Nagy_agoston_inszurrekcio_es_tarsadalmi mobilitas

In addition to the common soldiers conscripted or recruited from the peasantry,as well as the NCOs and officers of the regular army, the four noble levies(gene­ralis exercitus)during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars engaged a largenumber of the nobility, i.e. the members of the Hungarian political nation, inmilitary service. The noble levy of 1809 was unusual because the 1808 law man-dated the personal involvement of the nobility, which substantiated the estatesystem and, within that, the national character of the institution of the levy. Theactual deployment of the troops mobilised in this way, however, took place forthe first and the last time in the fifth coalition war in 1809. Revisiting ZoltánTóth’s concept of estate norms, the present study uses the example of VeszprémCounty to demonstrate how personal participation in armed service and sub-sequent military merits during a noble levy could become the means of socialmobility for both the nobility and those below the estate line. The examinationof the election of the officers in Veszprém County is followed by that of variousforms of rewards after the war, including the renewal of officers in 1810. Thesources reveal that after the war both the lord lieutenant of the county and the wider public strove to reward servicemen for their personal military service on asliding scale based on their position in the estate system and their local prestige.