But the events of Bayonne had been productive of greater alarm to the house of Austria than to any other power. In the humiliation of the Hohenzollerns, Napoleon had the sanction of conquest, though, in view of Prussia's rising strength, it was now commonly said that he had done too much or too little. While in weakening that nation he had rudely lopped the strength of an old French ally, yet he had not destroyed it, and he had exercised what all Europe still admitted to be a right--that of superior force. Austria, on the other hand, had been an old and inveterate rival of France in the race for territorial extension. Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here, however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by chicane, was due to a boundless ambition, and was rendered utterly abhorrent to all divine-right dynasties by the specious pretext of reform under which it was accomplished. This gave Francis food for reflection. In the territorial expansion of Rome her victims were first conquered, then made dependent allies, then at last destroyed, and their lands turned into Roman provinces. It appeared as if this, too, were, in general, Napoleon's policy; but in some cases he showed himself quite willing to dispense with any intermediary stage and marched direct to his goal. Austria, already irritated by the disposition made of Etruria and by the treatment of the Pope, could endure the suspense as to her own fate no longer. Her new military system was complete, her armies were reorganized and reequipped, her administration was well ordered, her generals and statesmen were alike confident. The Emperor of the French had shown quite the same impatience with Austria in July as with Prussia in September, admonishing both to observe the Continental System with strictness; but his warning produced no effect at Vienna. On the contrary, the Viennese newspapers took a belligerent tone, and called for war; English goods poured in through the harbor of Triest; communications between the ministry at London and the cabinet at Vienna became more frequent and regular; the nation supported its monarch and assumed a warlike attitude. The disasters in Spain tied Napoleon's hands, and he did nothing in a military way except to call Davout from Poland into Silesia, and to strengthen Mortier in Franconia.