Instead of making the campaign with four brigades and twenty-four guns, as Weitzel's original plan had contemplated, Banks, for greater security, set out with seven brigades and fifty-six guns. So far as concerned the main body ascending the Teche, this excess of strength could do no harm, but it was otherwise with the turning column by the lake; for to the needless augmentation of the artillery were directly due not only the day and night first lost, but also the still more precious hours of daylight consumed in landing guns that were not to fire a shot. Two brigades of infantry, with six guns at most, landing at Indian Bend, and marching directly toward the Cypremort, and quickly entrenching across both roads at or near their upper fork, would have been enough to hold the position against the best efforts of the whole of Taylor's army, with Emory close on their heels; and thus Taylor must have been lost and the war in Western Louisiana brought to an end. Consequences many and far-reaching would have followed. Moreover, when it was determined to use more than two divisions one of these was naturally Grover's, and thus it happened that to Grover, who knew nothing of the country, was assigned the delicate duty first cut out for Weitzel, while Weitzel, who had studied to the last point every detail of the topography and of the plan, stayed behind as the third in command of the column destined to butt its nose against the breastworks of Bisland and wait for the real work to be done a day's march on their farther side. Grover has been often criticised and much misunderstood for alleged over-caution and for taking the wrong direction after quitting the borders of the lake. Both criticisms are unjust. Generals, like other men, act according to their temperaments. In the whole war no braver man than Grover ever rode at the head of a division, nor any more zealous, more alert, more untiring in his duty. No troops of his ever went into battle but he was with them. But he was by nature cautious, and the adventure was essentially one that called for boldness. Moreover, he was by nature conscientious. That his orders, based as they were on misinformation of a date much later than Weitzel's intelligence, required him to land at Irish Bend instead of at Indian Bend, as first arranged, and to march on Franklin instead of toward the Cypremort, was not his affair. Surely no soldier is to be blamed, least of all in combined and complex operations, for choosing to obey the clearly expressed orders of those set over him, rather than to follow the illusory inspirations of the will-o'-the-wisp commonly mistaken for genius.