In one of the graves of the Central Cemetery in Vienna there lies the body of Svetozar Boroevic, a Serbian-born soldier who died shortly after World War I but who considered himself a Croat and who came from a family of border guards and had served in the Imperial Croatian Home Guard during his youth. To most contemporary people, he is completely unknown, and most of what is written about him is in Serbo-Croatian [1], and yet this man was a great military leader whose end of life demonstrated some of the most unpleasant and painful truths of our contemporary age, what happens to a man without a country in an age of nationalism and ethnic rivalries. What would have been entirely acceptable and unobjectionable and even praiseworthy behavior in previous generations, when many peoples like the Swiss served as mercenary forces in armies and where national feeling did not overwhelm loyalty to the realm one served by contract was treated as outright treachery as the Austro-Hungarian Empire divided into fractious and bitter post-imperial states, some of whom, like Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians, and Slovenes (later known as Yugoslavia), would later divide again in turn.

Life had not always been this way for Mr. Boroevic, who had entered the Austrian nobility as Baron von Bojna, and whose brother was also ennobled as a result of his military service in 1917. Boroevic had grown up, joined cadet school at ten, studied in military academies, and had been promoted higher in the officer ranks as a result of his loyal and conspicuous service to the empire in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the occupation of those lands by Austria-Hungary in 1878. Later military training followed, as well as continued promotion, reaching the rank of Field Marshall in 1918, becoming the only South Slav in the entire history of the Hapsburg Empire to reach the highest rank of the army. With a consistent pattern of promotions as a result of his military service had come other benefits as well, including marriage to the daughter of a deceased Austrian colonel, with whom he had a son, named after her father, as well as being awarded the highest decoration for Austro-Hungarian soldiers, the Military Order of Maria Theresia (better known as Maria Theresa in English-speaking countries, under whose reign Prussia conquered Silesia and became a great power).

As might be expected for someone so highly honored by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Boroevic showed immense loyalty to the empire. For one, he ably led imperial troops in the defense of the Isonzo in the face of eleven Italian attacks and the belief among many imperial advisers that relying on the Slovenes to defend land for the empire was hopeless, earning the love and adoration of his troops and the respect even of his enemies as one of the most able defensive commanders in World War I, no mean achievement. He was the unfortunate commander of the imperial troops at the battle of Vittorio Veneto, forced to seek an armistice at any price after his army collapsed under the divisive nationalism that tore Austria-Hungary apart. In this particular difficult time, he offered his services to the embattled final ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Charles, to put down the anti-Hapsburg revolts that were taking place in Vienna, but the offer was declined by imperial advisors and he was soon put in retirement when the Imperial & Royal army was demobilized. A lifetime of loyal and able service was ended because the realm he had served for decades no longer existed.

It is at this point that the life of the Baron von Bojna turns tragic. With the loss of his son in 1918, and the near simultaneous loss of the realm to whom he had given more than five decades of service, he offered his services to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which now ruled over his home territory. The offer was declined. Without a pension from either the Austrian government or the government of the united south Slavs, he lived in reduced circumstances in Carinthia, the southernmost state of Austria, and sought to have his belongings brought up from Slovenia, but they were confiscated en route. He wrote his memoirs, seeking to defend his honor and showing a great deal of confusion at the hostility of his people towards him in light of his obvious and conspicuous military achievements, and died in 1920, dependent on the largesse of his deposed emperor for a burial place, as he was not welcomed home again to the area of Croatia even after death. For while he is honored today among the Croats for his military skill, at the end of his life he was considered a traitor for having reached such responsible office in service to the hated Hapsburgs. Clearly, no man who was loyal to his people could have served the Austro-Hungarian Empire so loyalty in its efforts to expand or defend its territories, or so his contemporaries judged.

What had happened? For centuries, the Croats had been conspicuous among the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for their loyal service as border forces for the Osterreich against the Ottoman Empire, helping to hold the Eastern border territories as a loyal body. For centuries as well, European militaries had been greatly aided by soldiers who were part of imperial levies, such as the Australians or South Africans or Canadians or New Zealanders or Nepalis or others who fought as part of the British military. Even those nations founded as modern nation states had depended on foreign soldiers, as the illustrious careers of Lafayette, De Kalb, and many others in the American Revolution show. What Boroevic had done, in serving his empire in the way his father did, and in rising to a position of great honor and responsibility in a “foreign” empire who happened to be the imperial overlords of his homeland was not in the least an unusual matter, even if he rose to unprecedented heights compared to others of his background. Yet when that empire fell, that service and that obvious competence in military affairs was not appreciated by his countrymen who were now free of imperial rule. Having their own nation, his fellow Serbs and Croats forgot the long centuries of service their own relatives had made to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and rejected his own efforts to serve a new nation, considering him too much a discredited relic of the previous imperial regime. Sometimes someone can serve so well and so ably that they cannot go home again, not because they have changed, but because their world has changed so much that they cannot cope with it successfully, and because their own people do not wish to welcome them home again. Such a fate is worthy of reflecting on, for our glory and honor may be as fleeting as that of the brave Svetozar Boroevic if we are not fortunate.

[1] See, for example:

Horvat, Josip (1989). Politička povijest Hrvatske, Volume 1 (in Croatian). August Cesarec.

Mirnik, Ivan (13 October 2009). Feldmaršal Svetozar barun Boroević od Bojne na cmedaljama (PDF) (in Croatian). Arheološki muzej u Zagrebu.

Pojić, Milan (2006). Ćosić, Stjepan, ed. “Vojskovođa Svetozar Boroević 1856-1920.” (PDF) (in Croatian). Zagreb: Croatian State Archives.

Šurmin, Đuro (1904). Hrvatski preporod: Od godine 1836-1843 (in Croatian). Tisak Dioničke Tiskare.

Hrvatski biografski leksikon [Croatian biographical lexicon] (in Croatian) 2. Miroslav Krleža Lexicographical Institute. 1989. pp. 168–169. ISBN 978-86-7053-015-7.