The outbreak of revolution in the south found Cavour unusually confused and uncertain in his movements. His political life in ten years of office had mainly been devoted to the development of constitutional government and economic prosperity in the small subalpine state which comprised the provinces of Savoy, Piedmont, Liguria and Sardinia. Latterly he had turned his attention to other regions in the northern half of the peninsula, and in 1859–60 with French help he had partially displaced Austria and obtained for his king the additional provinces of Lombardy and the duchies. He still did not concern himself very much with the centre and south. Unquestionably he wanted to establish the independence of Italy from Austrian influence, but he had no idea how near this was to achievement. He had privately expressed the hope that Naples and Sicily would remain quiet for several years, and it was in keeping with this thought that his official representative at the Bourboi court was a man whom he himself recognized as second rate. In his plans for Italy he leant rather to an alliance or a confederation of states than to centralized unity. The idea of national independence by no means implied for him a united nation. He had shown signs of resting content with Victor Emanuel as king of the north, and the Bourbon Francesco as king of the south. He himself knew no other part of Italy except the north-western corner, and he continued to look on Rome as a mysterious and not altogether pleasant city. Unification as a doctrine, so far as he was concerned, carried some of the taint of Mazzini about it.