The captains of militia faithfully endeavored to comply with these orders, but the farmers, or habitans, showed great disinclination to abandon the cultivation of their fields for the certain hardships and dangers, and the uncertain glories of a soldier's life. Where the levies were efficiently carried out, the country remained waste; the last harvest had been far from abundant, and the rapacious seizures of grain for the real or fictitious wants of the government caused a pinching scarcity. The intendant had arbitrarily fixed the price of wheat at twelve sous the bushel, yet none was sold under a far higher rate. Every device of peculation was resorted to by the unworthy civil officers to increase their gains from the distresses of the people, while the vicious decrees of a corrupted court of law supported instead of curbing them in their iniquities. Dishonest exactions and forced contributions caused a reckless waste of those resources, upon the enjoyment of which no man could confidently count, and the intendant, finding it at length difficult or impossible to obtain the necessary supplies, quartered the troops upon the unfortunate inhabitants. The misery and distress of the colony at length deepened into absolute famine. Cadet, the commissary-general, by the intendant's orders, killed a number of horses for the use of the inhabitants and troops at Montreal and Quebec. Finally the governor and M. de Montcalm dispatched an officer to France with a detail of the deplorable state of Canada, and an earnest entreaty for succor. This officer, the afterward celebrated De Bougainville, although he had sailed very late in the autumn, escaped the dangers of the season and the vigilance of the British navy, and laid his melancholy dispatch before the throne of France.[163] Early in January, 1759, a census was taken of all those capable of bearing arms in Canada; the result showed 15,229 men. Of these, however, a large proportion were neither available nor worthy of trust. A detachment of artillery, eight battalions of French regulars, and thirty-three companies of the marine or colony troops, formed the real strength of the Canadian army.