When winter came Colonel Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, came south into the forest with a motley force of five hundred men, mixed of regulars, Tories, and Indians, such as St. Leger had taken against Stanwix, and occupied Vincennes again, upon the Wabash; but Clark struck once more, sending his boats up the river and bringing his picked force straight across the frozen forests from Kaskaskia by the Mississippi; and by the end of February, 1779, Colonel Hamilton and all his levy were his prisoners. The Illinois country was added to Virginia, and the grant of her ancient charter, “up into the land, west and northwest,” seemed made good again by the daring of her frontiersmen. He could have taken Detroit itself, Clark declared, with but a few hundred men. While he cleared the northern rivers of the British arms a force like his own descended the Mississippi, seized Natchez, and cleared the southern reaches of the great stream. [Illustration: GEORGE CLARK’S FINAL SUMMONS TO COLONEL HAMILTON TO SURRENDER] That winter had witnessed a sharp shifting of the scene of the war in the east. The British commanders there had turned away from General Washington and the too closely guarded reaches of the Hudson to try for better fortune in the far south. In December, 1778, Clinton sent thirty-five hundred men from New York to the southern coasts by sea, and on the 29th Savannah was taken, with comparative ease, there being but a scant six hundred to defend it. The town once taken, it proved an easy matter, at that great remove from the centre of the American strength, to overrun the country back of it during the early weeks of 1779. But after that came delay again, and inaction, as of those who wait and doubt what next to do. The new year saw nothing else decisive done on either side. In April Spain made common cause with France against England; but Washington waited in vain the year through to see the fighting transferred to America. A few strategic movements about New York, where Clinton lay; a few raids by the British; a few sharp encounters that were not battles, and the year was over. The British made sallies here and there, to pillage and burn, to keep the country in awe and bring off whatever they could lay hands upon, striking sometimes along the coast as far as Connecticut and even the Chesapeake at the south; but armed bands were quick to muster to oppose and harass them wherever they went, and it was never safe for them to linger. Clinton thrust his lines out upon the river and fortified Stony Point; but Anthony Wayne stormed the place of a sudden, with twelve hundred men, and took it, with unshotted guns at the point of the bayonet before dawn on the morning of the 15th of July, and brought more than five hundred prisoners away with him, having come with that quick fury of reckless attack which made men call him Mad Anthony, and having as quickly withdrawn again. Harry Lee stormed Paulus