In 1778 and 1779, the Wabash River shaped the struggle for Fort Sackville after Francis Vigo told Colonel George Rogers Clark that Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton had taken the fort. Clark gathered 170 men at Kaskasia and led them on a 160-mile march through Illinois into Indiana that lasted 19 days. For ten of those days, Clark and his men moved through the icy waters of the Wabash River, sometimes spending nights in water up to their necks, before reaching Fort Sackville on February 23, 1779. Using surprise and the river to their advantage, they retook the fort. Joseph Bowman recalled crossing the flooded Horse-shoe Plain, about four miles long and covered with water breast high, with Clark leading the men into the water while boats carried those too weak and numbed with cold. The river continued to bring destruction in later years: an 1898 flood inundated Vincennes, and in March 1913 the city experienced the Wabash River's highest volume flow, after rains beginning on Easter Sunday sent floodwaters to 26.30 feet and broke the levee on both the Vincennes and Illinois sides of the river.