Austro-Italian ironclad arms race
Austria's defeat in the Seven Weeks War forced Austria to determine a new set of foreign and domestic policies for the future, as Austria's interests since the days of the Holy Roman Empire had primarily been found in Italy and Germany. The Empire thus reformed itself into the Austria-Hungarian Empire following the adoption of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (German: "Ausgleich"), which re-established the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary and placed Hungarians within the Empire on an equal footing with Austrians. Under the "Ausgleich", Emperor Franz Joseph I would be crowned as King of Hungary, while a separate parliament at Pest with powers to enact laws for the lands of the Holy Crown of Hungary would be established.
Battle of Hochkirch
Although the Seven Years War was a global conflict, it took a specific intensity in the European theater based on the recently concluded War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, the prosperous province of Silesia. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances; she was intent upon regaining ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire as well as recovering the Silesian province. In 1754, escalating tensions between Britain and France in North America offered France an opportunity to break the British dominance of Atlantic trade. Seeing the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's growing power, Austria put aside its old rivalry with France to form a new coalition. Britain aligned herself with the Kingdom of Prussia; this alliance drew in not only the British king's European territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. This series of political maneuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution.