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.
Reichskrieg
During the First Silesian War (1740–42), the Emperor Charles VII had sought a "Reichsexekution" against Prussia, but the diet refused. The war over Silesia was regarded as a dynastic conflict between Prussia and Austria in which the empire itself should not intervene. During his brief reign, the Emperor Charles VII (1742–45) sought a declaration of "Reichskrieg" against Austria, although the latter had not breached imperial law and there was therefore no justification. The pro-Austrian elector of Mainz, Johann Friedrich Karl von Ostein, tabled a formal protest in the Imperial Diet on 23 September 1743 alleging that the election of Charles VII had been irregular. In such a situation, there was no chance of the diet agreeing to the emperor's proposal for a "Reichskrieg" against Austria. The Second Silesian War (1744–45) thus also went by without any imperial action. The Third Silesian War (1756–63), however, became wrapped in a global war of great power politics, the Seven Years' War, and Prussia could not escape an imperial action.