Austrian Plans
On 8 February 1809, the Austrian Empire determined to make war on Napoleon. Led by Foreign Minister Johann Philipp Stadion, Count von Warthausen, the brilliant diplomat Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, and Empress Maria Ludovika, the war party pointed to the French disaster at the Battle of Bailen in 1808. However, Archduke Charles wished to put off the war in order to fully mobilize and find allies.
Archduke Charles, appointed Generalissimo after the debacle of the War of the Third Coalition in 1805, had tried for three years to improve the Austrian army. Historian David G. Chandler writes, "Charles was the very best man available to Austria" to lead her army. He expanded the number of regular soldiers to 340,000 and created a large body of 240,000 landwehr troops. He upgraded the artillery corps, adopted the corps organization, and revised the infantry drillbook, incorporating more French-style tactical evolutions. Serious deficiencies remained, however, in Austrian staffwork, in the landwehr organization, and among the non-German nationalities. At the start, only 15,000 of the best landwehr formations were added to the field army while the rest were relegated to garrison duty or the reserves. The Habsburgs did not wish to arm the population for fear of an insurrection and therefore the landwehr was never fully utilized. In Hungary, the nobles and people were cool toward the war and contributed as little as possible.
Archduke Charles and the Hofkriegsrat sent 50,000 in two corps to Italy under Archduke John and 40,000 more in one corps to Galicia under Archduke Ferdinand. Charles massed the remaining regular army in Bohemia and along the Danube for the main effort.
Charles' army was organized as follows.
- Hauptarmee: Generalissimo Archduke Charles (206,906)
- I Armeekorps: General of Cavalry Count Heinrich von Bellegarde (27,653)
- II Armeekorps: Feldzeugmeister Johann Kollowrat (28,168)
- III Armeekorps: Feldmarschall-Leutnant Prince Friedrich Franz Xaver of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (29,360)
- IV Armeekorps: Feldmarschall-Leutnant Prince Franz Seraph of Rosenberg-Orsini (27,800)
- V Armeekorps: Feldmarschall-Leutnant Archduke Louis of Austria (32,266)
- VI Armeekorps: Feldmarschall-Leutnant Johann von Hiller (35,639)
- I Reserve Armeekorps: General of Cavalry Johann I Joseph, Prince of Liechtenstein (18,063)
- II Reserve Armeekorps: Feldmarschall-Leutnant Michael von Kienmayer (7,975)
Originally, Archduke Charles deployed six corps in Bohemia with only two corps south of the Danube. This proved to be too ambitious for the Austrian high command, so four corps were transferred south of the Danube. Accordingly, the I and II Armeekorps remained in Bohemia; the III, IV, and I Reserve Armeekorps formed a central mass under Charles; and the V, VI, and II Reserve Armeekorps made up the southern flank guard.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Teugen-Hausen, Background
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