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.
Franco-Austrian Alliance
The Alliance had its heyday during the Seven Years' War when France and Austria joined forces to fight the mutual enemy of Prussia. Following the allies' defeat in that war, the intimacy of the alliance weakened, and by the 1780s it had become something closer to a formality—when Austria briefly considered the idea of entering the American War of Independence on Britain's side against France. By the time of the French Revolution—when France first declared itself a constitutional monarchy, and then overthrew and executed its king—it had collapsed entirely and Austria actively tried to restore the French monarchy by going to war with the new French Republic.