What could the seven Austrian ironclads with their 74 little guns throwing 1776 pounds of metal do against these nine ships with double the number of guns and nearly ten times the weight of metal in their broadsides? But add in the three capital ships before noted on the Italian side, and we have:-- 12 ironclads against 7. 208 rifled guns against 74. 20,392 pounds of metal in the broadsides against only 1776. Clearly it would be mad folly for the Austrian fleet to challenge a conflict! It would be swept from the Adriatic at the first encounter! Here, then, are our calculations as to the command of the Adriatic at the outset of the war of 1866. They leave out of account only one element--the men, and the spirit of the men. Let us see how the grim realities of war can give the lie to paper estimates. Wilhelm von Tegethoff, who commanded the Austrian fleet with the rank of rear-admiral, was one of the world's great sailors, and the man for the emergency. He had as a young officer taken part in the blockade of Venice during the revolution of 1848 and 1849; he had seen something of the naval operations in the Black Sea during the Crimean War, as the commander of a small Austrian steamer, and during the war of 1864 he had commanded the wooden steam frigate "Schwarzenberg" in the fight with the Danes off Heligoland. Besides these war services he had taken part in an exploring expedition in the Red Sea and Somaliland, and he had made more than one voyage as staff-captain to the Archduke Maximilian, whose favourite officer and close friend he had been for years. When the Archduke, an enthusiastic sailor, resigned his command of the Austrian fleet to embark for Mexico, where a short-lived reign as Emperor and a tragic death awaited him, he told his brother, the Emperor Francis Joseph, that Tegethoff was the hope of the Austrian navy.