As soon as the revolution was fairly inaugurated in all the cities of the legation, an insurrectionary army was marched towards Rome, avowing the purpose not to concede anything to the papacy, but to have the Government reformed. The pope soon saw that he was powerless to resist so formidable a force, and that his crown would be lost to him unless he could obtain assistance from some of the allied sovereigns; that is, unless he could subdue his own Roman Catholic subjects by the help of a foreign army! Notwithstanding he boastingly considered himself as armed with divine authority, he did not feel it safe, in the face of the stubborn facts before him, to rely alone upon assistance from that source. He had more confidence in military than in spiritual power, in dealing with a population he knew to be incensed with the outrages committed by the Government he was defending. He accordingly called upon Louis Philippe of France to send an army to Italy to punish his own Roman Catholic subjects, because they desired only to take the crown of temporal sovereignty from his head, leaving all his spiritual rights unassailed. He relied upon the pledge which the "Holy Alliance" had exacted from the sovereigns that they would intervene forcibly, when necessary, to protect monarchism wheresoever popular and constitutional government was set up against it, and, of course, in making this appeal to the King of France, must have supposed that he occupied firm ground. But France, by this time, had learned to look upon the doctrines of the "Holy Alliance" with disfavor, and when she expelled Charles X, the last of her Bourbon kings, established the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other Governments, and tied the hands of Louis Philippe so tightly that he was compelled to decline the request of the pope, and leave the revolution in Italy to take its course. De Montor says, what is true, that the revolution in France had "encouraged the rebellion" in Italy[172]--which only proves that the Roman Catholics of Italy were apt imitators of their French brethren, dreading revolution as little, and as resolutely determined to avenge their own wrongs. Manifestly, they saw nothing in the faith of the primitive Church in support of the temporal power. Gregory XVI was undoubtedly discomfited by the refusal of Louis Philippe, which he had not probably anticipated; and it left him but a single method of escaping the wrath of his own people--but one way of dispelling the clouds thickening about him and threatening a tempest. That was to cling to the doctrines of the "Holy Alliance," and solicit the military intervention of some power so wedded to absolute monarchy as to be willing to march its armies against any people who were patriotic enough to assail the doctrine of the divine right of kings in order to build up a government of their own.