Since the project had been organised by the current government, it was also not interested in delving deeply into the reasons for its failure. Walker was sympathetically received by the queen, and both he and Hill were given new commands. Walker eventually wrote a detailed and frank account of the expedition, based on his memory as well as surviving journals and papers; it is reprinted in Graham. Walker was stripped of his rank in 1715 (amid a larger change of power including the accession of King George I), and died in 1728. Popular sentiment in England tended to fault the colonies for failing to properly support the expedition, citing parsimony and stubbornness as reasons. These sentiments were rejected in the colonies, where Nicholson and Governor Dudley instead blamed Walker. The relations between the military leadership and the colonial populations was not always cordial during the army's stay outside Boston, and foreshadowed difficult relations between civilians and military occupiers in the political conflicts that preceded the American Revolutionary War. One of Hill's officers wrote of the "ill Nature and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine, and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are unsupportable", and further commented that unless they were brought under firmer control, the colonists would "grow more stiff and disobedient every Day." Colonists noted with some disgust the fact that both Walker and Hill escaped censure for the expedition's failure. Authorities in France were alerted as early as March 1711 that Nicholson was organising an expedition against Quebec. They also knew the composition of Hill's force, but were apparently unaware of his destination until July. The Governor-general of New France, the marquis de Vaudreuil, sent Louis Denys de La Ronde to Boston ostensibly to oversee a prisoner exchange in early June. La Ronde also had secret instructions that he was to try to convince the colonial authorities to withhold support from expeditions sent from England. La Ronde, who coincidentally arrived in Boston on 8 June, the same day as Nicholson, was apparently unsuccessful in his attempts to influence colonial opinion. Nicholson became suspicious of his behaviour and eventually had him arrested. When copies of his secret instructions were found aboard a captured French vessel and brought to Boston, La Ronde was held in Boston until November. Governor Vaudreuil was warned again in August that expeditions against Quebec and Montreal were being organised. He called out his militia, rallied local Indians, and prepared his defences as best he could, putting the whole colony on a war footing.