212 The Winning of the West 



ble officer in warfare against both the Indians and 

 the tories, but he possessed no marked political abil- 

 ity, and was entirely lacking in the strength of char- 

 acter which would have fitted him to put a stop to 

 rebellion and lawlessness. He hated England, sym- 

 pathized with France, and did not possess sufficient 

 political good sense to appreciate either the benefits 

 of the Central Government or the need of preserving 

 order. 



Clark at once proceeded to raise what troops he 

 could, and issued a proclamation signed by himself 

 as Major-General of the Armies of France, Com- 

 mander-in-Chief of the French Revolutionary Le- 

 gions on the Mississippi. He announced that he 

 proposed to raise volunteers for the reduction of the 

 Spanish posts on the Mississippi and to open the 

 trade of that river, and promised all who would join 

 him from one to three thousand acres of any un- 

 appropriated land in the conquered regions, the offi- 

 cers to receive proportionately more. All lawful 

 plunder was to be equally divided according to the 

 customs of war. 5 The proclamation thus frankly 

 put the revolutionary legions on the footing of a 

 gang of freebooters. Each man was to receive a 

 commission proportioned in grade to the number of 

 soldiers he brought to Clark's band. In short, it 

 was a piece of sheer filibustering, not differing ma- 

 terially from one of Walker's filibustering attempts 

 in Central America sixty years later, save that at 

 this time Clark had utterly lost his splendid vigor of 



5 Marshall, II, page 103. 



