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.
Austria (Lombard)
Austria included the duchies of the north-eastern Lombard Kingdom, among them a prominent role was covered by:The duchies of Austria presented themselves as the defenders of the warrior and conqueror spirit of the Lombards. Here survived longer than in other places the old pagan cults and among the converts to Christianity, many were adherents of Arianism or adherents to the Schism of the Three Chapters. The Dukes of "Austria" pressed repeatedly on the king to take initiative, coming in several times to hatch conspiracies to overthrow the legitimate sovereign. This was the case in 662 of Grimoald (duke of Benevento, but a son of a Duke of Friuli), who managed to usurp the throne of Godepert and Perctarit despite the opposition of the Neustrians dukes of Asti and Turin; of Alahis, Duke of Trent, who in 688-689 was able to seize the throne of Pavia before being defeated by Cunipert; of Ansfrid of Friuli, who, having usurped the Duchy of Friuli, in turn attempted to seize the throne of Cunipert (who defeated and killed him in 698); of Rotarit, Duke of Bergamo, who after the death of Cunipert objected unsuccessfully to Raginpert first and then Aripert II (700-702). In the 8th century, however, the widespread conversion of the Lombards to Catholicism smoothed the opposition between "Austria" and "Neustria", thanks to a revived expansion at the expense of the Byzantine Empire with the Catholic and Neustrian Liutprand (king from 712).