.  The floor describes the Muslim incursions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the west.  These invasions captured such regions as Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, and a series of our nations that fell to Ottoman power.  The Austrians were the last line of defense before the Turks entered Central Europe and therefore, the bulwark of Christian/Western cultural.  The Hungarians themselves attempted to defend their Magyar lands but at the battle of Mohacs in 1529, their king was killed and the majority of the nation became an Ottoman satellite.  This battle, and the death of the Hungarian king, would later spell the first step in creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The rooms show what European soldier wore and used as weaponry during the time period but it would appear that some of their technology would prove ineffective against the more power Turkish army.  The Turks had mastered the use of rifles and artillery, making castle walls useless against such siege equipment.  The Turks still used swords and spears that appeared more exotic than practical.  Nonetheless, their equipment still looked fearsome against the swords and shields of the European powers.  Many of the European mannequins held spears that looked specifically used for castle sieges.  Ottoman rifles would prove more powerful on the battlefield and it would be interesting to know if these incursions specifically changed the style of warfare in Europe because their weapons were growing increasingly useless against the Turks.  While gunpowder was becoming more popular in warfare, it should not be forgotten that there were still practical uses for older forms of combat.  One can recognize the time differences between loading a rifle and a bow and arrow was actually quite significant.  While the rifle could prove more powerful and psychologically detrimental in combat, the loading time on both weapons could make the technologically inferior bow and arrow the better fighting weapon.

While the Turkish incursions were proving to be a conflict of cultures, the Thirty Years War was in part a conflict of ideas.  Originally forming as a theological war between Catholics and Protestants, the war dragged on into four phases in which the conflict changed from religious conflict to political fighting.  This was the last major religious war in Europe and following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, Europe entered a new stage of conflict where geopolitics took predominance and political ideology grew into a new form of conflict.  The military technology of these wars was quite similar to the wars against the Turks and I must admit I had trouble at times differentiating military units from the different campaigns.  The weaponry would arguably be the same since knights were used in France just as much as they were used in Hungary back in the day.  So I would assume the weaponry used in the Franco-Swedish phase was about the same as the technology used to fight the Ottoman aggressors in South-Eastern Europe.  The armor slowly changed from those of the knights to the less-cumbersome clothes of the rifleman.

All of these changes throughout history show the affects war had on the military and society in general.  It was fascinating to see all the different weapons, documents, and uniforms that have been worn throughout history and how exterior events, say like the Turkish invasions, actually changed nearly all European armies.  I did see the rest of the museum and that was all interesting to see as well but that is for another day.  These wars helped bring Europe to a new precipice in its history and the next floor of Austrian history shows the effects these had for Austria and Europe as a whole.