Talk:Imperial Army (Holy Roman Empire)

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It can be very difficult to decide what "imperial army" refers to in a source. Many of the links that previously pointed to the page on the Habsburg army are probably wrong. Srnec (talk) 21:18, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will take a look at it! Palastwache (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Palastwache: I think the concept of the "imperial army" is very confused. I do not think the kaiserliche Armee of the Thirty Years' War is the same thing as the Austrian army of the 1740s. I wonder if this page should not be turned into a broad concept article, but we do already have Imperial Military Constitution... The problem as I see it is a false dichotomy between (a) an army raised by the circles on the orders of the diet and (b) the standing army of the emperor as an imperial prince in his own right. In reality there was much more going on and I think the distinction really only hardens in the 1740s when the Habsburgs lost the imperial throne for a time.
For example, for your change at Battle of Vlotho you wrote the Reichsarmee was not assembled during the war, but the Peace of Prague states that "all armies are to be combined into a single main army to be called His Roman Imperial Majesty's and the Holy Roman Empire's Army" (source). Perhaps the problem is that "Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Emperor" is far broader than the Habsburg army if it includes every army under the emperor's command that was not raised through the standard diet-and-circle process. Srnec (talk) 21:09, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The origin of the standing Austrian army is the Imperial army of the Thirty Years' War in the sense of the regiments raised by e. g. Wallenstein. Only since the beginning of the Thirty Years War there was a continuous military organisation and permanently standing regiments in control the Emperor (some Imperial Austrian regiments can be traced back to the Thirty Years' War, e. g. the dragoon regiment of Jan van der Croon which was constantly under arms under the following regiment holders until 1918). The Peace of Prague did indeed aim to integrate every army in the Empire under the Emperor's personal command. If this reform had been fully implemented, it would have created a completely different kind of "Reichsarmee", it would have replaced the existing concept of an army raised (occasionally) on order of the diet by a standing army under direct command the Emperor. In reality, the other mercenary armies in the Empire did only nominally accept the supreme command of the Emperor, represented by his son, Ferdinand of Hungary. In particular, Bavaria (with the previous army of the Catholic League) and Saxony retained control over their armies as independent corps of the "Reichsarmada". Cooperation of these corps with the troops of the Emperor was completely dependent on the goodwill of the Imperial princes and their commanders (see e. g. the separate peace treaties of Brandenburg 1641 and Saxony 1646 with Sweden). There was no integration into one army of the Empire. Nevertheless, it is a unique episode of the Imperial Army of the Emperor that is rather neglected in the literature.

In other cases, the concept of "Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Emperor" might be broader than the Habsburg army, especially prior to 1618 when there was no standing Habsburg army, only occasionally hired mercenaries and local defense militias. It is more difficult to differentiate between the Landsknechts of Maximilian I or Charles V and circle troops fighting in their wars. There is also a difference between locally raised circle troops on their own (e. g. the Swabian circle had a standing circle army since 1694) and circle troops raised and united into the Reichsarmee on behalf of the Imperial diet. Palastwache (talk) 22:28, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]