This period prior to the war with Austria is Cavour's. He set the finances of Piedmont on a better basis; he began a series of measures for the development of her resources; he secured various internal reforms, but his brilliant achievement was in his foreign policy. He knew that the Austrians could not be dispossessed without a war, that Piedmont was not strong enough of herself, and that in order to gain allies she must get a hearing before Europe. The Crimean War gave Cavour an opportunity. England and France would have preferred Austria as an ally, and there was much cautious proceeding; but Austria hesitated, and Piedmont offered herself. Many Italians deemed the plan of taking part in a war with which Piedmont had no visible concern a piece of folly; but Cavour carried his point. The Piedmontese army went, behaved with credit, and effaced the unfavourable impression left by the disastrous campaigns of 1848-49. The fruits of the Crimean expedition were gathered at the Congress of Paris (1856), where Cavour, supported by England and France, was able to call the attention of the Congress to the condition of Italy. He pointed to the tyranny of Austria in Lombardy and Venetia, to the abominable condition of the Papal States, to the horrible misgovernment in the Two Sicilies; and he pointed to Piedmont as the bulwark against Austrian preponderance on the one hand, and against the revolutionary spirit on the other. Nothing definite was done, but the Italian question had been broached, and Cavour's participation in the Congress was recognized as a great achievement.