Most of the people were of French descent and had been taught by the British that the Kentuckians waged savage warfare. They were therefore terror-stricken until General Clark assured them that their own king, whose rule over them had been exchanged for that of the British by the treaty of Paris, 1763, had joined hands with America to stop the cruel war of the British and Indians. The French colonists were then overjoyed, said their French king had come to life, and offered to accompany the division that was to march to Cahokia. On July 6, that post was also surprised and taken; the inhabitants were dreadfully alarmed at the sight of the "big knife," but were soon reassured by their relatives and friends from Kaskaskia. Not satisfied with these brilliant successes, General Clark felt that he must also capture Vincennes, but M. Gibault, the village priest of both that place and Kaskaskia, volunteered to inform the people of Vincennes that the king of France had become an ally of the American colonists. Soon the American flag floated over that fort and from the Lakes to the Mississippi the powerful arm of the British was broken, and the many Indian invasions of Kentucky were discontinued. A FAMOUS MARCH News came to General Clark in January of 1779, that the British under Governor Hamilton from Detroit had recaptured Vincennes and were waiting only till spring to advance with hundreds of Indian allies on Kaskaskia, obliterate the Kentuckians, and break the power of Virginia west of the Alleghenies. Learning at the same time that Hamilton had only about eighty regular soldiers with three cannons and some swivels, Clark decided not to wait to be attacked, but to take the aggressive. He at once sent forty-five men on a boat to proceed to a point near the mouth of the White River with instructions, to allow nothing to pass, and to wait further orders. Nine days after the important information reached him, General Clark with one hundred and seventy men started across flooded prairies, swollen streams, and inundated valleys. There is no more daring march recorded. Trudging through rain and mud, fording small streams, wading most of the time in deep water ofttimes to the armpits, they traveled without tents, depending on parched corn and the securing of game for food; at last they went for days with no nourishment whatever. [Illustration: Clark and his men crossing a swollen stream.]