Without its conservative alliance with Russia, which never quite forgave it for its armed neutrality in favour of the allies in 1854, and equally mistrusted by the liberal Western powers for its reactionary politics and ‘soft-on-Russia’ peace initiatives during the war, Austria found itself increasingly isolated on the Continent after 1856. Consequently it would lose out in Italy (in the war against the French and Piedmontese in 1859), in Germany (in the war against the Prussians in 1866) and in the Balkans (where it steadily retreated from the 1870s until 1914).
