Editing Austro-Prussian War (section)

===Bonapartist lure and lukewarm Austrian desire for revenge===
[[File:Europe 1867 map en.png|thumb|Map of Europe in 1867]]
It was in order to prevent "unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge" and forestall intervention by France or Russia that [[Otto von Bismarck|Bismarck]] had pushed King [[William I, German Emperor|Wilhelm]] to make peace with the Austrians rapidly, rather than continue the war in hopes of further gains.{{Sfn|Taylor|1955|page=48}} As to the exclusion from political Germany, the conciliatory Emperor [[Francis Joseph I]] did not face notable public pressure for resilience, although the [[Napoleon III|French ruler]] made him restrict a negotiated freedom of the failing [[South German Confederation]] to reunite with the North.

Having lost his position as minister-president of Saxony over his Prussian counterpart's unwillingness to negotiate the peace with him, the new Austrian leader [[Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust]] was "impatient to take his revenge on Bismarck for [[Battle of Königgrätz|Sadowa]]". As a preliminary step, the [[Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867]] was "rapidly concluded". The Protestant Beust "persuaded Francis Joseph to accept [[Hungarians|Magyar]] demands which he had until then rejected",<ref>{{Cite book |last=Albertini |first=Luigi |author-link=Luigi Albertini |title=The Origins of the War of 1914 |date=1952 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |volume=I |page=4}}</ref> but Austrian plans fell short of French hopes (e.g. [[Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen]] proposed a plan which required the French army to fight alone for six weeks in order to allow Austrian mobilization).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Aronson |first=Theo |author-link=Theo Aronson |title=The Fall of the Third Napoleon |date=1970 |publisher=[[Cassell (publisher)|Cassell & Company Ltds]] |page=58}}</ref> King [[Victor Emmanuel II of Italy|Victor Emmanuel II]] and the Italian government wanted to join this potential alliance, but domestic public opinion there was bitterly opposed as long as Paris kept a French garrison in Rome protecting [[Pope Pius IX]], thereby denying the country the possession of its capital (Rome had been declared so in March 1861, when the first national parliament had met in Turin). Napoleon III was not strictly opposed to this (in response to a French minister of State's declaration that Italy would never lay its hands on Rome, the Emperor had commented "You know, in politics, one should never say 'never'."{{Sfn|Aronson|1970|page=56}}) and had made various proposals for resolving the [[Roman Question]], but Pius rejected them all. Despite his support for Italian unification, Napoleon could not press the issue for fear of angering Catholics in France. Raffaele de Cesare, an Italian journalist, political scientist, and author, noted that:

{{blockquote|The alliance, proposed two years before 1870, between France, Italy, and Austria, was never concluded because Napoleon III ... would never consent to the occupation of Rome by Italy. ... He wished Austria to avenge Sadowa, either by taking part in a military action, or by preventing South Germany from making common cause with Prussia. ... If he could ensure, through Austrian aid, the neutrality of the South German States in a war against Prussia, he considered himself sure of defeating the Prussian army, and thus would remain arbiter of the European situation. But when the war suddenly broke out, before anything was concluded, the first unexpected French defeats overthrew all previsions, and raised difficulties for Austria and Italy which prevented them from making common cause with France. ... For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations ... Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Cesare |first=Raffaele |url=https://archive.org/details/thelastdaysofpap00cesauoft |title=The Last Days of Papal Rome |date=1909 |publisher=[[Constable & Robinson|Archibald Constable & Co.]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/thelastdaysofpap00cesauoft/page/439 439]–443}}</ref>}}

Another reason that Imperial Chancellor Beust's supposedly desired revanche against Prussia did not materialize is seen in the fact that, in 1870, the Hungarian Prime Minister Count [[Gyula Andrássy]] was "vigorously opposed".{{Sfn|Albertini|1952|page=6}}