Watching the casualty figures continue to climb, Franz felt a headache coming on as well. Just as Carlo Filangieri had predicted, Austria needed to save face too.
If they could openly break with the French and go to war, losses of eight or ten thousand would be nothing. The problem was that Austria simply was not prepared for a decisive battle against the French.
Once the window paper was pierced, all-out war would inevitably erupt. A limited war was impossible; neither side could admit defeat, and once fighting began, it would escalate into a struggle for survival.
The proud French would not concede, so Napoleon III could only fight to the bitter end. Austria possessed the advantage in population and held the upper hand in war potential; Franz was even less likely to concede.
That meant there was no point even if a limited war produced a winner. Neither side would yield, and the war would still continue.
Either they fought for three or five years, with whoever failed to endure first admitting defeat—or both sides ended up bloodied and broken; or they went all in for a decisive battle and settled life and death.
Neither could be concluded in the short term. In this age without airplanes, tanks, or automobiles, when armies marched on nothing but their own two legs, blitzkrieg simply did not exist.
What mattered was overall national strength. One look at the map made it clear that the geography of France and Austria had already decided it: whoever launched the offensive would be the one at a disadvantage.
In Italy, at most they could conquer the greater part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. This was not the heartland of France, and the locals were a pack of Italians who could not be tamed. Occupying the place