Jamaica watched the neighbouring French colony burn from 1791 and did not follow, and Geggus explains that stability by examining each part of the island's society in turn. News travelled fast; enslaved Jamaicans were singing about the rising within weeks. Blacksmiths were said to be making cutlasses, shot was cast on one estate, and a Coromantee man confessed to a revolt planned for Christmas. What stopped it was force on the other side: a garrison already at wartime strength, more than eight thousand militia mustered over the holidays, and Maroons who turned out alongside the whites. Heavy new imports of Igbo and Congolese captives, reputed tractable, replaced the Gold Coast arrivals of earlier decades. White society meanwhile quarrelled over paying for troops and over a loan to French planters, and by 1793 faced a real dilemma, since restoring order next door risked handing Britain a rival that would ruin Jamaican sugar.