[4][5] His father Adam Boroević was a Grenzer (border guard) officer, his mother was Stana (née Kovarbašić von Zborište).

[6][7][8][page needed][9] His father took part in wars in Italy, Hungary and Austro-Hungarian campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878.

[8][page needed] After finishing grade school he moved to Kamenica and later Graz where he studied in military academies.

[2] Later he was appointed to chief of staff of the Seventh Corps of the Imperial & Royal Army in June 1898, where he remained until February 1904.

[2] His troops then pulled back to hold positions around Limanowa, at the Dukla mountain pass, and elsewhere on the Carpathians, stopping the Russians from breaking out on the Danube.

His actions on other sections of the war appealed to Emperor Franz Joseph and on May 25, 1915, he was given command on the Isonzo front.

[8][page needed] There Boroević became the Commander of the Fifth Army, with which he organized a defense against the Italians to break countless offensives.

[8][page needed] While there, Boroević's troops contained eleven Italian attacks and he was hailed as the Knight of Isonzo in Austria-Hungary, while his soldiers adored him and called him Naš Sveto!

After that Boroević fell back to Velden, where he sent a telegram to the Emperor offering to march on Vienna to fight the anti-Habsburg revolution in the imperial capital.

After the Imperial & Royal Army had been demobilized by the Emperor on 6 November, Boroević was retired, by the I & R War Ministry in liquidation, by 1 December 1918.

After the demise and disintegration of Austria-Hungary, Boroević decided to become a citizen of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

[34] So he stayed in Carinthia, now Austria's southernmost state; his personal belongings, which were on transport in Slovenia, the former Austrian crownland of Carniola, were confiscated there.

Boroević could not understand the mean treatment he had to experience, "the only field marshal the Southern Slavs had ever produced", as he wrote in his memoirs.

In 1916, with the approval of the Emperor Franz Joseph I, on the proposal of the Faculty of Law and the Senate of the University of Zagreb, Svetozar Borojević and Archduke Eugen were awarded the university's highest honorary degree, Doctor Honoris Causa in the field of social sciences, for their victory over the enemy and especially for the protection of hereditary grudge, and rights and cultural progress of Croats ("Ob eximia in limitibus imperii strenue defendendis ac imprimis in Croatum paterno solo iuribus atque litterarum et artium progressu tuendis merita").

Delegation for the award was made of Josip Šilović; Milorad Stražnicki, dean of the Faculty of Law; Fran Barac, rector; Robert Frangeš-Mihanović, sculptor; and Andrija Kišur, clerk.

[35][36] Svetozar Borojević de Bojna, Srbin s Banije (selo Borojevići kraj Mečenčana, odnosno Kostajnice)son of a Serbian Grenzer family from Croatia.regiments on this front; and one of the most successful Habsburg commanders was in fact a Serb from the old 'Military Frontier' region, Marshal Svetozar Boroevic, whose family had fought for the emperors through many generations.