But ere long came the inevitable swing in the other direction. Queen Anne died; King George had not yet landed at Greenwich; there was agitation and conspiracy among the adherents of the Stuarts, and Scotland was simmering with rebellion. Then did the fearful Privy Council send letter after letter to the Ordnance urging them to find arms for 10,000 men for Scotland, or for 5000, or even for 4000; but from their diminished stores even this small body could with difficulty be armed. A train of artillery was ordered to march, and could not: everything was starved, and in chaos; and its commander, Albert Borgard, wrote, "Things are in such confusion as cannot be described." Orders were sent to man and defend Fort William, the now desolate scene of John Murray's nineteen years; and General Maitland, on reaching it, reported that "the parapets want repairing: there are no palisadoes; without an engineer to help me, I can but make the best of a bad bargain." He had to advance the money himself: "Who pays me," he wrote, "I know not." By next messenger he asked for a little gunpowder, a few spades, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows, all rather useful articles in a fortification, but which had vanished under the breath of economy. There were no gunners, he wrote, to work the guns; and he requested that the hand-grenades which were coming from Edinburgh might be filled and fitted with fuzes before they should be sent to him, "for we have none here that understand this matter well." Of a truth, John Murray had his revenge! The principal gate of the fortress was so rotten and shattered that it could not be made use of, and was of no defence at all. There never had been any gate, the General wrote, to the port of the ravelin; and unless the platform could be renewed, it would be impossible to work the guns. "And," he adds in a well-rounded period, "the old timber houses in which the officers of the Garrison are lodged, and also the old timber chapell, are all in such a shattered pitifull condition, that neither the first can be lodged in one, nor the Garrison attend divine service in the other without being exposed to the inconvenience of all weathers."