The Council appeared more concerned over other Florida problems, and for good reason. Even before fortification came the matter of keeping the St. Augustine people from starvation such as came in the spring of 1662. Expected provisions from New Spain failed to arrive; the frigate out of St. Augustine, bringing maize from the granaries of the Apalache Indians in western Florida, was long overdue and the people feared she was lost. The tiny garrison was more or less accustomed to being underclothed, underfed, and unpaid, but to make matters worse, the Royal Treasurer refused to pension several veterans—men who had spent 50 years in the service of the Crown. True, these soldiers were now too old even for ordinary guard duty. The Treasurer was within his rights in refusing to pay them when they did not work, but his refusal was a death knell for the old men. The Governor saw it as something worse—a damaging precedent. The younger soldiers would realize, argued the Governor, that “they were wasting their youth and hoarding up for themselves a sentence of death from starvation as the price of their services.” The Council of the Indies sided with the Governor in this routine instance of bleak poverty, and certainly the Treasurer was glad to relieve his own conscience. Yet the fact remained that while the officials in Spain recognized the shocking conditions of neglect, St. Augustine was still far from succor. To the Viceroy of New Spain went new orders to pay the subsidies. The royal commands were ignored. By 1668 more than 400,000 pesos—8 years’ payments—were owing to the Florida presidio. Then came the midnight raid of 1668. After that crippling blow, St. Augustine was left destitute. Once again the soldiers were faced with the prospect of digging roots by day and begging alms by night from the few more fortunate inhabitants of the presidio—or starvation. As for the old wooden fort—the one nominal defense of the colony—a gun platform had fallen under its artillery; there was a great breach in the timber wall; the sea had washed away part of the foundation. Notwithstanding, the sack of St. Augustine proved to be a blessing in disguise, for the turn of events shocked the home officials into action. On October 30, 1669, Queen Regent Mariana commanded the Viceroy of New Spain to provide 12,000 pesos to start a new fort of stone, and 10,000 pesos each year to carry it to completion, amounts over and above the regular subsidy.