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 unappropriated land in the conquered regions, the officers to receive proportionately more.

All lawful plunder was to be equally divided according to the customs of war.

[Footnote: Marshall, II., page 103.] 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 materially 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 body and mind and was unfit for the task he had set himself.