Italy 1859: Rival Kingdoms

By the end of the Second War of Italian Independence, Austria had to know that Sardinia was looking to unite Italy. Rather than leave Italy disunified to be picked off one state at a time, could they build their own Kingdom of Italy as a client state of the Empire?

Such a state would require overthrowing the King of Two Sicilies, and would likely be a Papal State in name. Is this achievable? Can it hold it's own against Garibaldi? And most importantly, will it stay loyal to the Hapsburgs?
 
By the end of the Second War of Italian Independence, Austria had to know that Sardinia was looking to unite Italy. Rather than leave Italy disunified to be picked off one state at a time, could they build their own Kingdom of Italy as a client state of the Empire?

Such a state would require overthrowing the King of Two Sicilies, and would likely be a Papal State in name. Is this achievable? Can it hold it's own against Garibaldi? And most importantly, will it stay loyal to the Hapsburgs?

In retrospect, were I Franz Josef I would have used 1848 to split the inheritance a la Charles V. One Habsburg gets Lombardy-Venetia (and eventually the KoI), another gets the Kingdom of Germany (well, president of the German Federation, but details), and a third gets Hungary, maybe split off Croatia as a fourth kingdom or else just keep it in federation with either Hungary or Austria. By this point I'm not sure if they could accomplish that as Prussia is already gearing up. If nothing else the prospect of a Habsburg Europa would probably provoke a coalition.
 
Such a state would require overthrowing the King of Two Sicilies, and would likely be a Papal State in name. Is this achievable? Can it hold it's own against Garibaldi? And most importantly, will it stay loyal to the Hapsburgs?
The 2nd war of Independence ended in July 1859.
Garibaldi landed in Sicily on 12th May 1860.
By the end of July 1860 all of Sicily had been liberated, and Garibaldi landed in Calabria.
The Bourbon king left Naples on 5th September, and the final battle of the Volturno was fought on 1st October 1860.
The plebiscite in favour of the annexation of the kingdom of Two Sicilies was held on 26th October.

I don't think that FJ had the will (much less the time) to get involved in some harebrained scheme.
 
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