Austrian Army Sanitäts-Compagnies

hello

in Nebiha Guigua's thesis about how the wounded soldiers were treated by French and Austrian Armies

https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/29958/1/The%CC%80se-Guiga.pdf

I had the big surprise to met the Sanitäts-Compagnies, never seen such Austrian units before the Militärschematismus des österreichischen Kaiserthums of...1850 as Battalions then companies...nor they existed previously in wartime in the Napoleonic Wars

How many were raised?

if I understand the uniform was the same as the Invalids

In theory, they should be taken care of by the Sanitätscompagnie in the Austrian system since the regulation of 1788

As for the Austrian army, the only available information is regulatory, consisting of the directive to the sanitary companies ("Anweisung an die Sanitäts-Compagnie"), addressed to these formations by Field Marshal Leutnant Rosenberg on June 9, 1809, between the battles of Aspern-Essling and Wagram.

(...)

In Austria, the collection of the wounded was to be handled by the Sanitäts-Compagnie, which are older. They were the result of experiments under Joseph II, which aimed to attach invalids to the regimental doctors and Feldscherer. These were initially tasked with collecting the wounded, along with soldiers, at the end of the battle. The destruction of sources in Austria has prevented us from discovering all the stages in the founding of these companies, but we were able to find the instructions addressed to them by Ferdmarschall-Leutnant Orsini-Rosenberg in 1809. We also have the Conduite-Lista and Superarbitrierungs-Lista of these units, which provide us with information on the recruitment of semi-disabled personnel (Halb-Invaliden) to form the companies. In the instructions addressed by Orsini-Rosenberg to the medical companies, he defines their role, which is twofold. It is to provide first aid to the wounded and transport them to the hospitals closest to the front line (Aufnahmsspital), but also to separate the truly wounded from the fictitious and return the latter to their regiment. Their role is therefore both medical and disciplinary.

(...)

The sanitary companies were not composed of doctors but of soldiers whose task was to evacuate the wounded, limit the departure of able-bodied combatants from the battlefield, and indicate the route to the ambulance for the wounded able to move on their own. According to Emil Knorr, who wrote a history of European medical services in 1880 (before the Austrian archives were burned in 1927), this role even extended to having to place orange flags indicating the route to the ambulance.

(...)

A company is attached to an Army Corps and numbers between 200 and 300 men, at least for the duration of a campaign. A number, therefore, entirely equivalent to that of French companies. Transfer lists tell us that a certain number of soldiers arrive at the beginning of the campaign and leave the corps again once peace has returned. The soldiers in question come from homes of invalids Invaliden-Häuser and then return there, or they come from regiments and are often then retired at the end of the campaign. These are, in fact, what the Austrian army calls semi-invalids. They were deemed unfit for active service, but the arbitration, recorded on a Superarbitrierung lista, distinguished between genuine invalids sent back to their homes or to an invalid home and semi-invalids still capable of serving in hospitals (where this type of recruitment is also found) or, as we are interested in here, in medical companies. The other members of these companies came from the border cordons of the Austrian Empire. There were no doctors directly attached to these companies. Regimental surgeons were seconded to these companies as well as to the temporary hospitals. The recruitment method for these medical companies meant that they were relatively elderly men (between 40 and 60 years old on average), including the officers. These average ages were consistent with recruitment from invalid homes, which primarily housed soldiers with very long service and often very elderly. The service rosters of these companies show that some of the men had to leave the service during the campaign for health reasons.

3 comments

3 Comments

David Hollins

Aug 24

Then, there is Nebiha Guiga's PhD "Die Versorgung im Kampf verwundeter Soldaten im napoleonischen Europa (1805-1813)" https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/29958/2/Le_champ_couvert_de_mort_Guiga_Deutsche_Zusammenfassung_annexe.pdf

On p13, she says: "3. The Military Health Service: Austrian Legislation The health service of the Imperial and Royal Austrian Army was primarily governed by the legislation of 1788, written by Johann Alexander von Brambilla, Chief Physician to Joseph II. The regulations were divided into fourteen chapters, each dealing with the role of the various types of personnel, as well as the organization of care in the hospital, in the regiment, and on the battlefield. The regulations also established the strategy for recruiting surgeons. The Army Health Service was subordinate to both the Military Command and the Court War Council. Furthermore, hygiene, especially air quality, was a major concern. These guidelines continued to be applied during the Napoleonic era, although from 1805 onward, reforms were slowly introduced, primarily concerning the management of provisional hospitals and the organization of ambulances, two points on which the 1788 regulations remained rather vague. A first text on this, a working version, was written in 1808. More precise instructions were drawn up in 1809 for the establishment of military hospitals, as well as for ambulances and medical companies. Salomon Kirchenberger mentions a version of the regulations of the health service of the Austrian armies from 1811, which I was unable to find in the war archives. These various reforms were then published in 1815, with a particular focus on hospitals. 4. Major Deficiencies and Improvement Projects The regulations of the health services of the two armies involved convey the image of a well-oiled system with precise procedures. Without denying the effectiveness of these regulations, which partially challenge the conventional image of lack of care and utter chaos in the armies of the Napoleonic era, we must not fall into the opposite excess."

On p22, she says: "In Austria, the recovery of the wounded was carried out by the medical company. This was the result of reforms under Joseph II aimed at placing invalids with the doctors and field surgeons of the regiments23 to ensure the recovery of the wounded. In instructions that Orsini-Rosenberg addressed to the medical companies24, he defined their role as twofold. They were to provide first aid to the wounded and transport them to the nearest hospitals (admission hospitals), as well as to sort the wounded into "real" and "false" wounded and return them to their regiment accordingly. Their role was therefore both medical and disciplinary in nature. The personnel of these companies, which had no doctors despite being sent by the regiments, consisted of semi-disabled soldiers, i.e., soldiers deemed unfit for active combat duty but still classified by the super-arbitration board as fit for hospital duty. They were often elderly and in rather poor health. Medical soldiers rarely appeared in the memoirs, and often in unflattering terms: they were frequently accused of stealing from, or even killing, the wounded.

n.23 Joachim MOERCHEL, The Austrian Military Medical System in the Age of Enlightened Absolutism, Frankfurt am Main, 1984, p. 270."

David Hollins

Aug 24

Angeli 'Erzherzog Carl' V p128 doesn't add much: "From an operational perspective, the medical service proved inadequate. The organization of the medical facilities into only two lines of hospitals made it difficult to meet all operational needs. Due to the lack of easily mobile medical facilities that could adapt to the army in all circumstances, while others effectively divided the flow of wounded being transported backward, the troops suffered immensely in the first years of the war. They all too often found themselves in situations where the sick and wounded rapidly accumulated, but there were either no hospitals available to receive them, or these were so distant that it was almost impossible to send the patients there without obvious danger to their lives. On the other hand, the field hospitals were located so close together that in the event of an unexpected or precipitate retreat, they would be thrown one upon another and thrown into extreme confusion. were brought. While such grievances were unavoidable in the main army, they increased even more in the detached corps, whose medical services were essentially organized only as a sideline. Human misery, says the Military Court Commission in its report to the Emperor, truly crossed the limit of what was tolerable. It remains unknown what the sick and wounded suffered, and how many met their demise as a result of this alone. Such conditions certainly opened up a wide field of beneficial work for the organizer. However, the aim here was less to simply improve what existed than to find entirely new foundations for the contemporary expansion of those institutions that Emperor Joseph's creative spirit had brought into being for the benefit of the army. The first impulse in this direction came from Emperor Franz personally at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. When the contractor for the supply of medicines and bandages, Natorp, terminated the contract in the middle of the war in order to benefit from the state's distress, the Emperor ordered that the supply of medicines for the army be taken over into state administration from March 1, 1794." The Sanitäts-Compagnies came under the Army General Kommando (FML Skal) in 1809, which dealt with admin, supply etc.

Krieg 1809 Vol.1 p90 says: "Shortly before the outbreak of the war, medical companies were formed from Border cordon troops, semi-disabled soldiers, and Landwehr soldiers, and one was assigned to each army corps. Understandably, there was no question of training this personnel in medical support services; at best, they were needed to transport the wounded. Furthermore, this medical corps also provided guard duty for the corps' medical train during marches. For the transport of the wounded to the field reception hospitals that followed the army, opinions on whose use differed greatly, carriages always had to be procured on site. The corps also established hospitals as needed, using state and troop resources: the army command expanded the reception hospitals into "substation hospitals" as needed." and on p100: "The 4th Department or the Army General Command handled the affairs of supplies, medical training and finance, and was responsible for military support and the administration of occupied territories."

Acerbi says: "Unteroffiziere für den Sanitäts-Hilfsdienst Charges assigned only in war-time. These ranks appeared later in the XIX century (1861). They were NCOs commanding the Blessiertenträger Abteilungen (medical stretchbearers sections) and were subordinated to the Regiments-Chefarzt. Every regimental Staff had one Feldwebel and one Corporal per battalion, who acted as medical service NCOs. In war-time the number of the Corporals and that of the Blessiertenträger (three in peace time) doubled. In the Staff there were also eight Bandagenträger (medical orderlies, two per battalion), who carried the sanitary equipments and flanked the “Doctors” in the battlefield."