It began to be clear that the Neapolitan Government would soon have too much on its hands at home for it to indulge in crusades. But the crisis was not hastened by Cavour, and he was one of the last to believe it imminent. Towards the end of March he learnt with surprise from Sir James Hudson that the reason the British Fleet had been sent to Naples was that a catastrophe was expected. He then asked the Sardinian Minister at the Neapolitan Court whether a Muratist restoration was still possible, and what chances there were at Naples for Italian unity? The Marquis Villamarina replied that the French, who once had many partisans, had lost most of them. As to unity he held out few hopes; it was popular in Sicily but not on the mainland, where the king had a strong following. If the Marquis had said "large" for "strong" his assertion would have been accurate. The misgovernment, which Lord John Russell had lately described as almost without a parallel in Europe, was not of a nature to be wholly unpopular; it was national after a fashion; bribery and espionage and the persecution of the best citizens may leave the masses content, and, in fact, at least in the capital, the _basso popolo_ was royalist, as was the scarcely less ignorant nobility. The bulk of the clergy and the army was also loyal. All this support made the Bourbon _régime_ look not insecure to those on the spot, who failed to understand the complete rottenness of its foundations.
When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily, Cavour thought of sending secretly a Piedmontese officer, who fought in the Sicilian insurrection of 1848, to assume the direction, but he did not do so, perhaps because he had very little faith in the success of the attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was already separated in spirit not only from the Bourbon crown but from any rule which had its seat at Naples, the insurrection did not begin under promising circumstances. There were no signs of a concerted rising on a large scale, such as had overthrown the Government in 1848, and the authorities disposed of overwhelming means, if they knew how to use them, of crushing a few guerrilla bands. Cavour was slow to believe the catastrophe at hand, but he thought that the time was come to send the King of Naples a warning, which was practically an ultimatum. On April 15 Victor Emmanuel addressed a letter to Francis II, in which he told his cousin that there was possibly still time to save his dynasty, but that time was short. Two things must be done--the first was to restore the Constitution (this even Russia was advising), the second, that the kings of Sardinia and Naples should divide Italy between them, drive out the last Austrian, and constrain the Pope, in whatever strip of territory was left to him, to govern on the same liberal basis as themselves. If these things were not done, and at once, Francis would have the fate of his relative Charles X, and the King of Sardinia might be forced to become the chief instrument of his ruin. It cannot be said that the warning was not sufficiently explicit.