"Between the French and the earthquakes," wrote Horace Walpole in 1758 to Mr. Conway, "you have no notion how good we have grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth turned up with ashes." The years 1756 and 1757 were crowded with disappointments. With the miscarriage of the three campaigns of 1755, Governor Shirley became the successor of the forgotten Braddock and assembled a council of war at New York composed of Governors Shirley, Hardy, Sharpe, Morris, and Fitch, Colonels Dunbar and Schuyler, Majors Craven and Rutherford, and Sir John St. Clair. As though in very mockery, the king's instructions to the betrayed and sacrificed Braddock were read to the council, after which General Shirley announced a scheme for campaigns to be conducted during the new year. The new "generalissimo" proposed four campaigns: one army of five thousand men was to assemble at Oswego, four thousand of whom were to be sent to destroy, first, Fort Frontenac, then Forts Niagara, Presque Isle, La Boeuf, and Detroit; a second army of three thousand provincials was to march over Braddock's Road against Fort Duquesne; an army of one thousand men was to advance to Crown Point on Lake Champlain and erect a fort there; a fourth army of two thousand men was to "carry fire and sword" up the Kennebec River, across the portage, and down Riviere Chaudiere to its mouth near Quebec. The Council agreed, as councils will, to all this Quixotic program; insisting, however, that ten thousand men should be sent to Crown Point and six thousand to Oswego. In spite of Shirley's earnestness things moved very slowly, and the bickering between governors and assemblies and the jealousy of men out of power of those in power retarded every movement. The deadlock in Pennsylvania resulted in the abandonment of that province and Virginia so far as offensive measures were concerned, and the two governors busied themselves in fortifying their smoking frontiers, as described above. And finally the northern campaigns toward the lakes came to a sudden stand when General Shirley was superseded in his command by Lord Loudoun who, lacking the sense to forward Shirley's plans, officiously altered them completely at a time when everything depended on quick and concerted action. As a result, Loudoun moved northward at a snail's pace.