As the war drew to a close, Maister was in a position as the recruiting officer to know of all able-bodied men in the area, especially Slovenes. With the situation on the front growing desperate and deserters filling the streets of Marburg trying to get home, Maister decided to raise a local militia from whichever Slovenes he could find, beginning on 1 November 1918. Within a week, he had a regiment strength of 4,000 men, and these had disarmed the military police in the German-speaking districts of Marburg and Cilli. By 9 November 1918, Maister was in control of all Lower Styria and united his militia with men from Laibach. He declared general mobilisation of all Slovene men coming home from the war, and numbers of these reported for duty. All of Carniola was soon under Maister's command and the German-speakers were either disarmed or had left for German-Austria.
Maister then attempted to march against Klagenfurt and other northerly claims, but as Maister had raised Slovene-speaking militias to fight the German-speakers, so the German-Austrians in southern Carinthia and Styria had formed militias of their own, independent of the now practically nonexistent Austrian Army. The forces clashed on what is now the Austrian-Slovene border. Fighting was brief but sometimes fierce. After the fighting continued through the summer of 1919, the Entente ruled at Paris that a plebiscite should be held in 1920, to decide the fate of contested territory. In the plebiscite, two contested areas voted for Austria, but still had a large Slovene population. Maister went on to become a General in the Jugoslavian army, and commanded the northern frontier. His contribution to the modern Slovene national identity was not fully appreciated until Slovenia's independence in 1991, though the Jugoslavian government permitted a statue of him to be placed in his hometown of Kamnik in 1987.
Rudolf Maister died on 26 July 1934 at Unec pri Rakeku, Jugoslavia.
GWS, 6/04
