They certainly showed throughout the most light-hearted indifference to chronic perjury and treachery; nor did they in other respects appear to very good advantage.

Clark was not in the least surprised at the news of their conduct; for he had all along realized that the attachment of the French would prove but a slender reed on which to lean in the moment of trial.
Hamilton had no fear of the inhabitants themselves, for the fort completely commanded the town.

To keep them in good order he confiscated all their spirituous liquors, and in a rather amusing burst of Puritan feeling destroyed two billiard tables, which he announced were "sources of immorality and dissipation in such a settlement." [Footnote: _Do._] He had no idea that he was in danger of attack from without, for his spies brought him word that Clark had only a hundred and ten men in the Illinois county [Footnote: _Do._ "Fourscore at Kaskaskia and thirty at Cahokia."]; and the route between was in winter one of extraordinary difficulty.
He Goes into Winter Quarters.
He had five hundred men and Clark but little over one hundred.

He was not only far nearer his base of supplies and reinforcements at Detroit, than Clark was to his at Fort Pitt, but he was also actually across Clark's line of communications.

Had he pushed forward at once to attack the Americans, and had he been able to overcome the difficulties of the march, he would almost certainly have conquered.