Though Hood, as a sailor, was unversed in the military branches of the art of war, he decided after a reconnaissance of Bastia that it would be possible for the troops to carry the defences by a sudden assault from the land side of the town. Dundas, who though cautious by temperament was an educated soldier of much experience, condemned the project as beyond the powers of his small and ill-equipped force, and this difference of opinion at once intensified the friction already existing between the Admiral and the General. Unable to agree on a plan of operations, Hood and Dundas summoned conferences and councils of war, at which no decision was reached; and their relations became so strained that they ceased to meet, transacting business by means of formal and acrimonious correspondence. Throughout the army the question was hotly debated, and Bastia was reconnoitred by many officers, the large majority of whom became converts to Dundas’s opinions. Lieutenant-Colonel Wemyss, who commanded the XVIIIth, was one of the few in favour of an attack, but his views do not appear to have been supported by convincing arguments, for Sir John Moore (then Lieutenant-Colonel Moore, 51st regiment) recorded in his diary that “Wemyss conceives it would be mighty easy to take them” (_i.e._, the heights commanding the land fortifications), “but cannot explain how, and talks so like a boy that little weight can be given to his opinion.”[91] Hood’s conduct towards the General and the troops became so intolerable that Dundas took the unjustifiable step of resigning his command and returning to England. Not long after his departure reinforcements reached the officer in temporary command of the army, whose offer to co-operate in the operations was contemptuously rejected by Lord Hood; and thus, when on May 24th the garrison of 4500 men surrendered, the success was due to the Navy, whose blockading vessels had fairly starved the French into submission, while, with the exception of some artillerymen and the troops serving on the warships as marines, the land forces were hardly employed in the reduction of Bastia.