Palmerston, indeed, had not accomplished any such brilliant stroke of foreign policy as the breaking up of the Holy Alliance, or the defeat of Absolutism in Portugal, and had only played a late and subordinate part in the Greek question. But he had helped to save Belgium from the clutches both of France and Holland. He had uttered as decided a protest as was, perhaps, possible to him, against the Frankfort Decrees. And he had recently intimated plainly his opinion about the annexation of Cracow. The occupation of Ferrara had not at that time taken place; but Palmerston's utterance about the Treaty of Vienna on the Po had sufficiently indicated to Metternich the line which English feeling was taking with regard to Italian policy. But, though certain of the hostility of Palmerston, Metternich fully hoped to counterbalance that danger by securing France to his side. With Guizot he had long been on terms of cordial friendship; and each had sympathized with the other in various points of their political career. But, unfortunately for Metternich, in the Italian question Guizot had not seemed entirely sympathetic with Austria; for the Lombard exile, Pellegrino Rossi, who was now French ambassador at Rome, was the special friend and _protegé_ of Guizot; and as it was primarily for the sake of Austrian rule in Italy that Metternich cared about the Swiss question, he might find that here, too, French opinion did not coincide with Austrian. It soon appeared that Louis Philippe shrank from an alliance with Austria. He declared that any declaration by the four Powers, instead of hindering any outburst in Switzerland might hasten it; and Guizot was directed to propose that, instead of a common action by the four Powers, Austria should undertake alone the defence of the Sonderbund, France merely occupying some position in the territory of the Confederation. Metternich, however, remembered that during the intervention in the Papal States, in 1831-2, a French general had seized on Ancona, and had attempted a demonstration there, at first of a Republican character, and throughout entirely anti-Austrian. And he feared that, if he consented to Guizot's proposal, the French Radicals might turn the occupation of Swiss territory to their advantage.