John Bellew was a captain in the Imperial cavalry and served with several cuirassier regiments. His letters to his relatives in Ireland, written from 1778 to 1792, span the reigns of three Austrian monarchs, Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II, and his billetings and activities reflect Imperial foreign and domestic policy in this time period, and, not incidentally, the importance of the army in both.
Eighteenth century Imperial attempts at expanding power and territory in the west, i.e. in Germany, had been blocked first by the resistance of the German princes, backed by France, and then by the rise of Prussia, after the Seven Years War, a rival for influence and power within the Holy Roman Empire. Austrian plans for adding Bavaria to the Habsburg dominions on the death of its Elector in 1777 were met by Prussian resistance. In the resulting War of the Bavarian Succession, John Bellew’s cavalry unit, one of sixteen, was stationed in Bohemia from 1778-79, part of the total of 200,000 Austrian troops facing the Prussians in Bohemia and Moravia. Frustrated by the Prussian check in the West, Imperial policy turned eastward in an attempt to build an alliance which would isolate Prussia and support future ventures in Germany, and an alliance with Russia was concluded in 1781. Unfortunately, this also led to involvement in the Empress Catherine’s aggressive policy toward the Ottoman empire and further campaigns against the Austrians’ traditional foe in the East, the Turks.
In 1783, Bellew was in “Patch in Tolmeinser” [Pacs in Tolna] in southern Hungary as a part of the Austrian force mobilised along the Danube to support Catherine’s suppression of a revolt in the Crimea; from 1788 through 1790 he was on the border regions of Serbia and the Banat of Temesvar, where his cavalry unit was among those engaging Turkish forces in the joint Austro-Russian war with the Ottomans.
Bellew’s personal participation in military actions was of a varied nature. It was limited in the War of the Bavarian Succession, derisively dubbed the Potato War by the Prussians, the Plum Riot by the Austrians, names given according to the type of forage sought by each side after the initial confrontation degenerated into a series of what Bellew accurately termed “many skirmishes” and a war of attrition (Bellew Papers, 30 October 1778). Likewise, the mobilisation of 1783 did not lead to more active support of the Russians against the Turks, although Bellew stated optimistically that if they didn’t “agree in their preliminaries, we march straight to Belgrade” (Bellew Papers, 16 April 1783). However, five years later, he was to participate actively in operations around Belgrade. In 1787 the Turks declared war on Russia, and this time, to fulfil treaty obligations, and not incidentally seize the opportunity lost in 1783 to acquire Turkish territory, the Empire entered the war against the Ottomans.
Imperial encounters with the Turks were marked by a ferocity beyond even that associated with eighteenth-century warfare in western Europe. The beheading of Christian prisoners was a commonplace occurrence, and Austrian troops entering Belgrade during the Turkish campaigns of 1737-39 were appalled to find the Grand Vizier’s tent adorned with pieces of an Imperial general. John Bellew, with the western Austrian army in Bosnia, was to witness this aspect of war with the Turks some fifty years later. He described “what a shocking inhumane prospect” it was “to see a field covered with dead bodies, without heads” and characterised the enemy as having “no manner of humanity”. An eighteenth-century Bavarian officer remarked of the Turks: ‘It becomes impossible for an army which once shows its back to them, to save itself by flight or in any other way. They are most expert in the use of the sabre . . . and such is their skill in its use that, should their opponents give way before them, they produce an incredible amount of carnage in the shortest possible time’. Bellew’s “friend and relative” Pat Bellew was killed and beheaded at such a retreat from Mehadiye, a key border fortress taken by the Turks during an offensive into southern Hungary in 1788. John Bellew credited his 32-pound wrought-iron cuirass and the heavy iron cavalry helmet, designed specifically for protection against Turkish scimitars, with saving him from such a fate (Bellew Papers, 10 December 1788).
In November 1789, he wrote from Hungary of his major action in the war, his participation in the final Austrian assault against Belgrade, which fell in October after a month-long siege. He described to his Galway relative Michael Bellew the final taking of the citadel following a 48-hour bombardment and attack, in which the man and horse in front of and behind him were killed by cannon fire. His letter also reported the deaths of two fellow Irish officers, the son of General Plunkett, “who you knew for many years in Ireland,” killed during the siege, and the son of a Mr. Reilly of Ballinlash, “killed by Fuxan [Fokshani in Moldavia] under Prince Coburg” in July, and the survival of a kinsman from county Louth who had been with him in Belgrade (Bellew Papers, 20 November 1789).
The Journal of The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Karen Harvey, 1988.
(to be continued)