Introduction

The Habsburg Monarchy has received much historiographical attention since 1945. Yet the military aspects of Austria’s emergence as a European great power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have remained obscure. This book shows that force of arms and the instruments of the early modern state were just as important as its marriage policy in creating and holding together the Habsburg Monarchy.

Drawing on an impressive up-to-date bibliography as well as on original archival research, this survey is the first to put Vienna’s military back at the centre stage of early modern Austrian history.