Speaking of the Italian question, Franz's face darkened as well. After the Prussian-Austrian War, Italy had taken Venice. Before that, Italy had used the same tactics, taking Lombardy and a host of Italian dependencies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with French support. Italy was indeed currently the Austro-Hungarian Empire's greatest enemy beyond its borders.
Prussia had won leadership over the German territories because Austria truly had not been able to defeat it. But that weakling Italy was far too skilled at picking sides, and what it had taken was Austrian Empire territory. As a result, Austria was now left with only the port of Trieste to sustain its fragile navy. This was indeed the greatest humiliation Austria had suffered in recent years.
Franz silently cursed Italy, Prussia, and the rebellious Hungarians. Internal troubles and external threats were coming one after another.
"You have a solution?" Franz asked.
The French were currently protecting the Papal States. Napoleon III could be called the greatest driving force behind Italian unification. During his early years in exile in Italy, he had even joined Italy's Carbonari. After Napoleon III became emperor in 1851, he explicitly put forward the "principle of nationalism" and supported Italian unification. In 1856, the Crimean War broke out. Near the end of the war, the Kingdom of Sardinia exploited the rift between Britain and France and stood with the French, winning Napoleon III's trust. To win over France, the Kingdom of Sardinia offered Savoy and Nice as payment. With French help, it defeated its powerful enemy Austria, seized Austrian-controlled Lombardy, and annexed small states such as Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, which lay within Austria's sphere of influence, thereby achieving the initial unification of Italy.
Looking at it this way, France, Prussia, Italy, Hungary, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and even Russia, whose relations