Robert made a brief report the next day to Governor Dinwiddie, not telling that St. Luc and he had spoken together, stating merely that he had seen him, giving his name, and describing him as one of the most formidable of the French forest leaders. "I thank you, Mr. Lennox," said the Governor. "Your information shall be conveyed to General Braddock. Yet I think our force will be too great for the wilderness bands." On the following day they were at Alexandria on the Potomac, where the great council was to be held. Here Braddock's camp was spread, and in a large tent he met Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, Governor de Lancey of New York, Governor Sharpe of Maryland, Governor Dobbs of North Carolina and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, an elderly lawyer, but the ablest and most energetic of all the governors. It was the most momentous council yet held in North America, and all the young officers waited with the most intense eagerness the news from the tent. Robert saw Braddock as he went in, a middle-aged man of high color and an obstinate chin. Grosvenor gave him some of the gossip about the general. "London has many stories of him," he said. "He has spent most of his life in the army. He is a gambler, but brave, rough but generous, irritable, but often very kind. Opposition inflames him, but he likes zeal and good service. He is very fond of your young Mr. Washington, who, I hear is much of a man." The council in the great tent was long and weighty, and well it might have been, even far beyond the wildest thoughts of any of the participants. These were the beginnings of events that shook not only America but Europe for sixty years. In the tent they agreed upon a great and comprehensive scheme of campaign that had been proposed some time before. Braddock would proceed with his attack upon Fort Duquesne, Shirley would see that the forces of New England seized Beauséjour and De Lancey would have Colonel William Johnson to move upon Crown Point and then Niagara. Acadia also would be taken. Dinwiddie after Shirley was the most vigorous of the governors, and he promised that the full force of Virginia should be behind Braddock. But to Shirley was given the great vision. He foresaw the complete disappearance of French power from North America, and, to achieve a result that he desired so much, it was only necessary for the colonists to act together and with vigor. While he recognized in Braddock infirmities of temper and insufficient knowledge of his battlefield, he knew him to be energetic and courageous and he believed that the first blow, the one that he was to strike at Fort Duquesne, would inflict a mortal blow upon France in the New World. In every vigorous measure that he proposed Dinwiddie backed him, and the other governors, overborne by their will, gave their consent.