e Americans at every point,
pressed on to Washington. The inhabitants fled before them, and the
town was almost deserted when the British marched in with banners
flying and bands playing. The enemy held the city for only a day; but
in that time they did such deeds of vandalism, that even the people
and the press of London cried out in indignation. The President's
house, the Capitol, all the public buildings except the Patent
Office, were burned to the ground. The navy-yard, with the uncompleted
ships on the stocks, was likewise burned; but in this the enemy only
acted in accordance with the rules of war. It was their destruction of
the public buildings, the national archives, and the Congressional
library, that aroused the wrathful indignation of all fair-minded
people, whether Americans or Europeans. "Willingly," said one London
newspaper, "would we throw a veil of oblivion over our transactions at
Washington. The Cossacks spared Paris, but we spared not the capital
of America." A second English journal fitly denounced the proceedings
as "a return to the times of barbarism."

[Illustration: The March on Washington.]

But, if the invaders are rightly to be blamed for the useless
vandalism they encouraged, the American authorities are still more
culpable for their neglect of the most ordinary precautions of war.
That a national capital, close to the sea, should be left virtually
unprotected while the enemy was massing his forces only a few miles
away, seems almost unbelievable. But so it was with Washington; for
five hundred flotilla men were forced to bear the brunt of the attack
of five thousand British. True it is that the military authorities had
massed seven thousand militia-men for the defence of the city; but
such was the trepidation of these untrained soldiers, that they fled
before the main body of the British had come into the fight. That the
sailors and marines fought bravely, we have the testimony of the
British themselves. Mr. Gleig, a subaltern in the attacking army,
writes, "Of the sailors, however, it would be injustice not to speak
in the terms which their conduct merits. They were employed as
gunners; and not only did they serve their guns with a quickness and
precision which astonished their assailants, but they stood till some
of them were actually bayonneted with fuses in their hands; nor was it
till their leader was wounded and taken, and they saw themselves
deserted on all sides by the soldiers,