Common Army 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 ( of Austria ) and the Royal Hungarian Landwehr ( or Honved ) . However , it was simply known as the Army ( " Heer " ) by the Emperor and in peacetime laws , and , after 1918 , colloquially called the " k . u . k . Armee " ( short for Imperial and Royal Army ) . 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 " ( " Bewaffneten Macht " or " Wehrmacht " ) of the new double monarchy , to which the Imperial and Royal Navy ( " k . u . k . Kriegsmarine " ) also belonged . In the First World War all land and sea forces of the monarchy were subordinated to the " Armeeoberkommando " set up in 1914 . History . Origin of the name . Until 1889 the armed forces bore the title " k . k . " ( " kaiserlich - königlich " i . e . " Imperial - Royal " , which was technically incorrect after 1867 for a common institution of both Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Empire ) , as they had done before 1867 . Only on the express wish of the Kingdom of Hungary was the designation " k . u . k . " ( " kaiserlich und königlich " i . e . " Imperial and Royal " ) introduced in order to make the distinction clearer between the new Austrian army , the " k . k . Landwehr " , and the new Hungarian force , the " k . u . Honved " . The navy did not use " k . u . k . " as often , because there were few other naval forces apart from the main navy . Common institution . After the Austro - Hungarian Compromise of 15 March 1867 the army and navy were no longer institutions of a single state , but of the new double monarchy , which was composed of two countries on an equal footing : the Empire of Austria ( Cisleithania ) and the no longer subordinate Kingdom of Hungary ( Transleithania ) ; the two being joined together in a real union . From that point on , Emperor Franz Joseph - hitherto the " Emperor of Austria , King of Hungary , Bohemia , Croatia , Dalmatia , Galicia , etc . " - bore the title Emperor of Austria " and " King of Hungary . Overall command still lay with the monarch who communicated with the army through the newly established Military Chancellery of His Majesty the Emperor and King . The Imperial and Royal War Ministry ( " k . u . k . Kriegsministerium " - called the " Reichskriegsministerium " until 1911 ) was responsible for the administration and maintenance of the Army ( and Navy ) structure ; its associated General Staff being responsible for strategy . Its Chief of the General Staff had the right to address the monarch directly . Main element of the armed forces . The Austrian act of 11 April 1889 ( a law with identical content was passed in Hungary ) , which superseded the defence act of 1868 , amended in 1882 , stated clearly in section 2 that : In section 14 the annual recruiting quota for the Army and Navy was set at 103 , 000 ; of which 60 , 389 had to come from the " kingdoms and lands represented in the " Reichsrat " " . The recruiting target for Austrian " Landwehr " army raised for territorial defence was 10 , 000 men . The quotas were to be adjusted to meet requirements every ten years by political agreement between Austria and Hungary and by associated laws . The Austrian " Landwehr " and the Hungarian " Honvéd " were not subordinate to the Minister of War , but to the Imperial and Royal Minister for Defence ( " Landwehrminister " ) and his Royal Hungarian counterpart , unofficially called the " Honvédminister " . Funding . In all matters of joint concern , including the Common Army , there was a fixed cost - sharing between the two parts of the Empire . From 1867 onwards , Hungary bore 30 % of the total cost . This figure was increased in the Compromise negotiations in 1888 to 31 . 4 % and in 1907 to 36 . 4 % . The total cost of the Army , " Landwehr " and Navy in 1912 was around 670 million krones . That was less that 3 . 5 % of the entire national income , in 1906 it was only 2 . 5 % . In Russia , Italy and Germany the cost in 1912 was about 5 % of the net national product . Austria - Hungary remained the great power with the lowest expenditure on its armed forces . Neglect and factional interests . In the long period of peace during the final decades of the 19th century , the army and navy were increasingly neglected . Military expenditure was not popular in either the Austrian or Hungarian " Reichstag " , at least for their common forces . The much - needed modernization of the army was delayed again and again . This was to cause problems with mobilization in 1914 . ( The Mountain Troops of the Imperial - Royal Landwehr were , however , an exception and very well equipped ) . Hungarian politicians repeatedly demanded a separate Hungarian army . The monarch agreed a compromise in the 1867 accord : the two halves of the empire should be allowed their own territorial forces in addition to the common army . Hungary immediately began to establish the Royal Hungarian Landwehr , usually called the " Honvéd " , even in German . But Emperor and King Franz Joseph I mainly focused on the unity of the Army and Navy enshrined in the Compromise , and reinforced this in 1903 after further attempts by Hungary in his army order of Chlopy ( a training area in Galicia ) : Franz Ferdinand ' s reforms . In 1898 , when Archduke and heir to the throne , Franz Ferdinand , was entrusted by the Emperor with an analysis of the armed forces of the monarchy , the overdue need to rejuvenate its rather elderly General Staff quickly became apparent to him . The 76 - year - old Emperor agreed in 1906 to Franz Ferdinand ' s proposal to replace the chief of staff , Friedrich von Beck - Rzikowsky , also 76 years old , by 54 - year - old Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , and the heir immediately tasked Conrad with modernizing structures and processes . The 65 - year - old minister of war , Heinrich von Pitreich , was also replaced in 1906 at Franz Ferdinand ' s request . The investment proposals of the heir were implemented for political reasons but only to a small extent ; in World War I , the Austro - Hungarian army was far less well - equipped than the armed forces of the confederated German Empire . Wartime . From 1867 to 1914 , Austria - Hungary ' s land forces only had to deal with one emergency : the occupation campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Congress of Berlin approved its military occupation in 1878 . The deployment was needed in order to overcome armed resistance . In 1908 , part of the common army mobilized to quell an uprising in Bosnia - Herzegovina . After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand , in the summer of 1914 the 84 - year - old Emperor appointed Archduke Friedrich as the Army ' s Commander - in - Chief , as he himself had no longer wanted to hold this role in wartime since 1859 . By agreement , Friedrich left all operational decisions to his Chief of the General Staff , Conrad . After his accession in November 1916 , Charles I took over personal command of the armed forces again Organisation . Besides the Common Army there were also the : The Common Army and the Navy were run by the Imperial Minister of War ( " Reichskriegsminister " ) , later , from 20 September 1911 , the Imperial and Royal Minister of War , in Vienna , who was immediately subordinated to the Emperor and King . The two Landwehrs were run by the State Defence Minister of the Imperial - Royal Government in Vienna and his counterpart in the Royal Hungarian government in Budapest . In 1915 all the supplementary and honorific names in regimental titles were officially dropped and they were henceforth only to be referred to by their numbers . In practice this did not happen ; firstly , because no - one bothered to do so and , secondly , because the very frugal Imperial and Royal military administration had ordered that all existing stamps and headed letters had to be exhausted first . Recruiting and garrisoning . 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 Cisleithania n and the Transleithania n 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 ) . 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 battalion s of individual regiment s 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 . Armament . After their defeat at Königgrätz , the Emperor and army commanders were keen to learn lessons from the defeat , both in terms of armament , equipment and uniform , as well as army organization and military application . Very quickly breech - loading guns were introduced , something that had hitherto been long - delayed , the use of which by the Prussians was seen as crucial to their success . Thus , the earlier Lorenz muzzle - loading system was converted to breech - loaders based on a proposal by Vienna master gunsmith , Karl Wänzel . The infantry small arms , Extra - Korps weapons and " Jägerstutzen " converted in this manner to single - shot breech - loaders were standardized under the designation " Model 1854 / 67 " or " Model 1862 / 67 " and distributed to the respective branches of service . However , the Wänzel system was not intended to be anything more than a temporary stopgap . Subsequently , the " tabernacle lock " , developed by Joseph Werndl , provided an entirely new solution in the shape of a fundamentally groundbreaking breechblock system . This rotary block with loading groove for breech loading rifles subsequently made the Austrian Arms Factory ( " Österreichische Waffenfabriksgesellschaft " ) in Steyr into the biggest arms producer in Europe in its day . These small arms , standardized on the Werndl system , were introduced with the designations M1867 , M1873 , M1867 / 77 and M1873 / 77 and formed the standard weapon of the Imperial and Royal infantry and cavalry . for more than twenty years . The next big leap in the development of the small arm was the transition from the single - shot breechloader to the repeater . The system developed by Ferdinand Mannlicher had a straight - pull bolt action and magazine of 5 cartridges in the centre of the stock . This weapon system , first standardized in the k . u . k . Army in 1886 , was , at that time , one of the most advanced weapons in the world and , in its improved version , the M1895 was the standard rifle of Austro - Hungarian soldiers to the end of the First World War . Three million of these rifles were produced in Austria by Steyr Mannlicher and also in Hungary . In addition to firearms , a number of edged weapon s were standardized in the period from 1861 to the end of the Habsburg monarchy . These were the M1861 , M1869 and M1904 cavalry officer ' s and trooper ' s sabre s ; the M1877 light cavalry sabre ; the M1862 infantry officer ' s and soldier ' s sabre and the sabre for officers and men of the Imperial Landwehr Mountain Troops , this sabre also being used between the world wars by the Vienna Police . Furthermore , a standard M1853 engineers ' sabre was produced which , with its wide , heavy blade functioned more as a cutting tool than a weapon . All of these edged weapons are displayed in Vienna ' s Museum of Military History . The development of handgun s went through two different stages . In 1870 , the revolver was introduced in 1870 , in place of the previous single - shot , muzzle - loading pistol . These were the two high caliber guns developed by Leopold Gasser : the 11mm M1870 Army revolver and , four years later , the improved model M1870 / 74 . In addition , there was also the 9mm infantry officer revolver , the Gasser - Kopratschek M1872 , and the 8mm Rast & Gasser M1898 . Subsequently , the multi - shot repeater pistol was introduced , namely the 9mm Roth - Steyr M1907 and Steyr M1912 . Both guns have a rigidly locked recoil for chargers with a magazine for 10 and 8 rounds , respectively , in the grip . From the end of the 19th century several countries worked on the development of the machine gun . In Austria - Hungary in 1890 Archduke Karl Salvator and Major Georg Ritter von Dormus developed the so - called mitrailleuse . These early models are displayed in the Museum of Military History in Vienna . However , these technically highly ambitious developments proved to be unsuitable for use in the field , so eventually the Schwarzlose machine gun , developed by Andreas Schwarzlose , was introduced in 1907 as the Model M1907 and M1907 / 12 . Both the repeating pistols described above , as well as the Schwarzlose machine gun , were used by the Austrian Army until 1938 after the k . u . k . Army was disbanded in 1918 . Regimental colours . There were only two types of regimental colour in the Austro - Hungarian land forces of the Common Army . Both types of standard were bordered on three sides by a yellow , red and white toothed pattern . The standards were made of silk and measured 132 x 176 cm . They were assembled from two pieces , i . e . the reverse of the yellow standard was not a mirror image of the obverse side . Conscription . From 1866 there was general conscription . It was defined from 1868 by agreed , identical laws in both the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Empire . They covered service in the army , the navy , the " Landwehr " and the " Landsturm " . The length of service in the standing armies was 12 years : One - year voluntary service was permitted both in the army ( or the navy ) as well as the " Landwehr " . The one - year volunteers received no wages and equipment ( including a horse if needed ) had to be procured . Compulsory service began at age 21 . All persons aged 19 to 42 were liable for " Landsturm " service , unless they belonged to the army , the " Landwehr " and the replacement reserve . Peacetime order of battle in July 1914 . In July 1914 , the Common Army ' s order of battle was as follows : Infantry : Cavalry : The only difference between heavy ( uhlan ) and light ( dragoon , hussar ) cavalry was in the uniforms and unit titles ; which were chosen for genuine historic reasons . Artillery : Logistic troops : Technical troops : So - called march battalion s ( " Marschbataillone " ) were used to raise personnel strength for mobilization as well in the replacement of battle casualties . There was no system of reserve regiments as in the German Army . Languages . In the multinational state of the Imperial and Royal monarchy , German was the official , common , language of command and control . The roughly 100 relevant commands in German that were necessary for the effective discharge of their duties had to be learnt by every soldier . Only a small proportion of army units spoke German exclusively ; and in the navy , Italian was spoken by the majority of sailors . A " service language " was used for communications between military units . This was German in the Common Army and k . k . Landwehr , and Hungarian in the Honvéd . The " regimental language " was used for communication with a regiment . It was the language that the majority of the men spoke . If , as in the case of the 100th Infantry in Krakau , the unit was made up of 27 % Germans , 33 % Czechs and 37 % Poles , there were three regimental languages . Every officer had to learn the regimental language within three years . In all , there were 11 officially recognized languages in the k . u . k . monarchy .