Meanwhile there were sinister rumours that the French were likely to attack Oswego, and Loudoun sent Colonel Webb with the Forty-fourth regiment to reinforce the garrison. Webb had hardly reached the Great Carrying-place on his way, when the news met him that Oswego had already been captured. On the night of the 9th the Marquis of Montcalm, an energetic officer who had arrived in Canada in May 1755, had swooped down swiftly and secretly upon the fort with three thousand men, and after three days' cannonade had forced it to surrender. Webb at once retired with precipitation, and in alarm at a report that the French were advancing upon New York, burned the fort at the Great Carrying-place and retreated down the Mohawk. Such timidity was worthy of Newcastle's nominee; and this disaster brought the whole of the operations to a standstill. Montcalm having burned Oswego retired to Ticonderoga, where with five thousand men he took up a position from which Loudoun could not hope, with the troops at his disposal, to dislodge him. The British General therefore contented himself with improving the defences of Fort Edward; and therewith ended the campaign of 1756 in North America. Everything had gone as ill as possible. Loudoun had shown great impatience with the Provincials, and the Provincials had taken no pains to help him. In Pennsylvania every conceivable obstacle was thrown in the way of recruiting; in New York there was not less friction over the quartering of the King's troops. There were reasons sufficient in the jealousy, the inexperience, and occasionally the corruption of the Provincials to excuse impatience in the General, but Loudoun was not conciliatory in manner nor had he the ability which commands confidence. He was, in fact, one more of the incompetent men nominated by an incompetent Administration. All that he could show for his first campaign was the loss of Oswego, the station which bound the British colonies to the great Indian trade with the West, the place of arms from which the chain of French posts was to be cut in two, in a word the sharpest and deadliest weapon in the armoury of British North America. Small wonder that the French were filled with triumph and the British colonies with dismay.