#austro-prussian war

[redarmyscreaming]

Two Austro-Hungarian soldiers, 1866 Austro-Prussian War.

[redarmyscreaming]

Königreich Hannover armee 1866

[crungulus]

With some training in basic combat skills, the Waterboys would be pretty well-matched against the Liechtenstein military c. 1866. If you got every Waterboy together they could maybe even try to take over modern Liechtenstein

[oldfritz]

from the Deutsches Historisches Museum

[lightdancer1]

The Austro-Prussian War is a good reminder that history really does hinge at times on kings and battles:

One relatively impolitic and unfashionable truth is that the reason old history was so much a history of kings and battles is that kings and battles did so much to *shape* that history and who wrote it and the audiences for which it was written. There were societies that rose and fell on the course of a single battlefield. The wars of Otto von Bismarck-era Prussia and the unification of Germany (and the realities of today's Ukraine War, along with, really, the US 'War on Terrorism') show that this hasn't changed.

The Austro-Prussian War is a very good example of that. Austria goes into it with every possible advantage. Interior lines, superior numbers, a man who at the start vastly outweighed Helmuth von Moltke in reputation. Like Mexico in 1846 every paper strength military factor would have given Austria every possible chance to win this war and to do so decisively.

Instead in six weeks blind aggression and audacity won Prussia the war in spite of its army at times displaying the same reckless bloodlust that recurred in 1870-1 and both world wars. The reality is that against Franz Josef, the jobber of European wars, this was plenty to work. Against a divided and weak Second Empire and early Third Republic, amplified by the civil war of the Paris Commune, it was enough to work. Committed to a general European two-front war it wasn't anywhere near enough to work and the German officer corps could not bring itself to admit that military power alone wasn't enough, and so it plunged Germany into two avoidable bloodbaths that left Germany at the end of it the fourth power in Berlin.

That was hindsight. At the time the swift motions from the onset of the war, from Moltke's grasping the right potential of breechloading rifles and railroads where other powers were slower to do so, to the decisive battle of Koeniggratz (which like other decisive battles hinged on a razor-thin margin that some slight differences on the Austrian side would have turned into a victory as grand for Austria as the real life battle was for Prussia and rendered the entire set of defeats before it moot) stunned Europe.

Austria's weaknesses, in turn, were not exactly the multi-ethnic nature of its army. This particular factor of Austria is often invoked to explain the terminal collapse of the Habsburg system. It's too simple because the truth is that the Austrian Empire itself was a desperate bid to keep the imperial title and its diplomatic perks in the Habsburg family after the defeat of the 1806 war against Napoleon and the dismantling of the HREGN.

Austria never developed from that the basis of being a cohesive state and there were multiple ideological and bureaucratic factors that prevented any such thing. On paper it was the second-largest state after Russia in terms of population and land mass in Europe. In an age that identified power with the ability to run an effective military machine this created some pretty obvious Catch-22s for Italy and Austria, ones that ultimately cost both states much in the vain pursuit of what they could not do.

9/10.

Amazon.com: The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866: 9780521629515: Wawro, Geoffrey: Books

[warsofasoiaf]

In the struggle between Prussia and Austria for dominance of Germany, how big a role did sea access play? was lack of access to the atlantic a major factor in Austria's loss, or a minor one?

I’d chalk up the Prussian victory to superior tactics, training, organization, operational speed, and equipment rather than access to the Atlantic. 

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLkeALawyer, Hand of the King

[useleshistory]

Useless Fact #24

In 1866, during the Austro-Prussian War, Prince Johann II of Liechtenstein sent 80 soldiers to defend the Liechtenstein/Austrian border against the Italians. At the end of the war, 81 men came back.

[arcticdementor]

Ludwig von Gablenz - Wikipedia

Ludwig Karl Wilhelm Freiherr (From 1873, von Gablenz-Eskeles) von Gablenz (b. 19 July 1814 – d. 28 January 1874) was an Austrian general of Saxon origin.