Austrian Empire the Empire until 1848—the Year of Revolutions—and the rise of liberalism equated to his political downfall. The result was that the Austrian Empire was seen as one of the great powers after 1815, but also as a reactionary force and an obstacle to national aspirations in Italy and Germany. Crown lands of the Austrian Empire after the 1815 Congress of Vienna, including the local government reorganizations from the Revolutions of 1848 to the 1860 October Diploma: The old Habsburg possessions of Further Austria (in today's France, Germany and Switzerland) had already been lost in the 1805 Peace of Pressburg. From
History of the Catholic Church in Germany various states within the Empire to increase their power and the Emperor's attempt to achieve the religious and political unity of the Empire. The immediate occasion for the war was the uprising of the Protestant nobility of Bohemia against the emperor (Defenestration of Prague), but the conflict was widened into a European War by the intervention of King Christian IV of Denmark (1625–29), Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1630–48), and France under Cardinal Richelieu, the regent of the young Louis XIV (1635–48). Germany became the main theatre of war and the scene of the final conflict between France and the Habsburgs