Italy's issue had temporarily come to an end. The remaining matter of compensation was something to be settled privately among themselves. This time, the three parties had each taken what they needed.
Following the principle of tackling the easy problems before the hard ones, everyone turned their attention to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This time, Bulgaria and Russia were demanding war reparations from Austria-Hungary, while Britain and France stood by as witnesses.
In this world war, the Vienna government had not come away entirely empty-handed. Though it had lost more than a hundred thousand square kilometers of territory, it had also weakened the greatest source of instability within the country.
First, it had used the world war to deal a crushing blow to the Kingdom of Hungary. Then, it had used the Germans to abolish the Hungarian government. By the time the world war ended, the Kingdom of Hungary was already powerless to maintain its rule.
Like Austria, Hungarians made up no more than half of the Kingdom of Hungary's population. After the war, they were unable to suppress the local ethnic minorities, and the Vienna government took the opportunity to announce the abolition of the dual monarchy.
The postwar population proportions of the various ethnic groups had also shifted slightly, with some rising and others falling:
Before the War / After the War Germans: 24% / 24.8% Hungarians: 20% / 16.8% Czechs: 13% / 12.8% Poles: 10% / 7.9% Ukrainians: 8% / 4.6% Romanians: 6% / 13.6% Croatians: 5% / 4.8% Slovaks: 4% / 3.9% Serbs: 4% / 3.7% Slovenians: 3% / 2.9% Italians: 3% / 3.1%
Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire's territory had shrunk drastically, its population had not fallen by much. Its total population still exceeded fifty million—including the deported Romanians. Thus, the ethnic question remained the greatest problem