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.
Friedrich Heinrich von Seckendorff
Empress Maria Theresa released Seckendorff from prison in 1740, but, denied his arrears of pay, he laid down all his Austrian and imperial offices and accepted from the new Holy Roman emperor, Bavarian Charles VII, the rank of field marshal in the Bavarian service. As commander of the Bavarian army, Seckendorff relieved Munich in the War of the Austrian Succession and, by a series of battles in 1743 and 1744, forced the Austrians back into Bohemia, after which he resigned.