Immediately after the final examination, if there are any vacancies in the staff corps, the pupils receive appointments in order of merit, and are at the same time made captains. In proof of their receiving appointments on the earliest opportunity, we were told by Colonel Scudier that the last ten vacancies in the staff corps were filled up out of the twelve students who had just left the school. One of these was only a second lieutenant, and in order to make him a captain, (the rank required for the staff corps,) the Emperor promoted him to be a first lieutenant immediately, and to be a captain within three days afterwards. This double promotion was on the ground of great merit.
If an officer finds no vacancy in the staff corps ready for him, he must return to his regiment and wait as an attaché. But if a second lieutenant, he is entitled immediately to a step of rank, and if a lieutenant, after three years’ service he is made a captain, although he may not even then be attached to the staff corps.
There are to be eighty of these attachés to the staff. Their number at present amounts to only thirteen.
With regard to special aids-de-camp, generals are allowed to choose their own, without examination, but with this limitation, the officer chosen must not be a relation.[58]
[MILITARY EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS IN 1869.]
[PRINCIPLES OF MILITARY EDUCATION.]
The disastrous results to the integrity of the empire and the reputation of the army, of the military operations of Austria in 1858, against the combined forces of France and Sardinia, and of the still more humiliating defeat in the brief but momentous campaign of 1866 against Prussia, forced the military authorities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to a thorough investigation of her military system and the education of the officers of her armies. It was not difficult to account for ultimate defeat in the larger armies and better prepared in all the resources by which large armies are equipped, fed, and moved. But military critics were not slow in discovering that better preparation should have been made, the field should have been taken earlier, and the forces combined and moved with great certainty and skill.
In a Report by the Minister of War on the necessity of reorganizing the educational system of the Imperial army, and in the plan for such reorganization the author, Baron Kahn, starts with a principle which the great Empress Maria Theresa announced when she laid in 1748 the foundation of the earliest war school in Austria (Wiener Neustadt), and which Frederick the Great avowedly imitated in his War Academy in Berlin in 1764,—“In this school shall be formed men only, and of them, soldiers.” The choice of the profession of arms must be postponed till a good general education, reaching the moral as well as the intellectual and physical qualities of the future officer, has been imparted. The separation of the military pupils from their families at an early age must be avoided, and hence the number of cadet boarding schools for young aspirants are diminished. The intellectual preparation required, the sharpening and hardening the mental faculties, must not be gained by an exclusive mathematical course, in special schools, but in the general training of the public schools, the Real Schools or Gymnasia, of the country. A more practical knowledge of the common studies,—of geography and national history and the whole science of public economy and the martial resources of the empire, must be gained before the special military instruction begins. Admission to the higher military schools must be given only to aspirants of mature age, of high moral qualities, and of thorough intellectual activity—ascertained by careful examination and tested by at least one year’s service in connection with a regiment.