Page 302 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

302 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

The Employment of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the
Suppression of uprising in the Civil and Military Fields

M. CHRISTIAN ORTNER

When in the war year of 1918 the political leadership intended to use also military for-
mation to suppress and turn down strike movements, this was no new ground at all. it was
similar in all European countries that the armed forces were employed not only for outward
defence but also for the maintenance of law and order within a country, a development to be
th
th
found already in the 18 and 19 centuries . Although internal security tasks were reduced
due to the establishment of the gendarmerie in the middle of the 19 century, the so-called
th
“ordinary security service” was maintained in Austria and Austria-Hungary. It comprised
above all guard duties in the garrisons, which included the protection of military buildings
and real estates in garrison towns. Moreover, due to agreements with the responsible civil
administration authorities also the protection of state and public buildings could be taken
over. This implied above all the supervision of prisons, detention houses or state treasuries.
In bigger garrison towns the armed forces were used for the routine guard duties of the towns,
which meant the provision of permanent guards and the sending out of night patrols. Fur-
thermore, in big cities even so-called “main guards” were installed. In this “routine” guard
service the military had the function of a civil-security corps, a function which also linked to
the right of imprisonment of suspects and the use of arms.
Of special interest, however, was the so-called “extraordinary” security service, which
should be carried out only when there were not enough police and gendarmerie forces to meet
extraordinary dangers for the proper functioning of state institutions. For the civil authorities
this was the case, when not only individual persons but also so-called “mass movements”
started to offend the existing law regulations. The armed forces were to be employed to
strengthen the civil security corps and to form so-called “assistances” then. In the case of “re-
calcitrance” and “revolts” of whole villages or a greater number of persons, who opposed the
orders of the political authorities or refused to perform duties imposed on them like e.g. taxes,
they had to interfere. When employed these assistance were, however, not subject to the ter-
ritorial military hierarchy but served as a support of the civil administration authorities.
The first legal ground: for such employments are found in 1875 and 1876, when the terms
“military executions” and “military assistance” were legally defined. The first comprised
the use of military means of power to bring in state duties like e.g. taxes or natural duties,
whereas the term “military assistance” was very widely defined and comprised all military
measures in the security service.
What remained especially controversial was the use of weapons, which could not be ex-
actly defined. In a legal decision of the War Council of 1844 the field of “military assistance”
including the use of weapons was defined more precisely, as the use of weapon had either to
be ordered by the political authority requiring the assistance or was to be allowed for self-
defence purposes in the case of a direct attack on the assistance body.
To give the armed forces more exact guidelines, respective regulations on the “assist-