He at once appointed Colonel McNeil commandant of St. Louis,[44] that he himself, measurably free from local demands, might expend his energies in directing the larger affairs of his department. The best volunteers of the West rapidly and enthusiastically gathered around him. He gave himself without reserve to his great and difficult task. But from the start he appeared to be vainglorious. His headquarters were luxurious. Immediately around him he gathered a body-guard of about three hundred men, some of whom were foreigners with jaw-breaking names. It was later shown that most of them were enlisted not to serve the United States, but simply the general.[45] He and they, in full uniform, on horseback, often went thundering along our streets, kicking up a cloud of dust, or else making the mud fly. At Fremont’s headquarters were stationed so many sentinels that it was exceedingly difficult to find access to his person. Eminent citizens of St. Louis early began to complain that he ignored both them and the important questions on which they needed his counsel. Moreover, there was a marked lack of system in all that he undertook to do. He evidently had little talent for details; so everything in the encampments of his volunteer soldiers was in confusion. All this was inauspicious and disheartening. We had expected so much and were getting so little. The general soon reported to the authorities at Washington that his department was in a critical condition;[46] that troops of the Southern Confederacy in large numbers were moving northward to aid the disloyal of Missouri; that General Pillow threatened to invade the State from the southeast, General Hardee from the south, and General McCulloch from the southwest; and that while the volunteers gathering at St. Louis to meet the invaders were numerous, many of them were unarmed. In the meantime, Lyon at Springfield, with a clear view of the whole situation, seeing that by far the most formidable rebel force, under McCulloch and Price, was moving upon him from the southwest, pleaded in vain with Fremont to re-enforce his altogether inadequate army by at least one or two regiments and to pay and clothe his soldiers.[47] Fremont’s assistant adjutant-general, J. C. Kelton, wrote him at Cairo, August 2d: “General Lyon wants soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. So says Colonel Hammer, who has just arrived from Springfield.”[48] The same day Fremont wrote General Scott: “Force large in front of General Lyon.” But all was without avail. The Confederates, by a feint at New Madrid, in the southeastern corner of the State, had deceived him. Pillow was reported as being there with eleven thousand men.[49] He was led to believe that the main invasion of our commonwealth was to be at that point.