page_title: Common Army
section_title: Recruiting and garrisoning
hierarchical_section_title: Common Army / Organisation / Recruiting and garrisoning
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Österreichisch Maschinegewehr, 1907/12 (Kaliber 6mm); Festung Hohensalzburg, Salzburg, Österreich English: Austrian Machinegun, 1907/12 (6mm Caliber); High Fortress, Salzburg, Austria
context_page_description: The Common Army as it was officially designated by the Imperial and Royal Military Administration, was the largest part of the Austro-Hungarian land forces from 1867 to 1914, the other two elements being the Imperial-Royal Landwehr and the Royal Hungarian Landwehr. However, it was simply known as the Army by the Emperor and in peacetime laws, and, after 1918, colloquially called the k.u.k. Armee.
  Established on 15 March 1867 and effectively disbanded on 31 October 1918 when its Hungarian troops left, the Common Army formed the main element of the "armed power" of the new double monarchy, to which the Imperial and Royal Navy also belonged. In the First World War all land and sea forces of the monarchy were subordinated to the Armeeoberkommando set up in 1914.
context_section_description: Unlike the k.k. Landwehr and k.u. Landwehr, the Common Army and the Navy (the majority of the Navy's crews admittedly came from the region around Trieste and the rest of the littoral - and most of the Navy spoke Italian) recruited their soldiers from across the double monarchy, i.e. from both the Cisleithanian and the Transleithanian halves of the Empire. All military elements that did not come from the Kingdom of Hungary (including Upper Hungary, Transylvania and Banat) or from Croatia and Slavonia (that were part of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown) were designated as "German regiments", regardless of whether they were made up of Poles, Croats or Italian-speaking Tyrolese. All the rest were designated as "Hungarian regiments". German and Hungarian regiments differed from one another in their dress, but their designation as "German" or "Hungarian" was no indication of the languages used within those units (see section on languages).
  57 infantry regiments were called "German" regiments
  45 infantry regiments were called "Hungarian" regiments.
  4 infantry regiments (of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry) had a special status both in terms of uniform and language.
  The rifle (Jäger) battalions belonging to infantry regiments were organized according to the same system
  Artillery, sappers, logistic train and cavalry were also mostly organized along national lines, but lacked any descriptive additions to their unit names. But it was known that all hussars came from the lands of the Hungarian crown (with Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian and German as their native language), the Uhlans from Galicia (speaking Polish and Ukrainian) and the dragoons from the German-Austrian crown lands, Bohemia and Moravia (speaking Czech and German).
  The "armed power" (Army, Navy, Landwehr, Honvéd) was under the command of the Emperor and King in his capacity as "the supreme warlord" (allerhöchster Kriegsherr). This title was primarily of formal significance because, after the hapless campaign led by Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1859 in Italy, the monarch had retired from active military command and the actual command from then on in peacetime, was exercised by the War Ministry in Vienna and, in the First World War, by Commander-in-Chief Archduke Friedrich - only appointed for the war - and his Chief of General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. On 2 December 1916 Emperor Charles I again took personal command. Franz Joseph I had never made special visits to the troops, but had made contact with local regiments on his journeys around the Monarchy and had participated in the annual "imperial exercises" (Kaisermanövern) until he was very old. In addition, he always turned out in his field marshal's uniform, when not abroad, in order to testify to the link with his soldiers. The 30-year-old Emperor Charles I, who succeeded to the throne in the middle of the war, took the term commander very seriously and tirelessly visited the front and his troops.
  A feature of the Common Army was the frequent changes of troop locations during the early first decades. The battalions of individual regiments were moved at very short intervals to other locations (in 1910 only three infantry regiments of the Common Army were based entirely in one garrison: the 14th Infantry at Linz, the 30th Infantry at Lviv and the 41st Infantry at Chernivtsi). As a result, the traditional relationship between a regiment and a specific place and local population could not be formed (as was promoted, for example, everywhere in the various armies of the German Empire). Troops were often stationed at the other end of the Empire, so that, in the event of civil disturbance, they would not fraternize with the local population. But their widespread distribution was also the result of a lack of barracks. This went so far that even individual companies had to be separated from their battalions and housed independently. After greater efforts had been made, in the years before the First World War, to build new barracks and renovate existing ones, this practice reduced markedly.
caption: Schwarzlose MG M.07/12
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