Peter Mario Kreuter

Attempts of Austrian Redesign of the

Administration of Lesser Wallachia
between 1718 and 1739

Peter Mario KREUTER

Senior Researcher and Managing Editor of “Südost-Forschungen” at Leibniz
Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg

In: Harald Heppner / Sabine Jesner (eds.), The 18th Century as Period of
Innovation, Yearbook of the Society for 18th Century Studies on South Eastern
Europe 2 (2019), 131–140.

DOI: 10.25364/22.2:2019.10

Contribution is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.de

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Peter Mario Kreuter

Attempts of Austrian Redesign of the

Administration of Lesser Wallachia
between 1718 and 1739

Peter Mario KREUTER

With the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), Wallachia became a declared goal of Austrian annexation plans.
Although the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718) only conceded to Austria possession of the five Wallachian
districts known as Lesser Wallachia, the Austrian government immediately began to reorganise this
area in their favour. Relevant committees debated the actual state of agriculture and crafts, the
ownership of land, the condition of the road network and bridges, and the development of the capital
Craiova. Despite several changes to the head of the Oberdirektorium due to the death of the
incumbents, the modernisation of the Lesser Wallachia remained the key question. The problem of
the capital played a recurring role. Either in 1722 and 1727 the question arose as to whether the
existing capital of Craiova ought to be reshaped and modernised, or whether it made more sense to
venture further north to Tîrgu Jiu.

Introduction
On 21 July 1718 much changed in Southeastern Europe. First of all, there were
the territorial changes that led to the greatest expansion of Austria’s borders in
its history. In addition, these territorial changes were mostly accompanied by
changes in other areas such as taxation or the organisation of border defence.
Finally, questions of a religious or church-political nature loomed large as the
main territorial gains included a population that, in its overwhelming majority,
belonged to the Orthodox Church. And there was another important point that
complicated the gains of 1718 for Austrian decision-makers. While Serbia or
northern Bosnia, as provinces of the Ottoman Empire, came from a completely
different administrative tradition that did not require a native hereditary
nobility and therefore had to be completely renewed, Lesser Wallachia had been
separated from a larger sovereign state, the Principality of Wallachia, which had
its own administrative structures that corresponded neither to the Ottoman nor
to the Austrian ones. Even more, Lesser Wallachia had a special status within
the principality with some administrative peculiarities that would cause the
Austrians some headaches.

Wallachia as an Aim
Southeastern Europe only appeared relatively late as an object of strategic
interest for Austria. Although there were some voices at the Habsburg Court as
early as the first half of the 16th century that wanted to assign the Danube an
important role for geostrategic thinking, factors such as the Wars with the
Ottoman Empire or the Reformation meant that Southeastern Europe was not a
geopolitical objective at that time. Even though the importance of the Danube as
a route for the movement of goods or troops and weapons was clearly recognised,

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there was little interest in conquering territories along the river.1 As Maria
Baramova states,

“the genuine Habsburg Danube, however, and the river’s association with Vienna’s power politics
materialised only after the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699. […] Furthermore, after 1699 the
Habsburg Monarchy set its sights even farther eastward, on the delta and domination of the
Lower Danube. The Danube was no longer merely a river: it was a powerful space, the two banks
of which Vienna was beginning to consider its own”.2

Corresponding plans were already drawn up during the peace negotiations. In

the Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv in Vienna, there is a fine example for such
plans, in a memorandum from the year 1698 in which Wallachia is clearly named
as a central focus of imperial politics. 3 This memorandum is part of a series of
other texts that will be written around and after the Treaty of Passarowitz
(Požarevac). Only four pages in length, it is written by an unknown author and
seeks to show the possibilities of utilising the Orthodox population of Wallachia.
There are no detailed plans on how to obtain Wallachia, but the exact description
of church structures, the naming of important political players and the overall
context with regard to the expected conquests in Southeast Europe show that
despite peace at the end of the Great Turkish War, the ambitions of the
Habsburg Monarchy would by no means be finished.

Serbia and Northern Bosnia after 1718

Following the Treaty of Passarowitz, the Serbian and North Bosnian
acquisitions of territory had to be restructured administratively, and the actual
population figures had to be properly recorded. In addition, after the long
affiliation with the Ottoman Empire, many religious-political questions had to
be solved. Finally, Vienna’s desire for Catholicisation had to be taken into
account, which led to the (re-)establishment of a Catholic diocesan structure. 4

At first, it had been thought to give Serbia and Northern Bosnia to Hungary, but
the still unstable Habsburg rule in Hungary did not make this seem advisable.
In order to eliminate Hungarian desires and at the same time avoid the influence
of Austrian institutions, it was decided to establish Serbia as an independent
kingdom within the Habsburg possessions. 5 This Regnum Serviae or Königreich

1 In an essay, Maria Baramova presents as an example for the recognition of the military value of
the Danube the book of Georg Agricola, Oratio de bello adversus Turcam suscipiendo ad
Ferdinandum Ungariae Boemiaeque regem et principes Germaniae from 1538, where Agricola
underlines how easy it would be to transport troops and material on the Danube straight into the
enemy’s territory. Cf. Maria Baramova, Did the Danube Exist in Habsburg Power Politics in South-
Eastern Europe before 1699?, in: Idem / Plamen Mitev / Ivan Parvev / Vania Racheva (eds.), Power
and Influence in South-Eastern Europe. 16th–19th Century. Münster, Wien, Berlin 2013, 25–35,
29–30.
2 Ibidem, 35.
3 ÖStA AVA FHKA, Hoffinanz Ungarn, Siebenbürgen 174, Urkunden und Varia 1614–1700, Nr. 29,

4: Denkschrift über die Ausdehnung der kais. Oberherrschaft, fol. 391–394.

4 For this whole complex, see Enis Pelidija, The Influence of the Peace of Passarowitz on Bosnia, in:

Charles Ingrao / Nikola Samardžić / Jovan Pešalj (eds.), The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. West
Lafayette/IN 2011, 111–130, and Katarina Mitrović, The Peace of Passarowitz and the Re-
establishment of the Catholic Diocesan Administration in Belgrade and Smederevo, in: ibidem,
209–217.
5 Johann Langer, Serbien unter der kaiserlichen Regierung 1717‒1739. In: Mittheilungen des k. k.

Kriegsarchivs N. F. 3 (1889), 156–249, 158f.

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Peter Mario Kreuter

Servien was neither a part of the Holy Roman Empire nor the Kingdom of
Hungary but rather under the direct control of the Emperor in Vienna. The
actual administration of the province was in the hands of an appointed governor,
field marshal Karl Alexander von Württemberg (1684‒1737).6 A 1720 regulation
declared that the main part of Belgrade at the banks of the Danube river was to
be settled mainly by German Catholics, especially from the Rhineland, while the
Serbs were to live outside the city walls in the “Rascian” part on the banks of the
Sava river.7 Additionally, the further administrative division of the kingdom was
to be subordinated to the military and economic needs of Vienna.

Since conscription carried out in the autumn of 1721 in the new kingdom (except
Belgrade) brought to light an alarmingly low population of about 20,000 people,
the administrative reorganisation of Serbia was initiated. The Kingdom of
Serbia was divided into the city of Belgrade itself and 15 districts, the smallest
with 17, the largest with 81 villages. In 1723 there were still minor changes to
this division, but essentially this district distribution remained intact until
1739.8 Serbia was entirely reorganised, and nothing remained of the old Ottoman
administrative structure. This complete revision of the entire administrative
structures also made it possible to use local Hajduks for border security in
addition to the Austrian troops.9

Something Old and Something New in Lesser Wallachia

Such far-reaching changes to the administrative structure were not planned for
Lesser Wallachia. The obvious reason for this was that for centuries a local
administration was able to develop, corresponding far more to what the new
masters from Austria knew themselves. There was a local nobility whose
possessions and privileges were inherited from the family. There was also an
ecclesiastical structure whose organisation was also similar to that of the
Austrian hereditary lands. As well, there was an existing administrative
organisation to build on. Above all, however, one thing was significant: Lesser
Wallachia, like the Principality as a whole, had never been a province of the
Ottoman Empire. The administration in Craiova was therefore oriented towards
Bucharest, not Istanbul.

However, the boyars of Lesser Wallachia were not inactive either. After the
victory of the Austrians at the Battle of Petrovaradin on 5 August 1716, the
occupation of the Banat in October of the same year and the first military actions
and occupations of the Austrians in Wallachia, it was obvious to the local nobility
to seek contact with the Habsburg monarchy and to influence the course of
events as much as possible. In February 1717, a delegation under the leadership
of the bishop of Rimnik appeared in Vienna to negotiate the future position of
Wallachia. On 27 February 1717, this delegation presented Prince Eugene of

6 Márta Fata, Karl Alexander von Württemberg. Kaiserlicher General und Statthalter von Serbien,
in: Wolfgang Zimmermann / Josef Wolf (eds.), Die Türkenkriege der 18. Jahrhunderts.
Wahrnehmen, Wissen, Erinnern. Regensburg 2017, 43‒71.
7 Michael Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence. War, State and Society in the Habsburg

Monarchy, 1683–1797. London et al. 2003, 229; Langer, Serbien unter der kaiserlichen Regierung,
200.
8 Langer, Serbien unter der kaiserlichen Regierung, 199f.
9 Ibidem, 218‒221.

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Savoy a memorandum setting out their wishes, which they requested to into
account in the future administration of their country. Ten points set out what a
future Wallachian government could look like. The points included the
investiture of Gheorghe Cantacuzino as a prince for life under imperial
sovereignty, the preservation of the privileges of the Orthodox Church and its
clergy, the granting of offices only to locals and restrictions on the sale of goods
by foreign merchants.10 In fact, these points were incorporated into a conference
given to the Emperor by the Aulic War Council on 25 April 1717. On 30 May
1717, Charles VI then decided to use the principles laid down in that conference
as a guideline for the further development of plans. At the same time, Austria
entered into the Convention of Hermannstadt (Sibiu) of 24 February 1717 with
Wallachia, in which Austria recognised the 12 districts of Great Wallachia as
subjects, but at the same time stated that the conquests on the other side of the
Olt River would be regarded without any discussion as Austrian territory. 11 The
Habsburg Monarchy then took this view at the negotiations in Passarowitz.

After Lesser Wallachia had finally passed over to Austria, Vienna immediately
began to establish its own power structures. The direction, both in
administrative and military terms, was handed over to an Oberdirektor, and this
office was merged with that of Commanding General in Transylvania. In
addition to decision-making power in military and civil matters, he was also
responsible for final decisions in legal matters. The local nobility was allowed to
oversee the administration at the local level. The control committee of this local
administration was located in Craiova and consisted of a committee of four
consilieri, presided over by the Ban of Lesser Wallachia. 12

What the new administration lacked, however, were precise figures. Neither did
they know exactly how many people lived in the five provinces on the right bank
of the Olt River, nor were they fully aware of their economic capacity. Also,
neither rural maps nor city maps were available. There were various ways used
to remedy this deficit. In the 1720ies, for example, a number of censuses were
carried out to provide reliable figures for tax collection and military planning. 13
At the same time, technical tools were improved, and an excellent example of
this is the description of Lesser Wallachia together with the corresponding map
by Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels.14

Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels and his Description of Lesser

Wallachia
Only little can be said about the life of Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels. In his
case, neither a service file nor an ego document exists. Nor is there any
correspondence from him beyond the official letters that have come upon us. We

10 Paul Jacubenz, Die cis-alutanische Walachei unter kaiserlicher Verwaltung 1717‒1739. In:
Mittheilungen des k. und k. Kriegsarchivs N. F. 12 (1900), 173‒250, 174f.
11 Alex Mihai Stoenescu, Istoria Olteniei. București 2011, 206.
12 Șerban Papacostea, Oltenia sub stapînirea austriacă (1718‒1739). București 1971, 28‒31.
13 Jacubenz, Die cis-alutanische Walachei unter kaiserlicher Verwaltung, 218‒226.
14 A bilingual edition in German and Romanian has recently been published, which also includes a

facsimile of the original text and all the map material on an enclosed CD-ROM. Cf. Friedrich
Schwantz von Springfels, Descrierea Olteniei la 1723. Ediție, traducere din limba germană, studiu
introductiv și indice de Mircea-Gheorghe Abrudan. Brăila, Cluj-Napoca 2017.

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Peter Mario Kreuter

do not know when he was born or where. It also remains hidden to us where he
studied engineering. What is certain is that he was already present at the
beginning of the military operation of 1716, when General Steinville asked him
in December of that year to begin work on making the Olt River navigable. At
the beginning of 1717, he was commissioned with fortification works around the
Cozia monastery, the progress of which he reported to both General Steinville
and the Aulic War Council. In 1718, he was commissioned to work on Via
Carolina, an activity that kept him busy over the next few years. The last known
news about him came from September 1727, when he was in Craiova with some
other officials. Apparently, he died shortly after that.15

Fig. 1: Craiova as Capital of Lesser Wallachia

Source: Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels, Descrierea Olteniei la 1723. Ediție, traducere din limba
germană, studiu introductiv și indice de Mircea-Gheorghe Abrudan. Brăila, Cluj-Napoca 2017, CD-
Rom, Harta Kriegsarchiv Viena Copie 2, no. 12.

In addition to practical activities such as erecting fortifications and establishing

traffic routes, Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels also worked as a cartographer.
Parallel to his work on Via Carolina, he produced a map entitled “Tabula
Valachiae Cis-Alutanae per Frider: Schwantzium Regiminis Heisteriani
Capitaneum”. This map was created between 1717 and 1720. Not only is it the
first comprehensive and detailed map of Lesser Wallachia, but it is also a first
testimony to the statistical and accurate recording of the country. In addition to
this map, Schwantz von Springfels also wrote a description of Lesser Walachia,
which was completed in 1723.

The original manuscript is now kept in the Austrian National Library. 16 It has
42 pages of text, plus a series of subsequently inserted drawings, which were
bound together with the text to form a book. The description is divided into 21
paragraphs. In addition, at the end there is a list of the place names of Lesser
Wallachia, which are assigned to their respective districts. The entire
manuscript shows the technical background of the author. Those paragraphs

15 Ibidem, 38‒53.
16 Accession number: Ser. nov. 34.

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that deal with people, their customs, with the nobility or the church are
exceptionally short, sometimes only a few lines long. Paragraphs dealing with
geography, traffic routes, agriculture or mineral resources, on the other hand,
are always several pages long and always full of detailed information. The
geographical passages, in particular, have the character of additional
explanations to that map as if the details should be further extended.

A particularly amazing paragraph is Number 6 “From the Capital of the

Country”.17 Actually, the reader learns nothing about the principal town. What
he is told are the disadvantages of Craiova. On the one hand, the distance to
Hermannstadt is very great, the roads to Transylvania are in poor condition and
in particular, the defence works are in such a pitiful condition that no short-term
remedy can be found. Moreover, Craiova was very exposed and in a new war
against the Ottomans highly vulnetable. 18 Schwantz von Springfels suggested a
number of places, which he considered more suitable to serve as the capital of
Lesser Wallachia, and after a few lines he begins to enumerate some locations
and briefly describes them. What follows in that paragraph is a military-related
consideration of communication possibilities, defence facilities and marching
times in relation to the selected locations.

17 Schwantz von Springfels, Descrierea Olteniei, 252‒261.

18 Ibidem, 252.

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Peter Mario Kreuter

Fig. 2: Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels – Main Title of the Original Manuscript

Source: Friedrich Schwantz von Springfels, Descrierea Olteniei la 1723. Ediție, traducere din limba
germană, studiu introductiv și indice de Mircea-Gheorghe Abrudan. Brăila, Cluj-Napoca 2017, 221.

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Peter Mario Kreuter

The description of Lesser Wallachia was therefore by no means merely a

representation of this country for interested circles. It clearly followed military
needs and probably had a direct relation to his own map series.

Craiova or Tîrgu Jiu?

The debate on the future capital of Lesser Wallachia provides a concrete example
of how the Austrian administration intended to change its administrative
structures and how it ultimately failed. Craiova was first mentioned during the
reign of the Wallachian prince Vladislav II (1448‒1456). It was the residence of
the Ban of Craiova since the reign of Prince Vlad Călugărul (1482‒1495),
replacing the former seat of Strehaia. In this respect, Craiova was mentioned as
the traditional seat of the Ban, but it was by no means the capital of ancient
times.

Now that the Austrians had come into possession of Lesser Wallachia, they soon
learned that Craiova, as the principal town of the land, also had some
disadvantages, not only from a military point of view. As early as December
1719, Hofcammerrath Ignaz von Haan complained that Craiova was a very
cramped city and offered only poor housing conditions. He also described both
the air and the water quality as being poor.19 The high temperatures in the
summer also caused problems again and again. In June 1723, in connection with
the unpotable quality of the water, the Ban and his administration proposed to
the Austrian administration that the capital be moved to Tîrgu Jiu. 20 Friedrich
Schwantz von Springfels had, as we have seen, also remarked in his report that
Craiova as the headquarters of the administration could not please. Tîrgu Jiu
seemed particularly suitable to him, too, and he was not alone in this choice. In
a report to Emperor Charles VI of 23 February 1726, Eugene of Savoy suggested,
among other things, that “the aforementioned Craiova was as unhealthy as it
was uncomfortable and that it also suffered from a shortage of wood and water,
both of which had to be fetched from afar at considerable cost and effort.
Therefore, the generals from Transylvania, who were appointed to the
Wallachian High Command, have all proposed that the Sedes Provinciae should
be transferred from there as an exposed and unhealthy place to Tîrgu Jiu on the
Transylvanian border”.21 The complaints about Craiova listed here are by no
means exhaustive. They prove, however, that the city was perceived as
unsuitable due to its living conditions as well as its geographical location.

How, then, was this remedied? The answer is: not at all. Not only does Craiova
remain the capital of Lesser Wallachia, but no serious attempt was ever made to
transfer the administration to another location. The Austrian administration
does not seem to have been particularly in a hurry to relocate either. In August
1732, for example, a letter from the Aulic War Council to the Oberdirektor of
Lesser Wallachia again envisaged a relocation away from Craiova. However,

19 Constantin C. Giurescu, Material pentru istoria Olteniei supt Austriaci. Volum 1: 1716‒1725.
București 1913, document 338 “Haan către Camera aulică. 12 Decemvrie 1719”, 416.
20 Giurescu, Material pentru istoria Olteniei supt Austriaci. Volum 1, document 382 “Königsegg către

Consuliul de răsboiu. 24 Iulie 1723, Sibiu”, 585.

21 Constantin C. Giurescu, Material pentru istoria Olteniei supt Austriaci. Volum 2: 1726‒1732.

București 1944, document 6 “Președinții Consiliului de război și Camerei Aulice către Împăratul
Carol VI. Viena, 23 Februarie 1726”, 22.

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Tîrgu Jiu is no longer the destination, but instead Ţînţăreni, a small town north-
west of Craiova.22 But apart from a request to check the possible costs of
relocation, nothing else happened. Craiova remained the capital of Lesser
Wallachia and would so for the centuries to come. Among the Phanariotes, the
Ban even built a representative building in the middle of the city centre.

Pragmatism ruled
How can all this be interpreted now? How can one explain the slow and
cumbersome administration by Transylvanian institutions, the maintenance of
a capital which is considered impractical and the very slow censuses and surveys
of the land? Why were military needs clearly defined, but subsequently not acted
upon?

There are no clear answers, but there are some clues. Especially in the initial
phase of Austrian rule, the Oberdirektoren changed every two years – deaths
were always responsible for this. As a result, a new director first had to learn the
ropes and be provided with new instructions from Vienna. Added to this was a
core problem in the administration of the Habsburg Monarchy – the
administration itself. Clumsy bureaucratic structures and an inefficient tax
system, occasional parallel administrative structures and not least a lengthy
decision-making process at the head of the Vienna Central Authorities made it
almost impossible for local decision-makers to implement necessary reforms.
Proposals to shift the initially established administrative division between local
nobility and Transylvanian institutions in favour of the latter quickly came to
an end. And as was so often the case, there was no money.

Ultimately, however, a good degree of pragmatism made itself apparent and

everything worked out okay. There were even some improvements – thanks to
the censuses the tax revenue increased temporarily. And finally, the lack of time
was a key factor because already by 1739, Lesser Wallachia was again
completely Wallachian.

22 Giurescu, Material pentru istoria Olteniei supt Austriaci. Volum 2, document 208 “Consiliul de
război către Wallis și Rebentisch. Viena, 20 August 1732”, 538.

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