e; thence marching across country, much
pressed for food, he reached Kaskaskia in six days. The
inhabitants there were surprised and coerced during the night
of July 4-5, without the firing of a gun. Cahokia and Vincennes
soon quietly succumbed to his influence. Lieut.-Governor
Hamilton, on hearing of this loss of the Illinois country and
the partial defection to the Americans of the tribes west and
southwest of Lake Michigan, at once set out to organize an
army, chiefly composed of Indians, to retake the Illinois. He
proceeded via the Wabash and Maumee, with eight hundred men,
and recaptured Vincennes, December 17.

The intelligence of this movement of Hamilton was not long in
reaching Clark at Kaskaskia, and he at once set out for
Vincennes to recapture it. The march thither was one of the
most heroic in American military annals. Hamilton surrendered
to him, February 25, and was forwarded to Virginia as a
prisoner. Early in 1780 he established Fort Jefferson, just
below the mouth of the Ohio, and later in the season aided in
repelling a body of British and Indians who had come to regain
the Illinois country and attack the Spaniards at St. Louis.
Leaving Colonel Montgomery to pursue the enemy up the
Mississippi, Clark, with what force could be spared, hastened
to Kentucky, where he quickly raised a thousand men, and
invaded and laid waste the Shawnee villages, in retaliation for
Capt. Henry Bird's invasion (see p. 262, _note_).

Later, he was engaged in some minor forays, and was appointed a
brigadier-general; but his favorite scheme of an expedition to
conquer Detroit miscarried, owing to the poverty of Virginia
and the activity of the enemy under Brant, McKee, Girty, and
other border leaders. In 1782 Clark led a thousand men in a
successful campaign against the Indians on the Great Miami.
This was his last important service, his subsequent expeditions
proving failures. His later years were spent in poverty and
seclusion, and his social habits became none of the best. In
1793 he imprudently accepted a commission as major-general from
Genet, the French diplomatic agent, and essayed to raise a
French revolutionary legion in the West to overcome the Spanish
settlem