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In October 1813, as the part of the ongoing all-out effort to defeat Napoleon, a Freikorps was raised in the south of the Habsburg Monarchy in the regions of Banat and Crișana. In so doing, the local military authorities clearly wished to take advantage of the situation playing out across the border with the Ottoman Empire. Since the outbreak of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, refugees had entered the Monarchy’s lands from the south. In 1812, there was a lull in the fighting following the Treaty of Bucharest with Russia in which the Ottomans promised an amnesty for the rebels and limited autonomy for Serbia. But in summer 1813, taking advantage of the disputes between the local leaders, and Russia’s pre-occupation with fighting Napoleon, Ottoman troops invaded the region. The re-conquest of Serbia was swift and brutal. Again, survivors flooded north. The new Freikorps aimed to tap into this new resource of military manpower. To attract the refugees into the unit, it was named the Serbian Freikorps (Serbisches Frey Crops). This drew on the memory of an earlier unit of the same name which was active during the Last Habsburg-Ottoman War of 1788-1791. Reaching a peak strength of some 5,000 fighters, the first Serbian Freikorps took volunteers eager to fight for Serbia’s independence. The overall disappointing performance of the Habsburg Army in that war forced the Monarchy to abandon its plans for a Serbian protectorate, and so the Serbian Freikorps was disbanded. However, the legacy of that unit lived on as many of its veterans, such as Aleksa Nenadović, Miloje Todorović and Vasa Čarapić, became prominent figures in the subsequent Serbian struggle for independence. What became the de facto second Serbian Freikorps was to build on these events. The actual reaction of the Serbian refugees was lukewarm: when the corps was disbanded in September 1814, its final revision papers reveal that less than half of its soldiers were foreigners. Rather than attracting the military refugees from Serbia, the corps drew primarily on the population of the southern periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy, including a noticeable number of internal migrants arriving from the north. Based on all its surviving manpower records – 4 cartons preserved in the Viennese Kriegsarchiv – this database covers every identifiable Jewish soldier who served in the Serbian Freikorps of 1813-1814, a total of 12 individuals. This was but a tiny fraction of a unit which numbered more than 4,000 men at its peak. Joining either in October 1813, when the first two battalions were raised, or in the subsequent recruitment drive to man the 3rd battalion, the collective experience of these Jewish soldiers was as uneventful as the history of their unit. One deserted, one died in hospital, and another – after spending several months hospitalised – was pronounced unfit for service. Those allocated to the first two battalions marched to northern Italy where they arrived at the garrison in Palmanova shortly before the war was over. Those enlisted in the 3rd battalion remained in the Banat, one of whom Benjamin Friedmann, rose to non-commissioned officer. After peace was made in April 1814, the part of the unit which reached Italy was sent back to Temesvár (Ro: Timișoara) and Arad, where the Freikorps was disbanded in early September 1814. From the 9 Jewish soldiers still in service, one was transferred into the regular infantry and the rest were discharged. One of these, Jacob Schwarz, soon chose to re-enlist, taking service with the 39th Hungarian Line Regiment ‘Duka’ whose Depot Division was then based in Arad. Jacob eventually returned to Italy where the bulk of his regiment was stationed and was still serving in Milan in 1820. What makes the experience about the Jewish soldiers of the Second Serbian Freikorps stand out was not their service itineraries, but the fact that the majority were internal migrants. Only one of the recruits, Jacob Deutsch from Zrenjanin, was born in the same place where he resided when joining the Freikorps. Another four were born within the region, moving between neighboring districts along the Ottoman border. The remaining seven arrived from northern Hungary, including far away Jewish communities like Miskolc and Balkány in Hungary and Košice, Senec, and Vrbové in today’s Slovakia. This information is made available to us thanks to the divergent administrative practice between the German and the Hungarian parts of the Monarchy. While units from the Austro-Bohemian lands noted only the place of birth, the enlistment papers of the Hungarian establishment noted both birthplace and current place of residence of the recruit. There are several ways to interpret this data. Firstly, it provides concrete evidence for Jewish migration southward – which was part of a broader migration pattern in the period. Southern Hungary and Banat were sparsely populated and underdeveloped, offering better opportunities for new arrivals from areas of higher population and fewer economic chances. Furthermore, it is known that, whether it was or calling on conscripts or volunteers, Habsburg recruitment drew heavily on weaker social elements. Internal migrants were exactly such a group. For more information about the Second Serbian Freikorps, see: Alphons von Wrede, Geschichte der k. und k. Wehrmacht, 5 Vols, (Vienna: Seidel, 1898-1905), Vol. 2, p. 503.