The further conquest by Italy of her own territory and the annexation of Venice to the Italian crown were therefore universally acclaimed. But those who knew Prussia and its military system, and watched the nefarious policy which had crushed Denmark as a stage on the road to the crushing of Austria, even thus early began to doubt whether the substitution of Prussia for Austria in the leadership of the old Germanic Bund might not speedily lead to a still more dangerous situation. Either this did not suggest itself to Napoleon III and his advisers, or they thought that Austria might win, or, at worst, that a bitterly contested campaign would enable France to interpose at the critical moment as a decisive arbiter in the struggle. Probably the last was the real calculation. It was falsified by the rapid and smashing Prussian victories of Königgratz and Sadowa, and Napoleon could do nothing but accept the decisions of the battlefield. But from this moment the Second Empire was in serious danger, and any far-seeing statesman would have set to work immediately to bring the French army up to the highest possible point of efficiency and prepare the way for alliances that might help the Empire, should help be needed in the near future. Neither Louis Napoleon nor his councillors and generals, however, understood what the overthrow of Austria meant for France. They turned a deaf ear then and afterwards to the warnings of their ablest agents abroad, and thus drifted into the crisis which four years later found them without an ally and overwhelmed them. CHAPTER III DOWNFALL AND RECONSTRUCTION