He was too far removed from the inhabited country to hope for support, and was too weak to maintain Kaskaskia and the Illinois against the combined force of regulars and Indians by which he was to be attacked as soon as the season for action should arrive. While employed in preparing for his defense he received unquestionable information that Hamilton had detached his Indians on an expedition against the frontiers, reserving at the post he occupied only about eighty regulars with three pieces of cannon and some swivels. Clarke instantly resolved to seize this favorable moment. After detaching a small galley up the Wabash with orders to take her station a few miles below Vincennes and to permit nothing to pass her, he marched in the depth of winter with 130 men, the whole force he could collect, across the country from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. This march through the woods and over high waters required sixteen days, five of which were employed in crossing the drowned lands of the Wabash. The troops were under the necessity of wading five miles in water frequently up to their breasts. After subduing these difficulties this small party appeared before the town, which was completely surprised and readily consented to change its master. Hamilton, after defending the fort a short time, surrendered himself and his garrison prisoners of war. With a few of his immediate agents and counselors, who had been instrumental in the savage barbarities he had encouraged, he was, by order of the Executive of Virginia, put in irons and confined in a jail. This expedition was important in its consequences. It disconcerted a plan which threatened destruction to the whole country west of the Allegheny Mountains, detached from the British interest many of those numerous tribes of Indians south of the waters immediately communicating with the Great Lakes, and had most probably considerable influence in fixing the boundary of the United States. These Indian hostilities on the western border were a subject of extreme solicitude to Washington, ever alive as he was to the cry of distress and ever anxious to preserve peace and security to the rural population of the country. Experience and observation had long since taught him that the only effectual protection to the inhabitants of the frontier settlements consisted in carrying the war with severity into the enemy's own country. Hence we find that from the moment these atrocities of the Indians commenced in the western country he was engaged in planning that expedition which, in the next campaign, under the direction of General Sullivan, carried desolation to their own homes and taught them a lesson which they could not soon forget. In the following extract of a letter to Gov. George Clinton of New York, dated March 4, 1779, it will be perceived that he speaks of his plan as already matured: