Austro-Italian ironclad arms race
Seizing upon the decline of the Regia Marina in the years immediately after the Battle of Lissa, Tegetthoff worked to continue the efforts of Archduke Ferdinand Max of expanding the ironclad fleet of the now Austro-Hungarian Navy. Tegetthoff found political allies in the Austro-Hungarian Minister of War Carl von Franck and retired Admiral Bernhard von Wüllerstorf-Urbair. Wüllerstorf's and Franck's primary arguments in favor of continuing with the ironclad program Austria had engaged in prior to the Seven Weeks War lay largely along economic grounds. The two believed that constructing new ironclad warships would rejuvenate Austria-Hungary's economy following the defeat at the hands of Prussia and Italy, and that such a fleet would help to open up new commercial opportunities in the Levant and the Middle East. These proposals would be shelved however while Austria continued to reel from the military defeats inflicted by Prussia, and several cabinet reshufflings by Emperor Franz Joseph I resulted in a government more interested in pursuing revenge against Prussia than constructing new ironclads, which would be of little use in a hypothetical second war with Prussia.
Silesian Wars
Peace with Prussia allowed the Austrians and their British–Hanoverian allies to reverse the gains made by the French and Bavarians in 1741. By the summer of 1743, Austria recovered control of Bohemia, drove the French back across the Rhine into Alsace, and occupied Bavaria, exiling the Bavarian Elector Charles Albert (now crowned Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII) to Frankfurt. In September 1743, Britain, Austria and Savoy–Sardinia concluded a new alliance under the Treaty of Worms that led Frederick to suspect that Maria Theresa meant to retake Silesia as soon as the war elsewhere was concluded. So, on 7 August 1744 Prussia declared its intervention in the Austrian war on behalf of Bavarian Emperor Charles, and Frederick led soldiers across the frontier into Bohemia on 15 August 1744, beginning the Second Silesian War.