Austro - Hungarian Military Mission in Persia The Austro - Hungarian military mission in Persia the development of a military organization in Persia in 1879 , which is considered as part of efforts to reform the Persian army under Naser al - Din Shah and set up a standing army in Persia . The Association had the strength of a corps . Establishment History . A corps is a large military organization , which consists of several branches of service . The creation of the built - up of the Austro - Hungarian Army Corps mission was part of modernizing process of the Persian forces that had been implemented with the help of Austrian military experts . Due to the good relations of the first interpreter of Naser al - Din Shah , the Armenian Mirza Davood ( David ) Khan , the Austrian court in Vienna , and the connections of his former personal physician , Jakob Eduard Polak , on his second trip to Europe Naser al - Din Shah recruited Austrian officers who were to undertake the reorganization of the Persian army . The arrival of Naser al - Din Shah in Vienna on 5 July 1878 was like a true festival . Johann Strauss ( son ) was commissioned by the Viennese court to compose a Persian national anthem to honor the royal guest . [ 1 ] First Naser al - Din Shah visited the Viennese Arsenal to witness a demonstration of the guns developed by Major General Uchatius , the ordnance expert and master artillerist , member of the Viennese Academy of Sciences , Knight Commander and recipient of the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen . The Shah was apparently so impressed that he immediately ordered 12 guns . Furthermore , he bought 26 , 000 rifles and agreed with the Austrian government terms for the deployment of a military mission . The Mission . One Colonel Adalbert Schönowsky von Schönwies as Head of Mission departed with 30 other officers for Tehran on 29 October 1878 . On 12 November 1878 , the mission had arrived in Tarnopol , where retired military band Julius Gebauer with the instruments , which he had bought in Vienna for a Persian military band , joined the mission . The 14 participants of the mission then traveled with a luggage of 2 . 4 tons by train to Odessa , by ship to Poti , again by train to Tbilisi , from there to Baku and via the Caspian Sea to Rasht . [ 2 ] The Mission arrived in Tehran in January 1879 . The mission was accompanied by Albert Joseph Gasteiger Freiherr von Ravenstein und Kobach , who had already served several years in Persia . The objective of the mission was to reorganize the Persian army on the model of the imperial Austrian army . The first thing to be established was a corps of 7 , 000 men , including a musical procession . The training of the soldiers would be completed by March 1881 . The Austrians were able to achieve that the Persian soldiers of the Corps were better paid than the rest of the soldiers , and that the payment was paid regularly . Despite attacks by the clergy against the infidel , the corps was formed , and soon a corps spirit grew on the soldiers and seemed to make the training a success . On 22 May 1879 , Naser al - Din Shah visited and took a look for the first time at the corps set up by the Austro - Hungarian military mission corps . He was greeted with a Radetzky March , took a parade and visited the barracks of Abd ol - Azim , which he had obviously never seen in such a clean condition . The good mood of the Austrian officers , however , was marred by the fact that in May 1879 Russian officers arrived to establish a Persian Cossack Brigade . In the end the Persian Cossack Brigade outstripped the Austrians Corps and later formed the nucleus of the Imperial Iranian Army . Even though it looked like a success of the Austro - Hungarian military mission . At the end of July 1879 , the corps had 90 officers and 1 , 400 men and in January 1880 , the Head of Mission and Schönowsky were dismissed by Colonel Schemel v . Kühnritt , a former commander of the regiment No . 2 of Hussars " Friedrich Leopold of Prussia " . In May the corps was composed of 2000 men , who were equipped with Austrian uniforms and weapons . In April 1880 , there were already 260 officers and 6 , 000 men who served in the Austrian Corps service . The plans for the Persian army was to have a corps with the total strength of 7 , 000 men , organized as follows : [ 3 ] Operation History . The first use of the " Austrian corps " came in October 1880 . In Azerbaijan , a Kurdish uprising had sprang up against the central government in Tehran under the leadership of Sheikh Ubeydullah . The commander of the detachment was Captain Wagner von Wetterstädt who has already served in Mexico under Maximilian I and was battle - tested . The uprising was crushed . Captain Wagner was with the artillery in Urmia to defend it against further attacks . The successes of the Austrian corps led to further plans . The entire army should be preserved in Austrian uniforms and armed with new rifles and guns . But this was a tough task given Naser al - Din Shah lacked the necessary funds . In May 1881 , the payment of the Corps was reduced , and on 5 August 1881 the payment to all officers terminated . The end of the Austrian corps had come . In the autumn of 1881 the last officer of the military mission came back to Austria . Also Wagner von Wetterstädt returned to Austria in 1881 and retired in 1885 as a Major from the Austrian army . At the request of Naser al - Din Shah , Wagner von Wetterstädt areturned to Persia with the rank of general in the Persian army in 1886 . He reorganized the army and was given the title ' Khan ' . As commander of the army he led numerous missions and accompanied the Shah to the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 . He did not return until 1901 for health reasons in his native Transylvania , where he died on 30 September 1902 in Hermannstadt . Further development . After lengthy negotiations Naser al - Din Shah succeeded to recruit officers for the continuation of the Austrian army reform . This time they drove away " on their own account " in Iran and were no longer part of an official military mission . As a tribute to the work done so far by the Austrians in January 1882 , the entire army consisting of 10 , 000 men was equipped with Austrian uniforms and bought 8 , 000 new rifles . During 1883 and 1888 several mountain guns and 20 heavy guns were added to the artillery . Persian and Austrian Military Exchanges . In Bremerhaven , a warship was ordered with 6 guns and baptized " Persepolis " . Naser al - Din Shah could control the Persian Gulf with it . The ship was to sail with a German team to the Persian Gulf . A military academy was founded in Tehran in 1885 , which Austrian officers stationed in the Persian army taught there in addition to their military service duties . In 1886 Persian cadets sent to Vienna for further studies and Naser al - Din Shah asked Emperor Franz Josef for additional support in the army reform in 1887 . An Austrian general was to go to Persia , inspect the troops and lead an Austrian military mission with the rank of Persian Defense Minister . Franz - Josef refused , fearing problems with Russia . But he sent General von Thömmel as ambassador to Tehran . After a brief inspection of the situation , it became clear that there would be little return for the military support Austria was to provide . Also , Persia began to lose its importance from a strategic military point of view . Thus , the first official Austrian military involvement in Persia was terminated . Even under Muzaffar al - Din Shah , the successor of Naser al - Din Shah , Austrian officers were hired as instructors . On 7 August 1906 he met Captain Artur Kostersitz von Marenhorst and Major Conrad Emil Padowetz in Tehran . Padowetz left Tehran for two years and went as honorary consul to Geneva . Kostersitz , the last Austrian officer in the Persian service , was Head of the Military Academy until its closure in 1911 . The graduates were taken to the newly founded Persian Gendarmerie in 1911 . Kostersitz remained in Tehran until shortly before the outbreak of the First World War . Recruitment in Persian Army . At this time , the Persian army had nominally 72 infantry regiments , each with 600 men , recruits came exclusively from rural areas , as the inhabitants of the towns were exempted from military service . According to the National Defence Act each village was required to provide a certain number of soldiers . Conscription lasted between five and twenty years . The conscripts were in the army , however after a few months of basic training left it by paying of a bribe to the regimental commander for an indefinite period . Those who could afford no money worked , by the way , in order to earn an income . The soldiers received neither payment nor food . New uniforms were issued only every two to three years . The weapons were stored in arsenals and issued only to military exercises . Many soldiers had not fired a single shot as there was rarely target practice . A so - called military training took place more than twice a week . The officers of the army were usually landowners . Many of them had this position only because of their social status . The officers often had no military or other kinds of training . Most of them could not read or write . Some officers incidentally operated shops in the bazaar , to supplement their income . In a garrison from 100 to 500 soldiers were stationed . The Ministry of War sent inspectors twice a year in the garrisons , to verify the number of switches on the payment lists soldiers . When an inspection was announced , all standing on the payment list soldiers were called at short notice . To replace losses for the inspection day , laborers were hired , which is decked out with guns and uniforms lined up along with the regular soldiers in the ranks . The inspectors confirmed usually the presence of all listed men . Besides the infantry , there was an artillery consisting of 16 units . They had 60 Uchatius heavy guns produced in Austria and 30 Schneider - Creusot quick guns , although they were stored for up to a few guns in the arsenal , as it could serve no one . Some guns were loaned to the Gendarmerie . The artillery did not have their own horses . If an artillery exercise in Tehran was scheduled horses were borrowed from the hackney . [ 4 ] In the condition described by Hassan Arfa , the Persian army was ultimately not ready to fight . Even in the conflicts between the central government in Tehran and separatist movements in the west and north of the country erupting after the First World War , the army played no significant role . The defeat of the separatist movement has been made on the merits of the Persian Cossacks led by Reza Khan . The Persian army remained unchanged , with only minor reforms in the uniforms which some generals wore until after the end of World War I and the yellow paint of the Persian army barracks , until its dissolution by the measures implemented by Reza Khan , later Reza Shah Pahlavi , in 1921 . As the only member of the first Austro - Hungarian military mission of 1879 military bandmaster Julius Gebauer remained until his death in Tehran . On his grave in the cemetery in south Tehran Doulab reads : " Here lies Julius Gebauer , general and musical director , born 18 March 1846 , died on 9 July 1895 [ 5 ] "