To be wounded in battle and healed in Napoleonic Europe (1805-1813)
pdf in french or german version below :
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this Nebiha Guiga's thesis refers to the Austrian Army "Sanitäts-Compagnies", never seen such units in the Austrian Army before 1850 as Battalions then companies…so nor they existed previously in wartime in the Napoleonic Wars, they were Austrian equivalent of the French Army nurses companies Compagnies d'Infirmiers
if I understand the uniform was the same as the Invalids, for the rest
How many were raised? Numbered or named? When raised and disbanded?
Unfortunately if the author shares interesting details about them, we don't have a list with such precisions :
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.
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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.
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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.
Nebiha Guiga
