The beginnings the home government made were small and weak enough; but it did at least act, and it was likely that, should it keep long enough at the business, it would at last learn and do all that was necessary to make good its mastery against a weaker rival. By the 20th of February, 1755, transports were in the Chesapeake, bringing two regiments of the King’s regulars, to be sent against Duquesne. The French, too, were astir. Early in the spring eighteen French ships of war sailed for Canada, carrying six battalions and a new governor; and though the English put an equal fleet to sea to intercept them, the Frenchmen got into the St. Lawrence with a loss of but two of their ships, which had strayed from the fleet and been found by the English befogged and bewildered off the American coast. The scene was set for war both north and south. [Illustration: THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE] Major General Edward Braddock commanded the regiments sent to Virginia, and was commissioned to be commander-in-chief in America. He therefore called the principal colonial governors to a conference at Alexandria, his headquarters. By the middle of April five had come: Robert Dinwiddie, of course, the governor of Virginia; Robert Hunter Morris, whose thankless task it was to get war votes out of the Pennsylvanian assembly of Quakers and lethargic German farmers; Horatio Sharpe, the brave and energetic gentleman who was governor of Maryland; James DeLancey, the people’s governor, of New York; and William Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, past sixty, but as strenuous as Dinwiddie, and eager for the field though he had been bred a lawyer,—every inch “a gentleman and politician,” it was said. It was he who had done most to organize and expedite the attack on Louisbourg which had succeeded so handsomely ten years ago (1745). He would at any rate not fail for lack of self-confidence. The conference planned an attack on Niagara, to be led by Shirley himself, to cut the French off from Duquesne; an attack on Crown Point, to be led by Colonel William Johnson, of New York, whom the Mohawks would follow, to break the hold of the French on Champlain; an attack upon Beauséjour, in Acadia, under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, of the King’s regulars; and a movement, under the command of General Braddock himself straight through the forests against Duquesne, by the way Washington had cut to Great Meadows.