In 1866 Austria was driven out of the German Confederation by Prussia.  Seven years earlier she had lost most of her Italian possessions.  Thereafter her interests and ambitions lay to the southeast; and she bent her energies to extend her territory, influence, and commerce into the Balkan region.  A semblance of popular government was established in Austria and in Hungary, which were separated from each other in ordinary affairs, but continued under the same monarch.  In each country, however, the suffrage and elections were so juggled that the ruling minority, of Germans in Austria and of Hungarians in Hungary, was enabled to keep the majority in subjection.

Austria-Hungary has not progressed as rapidly in industry and commerce as the countries to the north and west of her.  Her life is still largely agricultural, and cultivation is often conducted by primitive methods.  Before the war her wealth per person was only $500, as compared with $1843 in the United States, $1849 in Great Britain, $1250 in France, and $1230 in Germany.  She possessed only one good seaport, Trieste (tr[)i]-[)e]st’), and this partly explained her desire to obtain access to the Black Sea and the AEgean Sea.  About half of her foreign trade was carried on with Germany.  The low standards of national wealth and production made the raising of taxes a difficult matter.  The government had a serious struggle to obtain the funds for a large military and naval program.

Italy.—­For a thousand years before 1870 there was no single government for the entire Italian peninsula.  Although the people were mainly of one race, their territory was divided into small states ruled by despotic princes, who were sometimes of Italian families, but more often were foreigners—­Greeks, Germans, French, Spanish, and Austrians.  The Pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church, governed nearly one third of the land.  This condition continued after 1815.  But during the nineteenth century the Italians began to realize that they belonged to one race.  They saw that the rule of foreigners was opposed to the national welfare.

By 1870 the union of all Italy into one kingdom was completed.  In this work three great men participated, as well as many lesser patriots.  The first was Garibal’di, a man of intense courage and patriotism.  He aroused the young men of Italy to the need of national union and the expulsion of the foreigners.  For over thirty years he was engaged in various military expeditions which aided greatly in the establishment of the national union.  The second leader was of an entirely different character.  Count Cavour (ka-voor’) was a statesman, a politician, a deep student of European history, and a man of great tact.  He, too, wished for a united Italy, but he believed union could not be gained without foreign assistance.  By most skillful means he secured the support of France and of England, while at the same time he used Garibaldi and his revolutionists.  He had succeeded, at the time of his death in 1861, in bringing together all of Italy except Rome and Venice.  He won for the new Italian kingdom a place among the great nations of Europe.