wm026 - original Austro-Hungarian Empire pre WW1 Mobilisation Cross Medal 1912 1913

Commemorative Cross for Mobilisation (Mobilisierungs-Erinnerungskreuz), 1912-13 Gilt bronze Leopold cross with loop for ribbon suspension; the face with a circular central medallion bearing the dates ‘1912 1913’; the reverse plain. The medal was created in 1913 and awarded to those Austro-Hungarian forces that had been mobilised as a precautionary measure during the Balkan Wars between an alliance of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia on the one hand and Ottoman Turkey on the other. Austria did not intervene in the wars but they led to Turkey being largely thrown out of Europe and a much-strengthened of Serbia, making Austria more nervous of her Slav neighbour and laying the ground for the outbreak of World War I following the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 and Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia on 18 July 1914.