On May 5 Warren sailed into Canso. The Provincials thought the date of his arrival a very happy omen, as it fell on what was then, according to the Old Style calendar, St George's Day, April 23. After a conference with Pepperrell he hurried off to begin the blockade of Louisbourg. A week later, May 21, the transports joined him there, and landed their militiamen for one of the most eccentric sieges ever known. While the British had been spending the first four months of 1745 in preparing 8,000 men, the French authorities in Louisbourg, whose force was less than 2,000, had been wasting the same precious time in ridiculous councils of war. It is a well-known saying that councils of war never fight. But these Louisbourg councils did not even prepare to fight. The news from Boston was not heeded. Worse yet, no attention was paid to the American scouting vessels, which had been hovering off the coast for more than a month. The bibulous du Quesnel had died in October. But his successor, du Chambon, was no better as a commandant. Perhaps the kindest thing to say of du Chambon is that he was the foolish father of a knavish son--of that du Chambon de Vergor who, in the next war, surrendered Fort Beausejour without a siege and left one sleepy sentry to watch Wolfe's Cove the night before the Battle of the Plains. It is true that du Chambon had succeeded to a thoroughly bad command. He had no naval force whatever; and the military force had become worse instead of better. The mutiny in December had left the 560 regulars in a very sullen frame of mind. They knew that acquisitive government officials were cheating them out of their proper rations of bacon and beans. The officials knew that the soldiers knew. And so suspicion and resentment grew strong between them. The only other force was the militia, which, with certain exceptions, comprised every male inhabitant of Cape Breton who could stand on two legs and hold a musket with both hands. There were boys in their early teens and old men in their sixties. Nearly 1,800 ought to have been available. But four or five hundred that might have been brought in never received their marching orders. So the total combatants only amounted to some 1,900, of whom 1,350 were militia. The non-combatants numbered nearly as many. The cramped hundred acres of imprisoned Louisbourg thus contained almost 4,000 people--mutineers and militia, women and children, drones and other officials, all huddled up together.