 He enrolled into a cadet institute at Hainburg in 1865, and, after spending some time there and at the academy in Znaim, he moved to a military academy in Vienna.He passed the courses at the academy with fair success and received an accelerated promotion to captain.He led his first military expedition in 1882 on a mission to suppress a mutiny in Dalmatia and was commended by the Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria with a Merit Medal and also received a Knights Cross of the Order of the Italian Crown that same year.