He came at a fortunate time. The colonies were rejoicing over the first great victory of the early war, Saratoga. Hope, everywhere, was high. From Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, Clark received two orders, one of which was to attack the British post Kaskaskia. He at once set out for Pittsburg to raise, in the West (where both Dunmore and Lewis raised their armies), troops for the most brilliant military achievement in western history. Descending the Ohio to Kentucky, where he received reënforcements, Clark marched silently through the forests--with one hundred and thirty-five chosen men--to Kaskaskia, which he took in utter surprise July 4, 1778. "Keep on with your merriment," he said to revelers whom he surprised at a dance, "but remember you dance under Virginia, not Great Britain." Clark brought the news of the alliance recently made between France and the United States into the Illinois country and used it with telling effect. A French priest at Vincennes raised a Virginian flag over that fort, telling the inhabitants and the Indians that their "French Father had come to life." In October Virginia incorporated the "County of Illinois" within her western empire--the first portion of the land north of the Ohio River to come under the administration of one of the states of the Union. Contemporaneously with Clark's stirring conquest, an expedition was raised at Pittsburg to march against the Indians in the neighborhood of the British fort at Sandusky--possibly to counteract the rumored attempt to invade Pennsylvania, by Hamilton at Detroit. Troops and supplies were to be assembled at Fort Pitt, where the famous route of Bouquet was to be followed toward the lakes. The expedition was put in charge of General Lachlan McIntosh. Distressing delays made the half-hearted Indians who were to guide the army, chafe; and McIntosh started before his stores arrived, fearing that longer delay would alienate his friendly Indians, among whom was the Delaware, White Eyes, now turned from a neutral course. At the mouth of the Beaver River McIntosh built the fort which bears his name--the first fort built by the Americans on the northern side of the Ohio. Advancing westward over Bouquet's tri-trail track with twelve hundred men, he reached the Muskingum (Tuscarawas) River in fourteen days, arriving November 19, 1778, where he erected Fort Laurens.