Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (116 page)

Up rides William Simmons, another Armstrong-hater, recently fired from his job with the War Department. Now, however, he has buried his bitterness in the common cause. Spotting Monroe, he offers to ride into the village and scout out the enemy. He gets to Lownde’s Hill, on the far side of town, and sees, in the near distance, a great cloud of dust. Back he gallops to discover that the presidential party is in front of its own lines, moving down toward the Bladensburg bridge. Simmons warns the President that the British advance has already reached the village.

“The enemy in Bladensburg!” Madison exclaims in surprise. His party wheels about as Simmons vainly calls after them:

“Mr. Madison, if you stop, I will show them to you.…”

Only Richard Rush, the Attorney General, checks his horse. Simmons points out the redcoats entering the town, whereupon Rush too wheels about and gallops off, with Simmons riding after him, shouting that he has left his hat behind.

By 12:30, the battle is joined. Henry Fulford in the Baltimore 5th watches in amazement as the American cannons and sharpshooters pour a hail of fire onto the bridge. The British redcoats, dashing across, seem to take no notice; they move like clockwork: the instant a platoon is cut down it is filled up by men from the rear without the least confusion. George Gleig, on the bridge, has a different view: an entire company ahead of him is cut to pieces, and he has the grisly experience of trampling on his dead and dying comrades.

Without pausing for the rest of the British to come up, Colonel Thornton leads his men against the forward American skirmishers. Flinging aside their heavy packs, Gleig and the others drive the riflemen back into the woods, only to be faced with the main body of Marylanders. The Baltimore 5th surges forward, forcing the redcoats back to the river’s edge. The carnage is dreadful. Almost every British officer is hit. Gleig’s friend, Lieutenant Codd, falls dead beside him—the pair will never again forage for chickens. Not far away, crouching in the willows, Captain John Knox realizes he had never seen such fire. So many officers are down that he can expect promotion—if he lives. “By the time the action’s over, the devil is in it if I am not a walking Major or a dead Captain,” he tells himself. Harry Smith has been right; Thornton was too impetuous; he should have waited for the rest of the army.

Now, however, Major-General Ross has his Congreve rockets in position. Long tubes filled with powder, they operate on the same principle as a Fourth of July firework. They are hopelessly inaccurate but make a terrifying scream as they whoosh over the heads of the raw American troops, who have never before encountered anything like them. The Baltimore 5th, on the left of the line, stands fast, but the two regiments on the right break in panic. With its flanks exposed, the 5th also falls back. Officers dash about, vainly attempting to rally their fleeing men, but the retreat has become a rout.

John Kennedy, still in his dancing pumps, flings away his musket and joins the mob, carrying a wounded comrade to safety. Henry Fulford has only one idea in mind: to head for the woods, lie down, and sleep; instead, the musket balls and grape shot drive him into a swamp from which he later makes his way to a friendly farmhouse.

The rear line of Americans has only just formed when the fleeing Marylanders come dashing through. (Madison and his Cabinet have long since galloped off.) It stands briefly, then breaks. Only the naval veterans under Commodore Joshua Barney hold fast at their guns until out of ammunition. Barney, badly wounded in the thigh, cannot understand the rout.

“Damn them,” he growls to his British captors, “there were enough of them to have eaten every one of you!”

The road to Washington and the city beyond is filled with fleeing militia. Winder, who has made no plans to gather his troops at a rallying point in case of retreat, decides to abandon the capital, an order that causes anguish among General Smith’s brigade of Washington militia. Many vanish to their homes to look after their families. Those who can be collected are marched eighteen miles beyond the city to Montgomery Court House.

For the moment, the British are too exhausted to follow. George Gleig pursues the fleeing troops for a mile before he collapses and slakes his thirst in a muddy pool. He is lucky to be alive: a musket ball has torn the arm of his jacket, another has seared his thigh. He gathers what men he can and returns to join his battered regiment. It is dark before the scattered remains of his company can be collected. Then, tired or not, the light brigade marches triumphantly off toward the abandoned capital, the sky ahead bright with the glow of leaping flames.

Dolley Madison waits in the President’s house, listening to the rumble of cannon and seeing, in the distant sky, the flash of rockets. She has no intention of leaving until she hears from her husband.
Two pencilled messages have arrived, warning her to be ready to depart at a moment’s notice. In the driveway stands her carriage loaded with trunks containing all the Cabinet papers. A wagon, recently procured, contains some silver plate and personal belongings.

Four artillerymen, posted at two cannons guarding the mansion, have deserted their posts. French John Siousa, her personal servant, offers to spike the guns and lay a trail of powder to the door, to destroy the house if necessary. Mrs. Madison will have none of it. At three, two messengers, grimy with dust, gallop up with orders from the President to leave immediately. She will not do so until she can rescue Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of George Washington. She and French John attack the frame with carving knife and axe. With the canvas rolled and placed in friendly hands, the First Lady of the United States climbs into her carriage and rolls through the streets of the capital, crowded with soldiers, senators, women and children, with carriages, horses, wagons and carts loaded with household furniture, all fleeing toward the wooden bridge on the west side of town.

Half an hour later, the President arrives with his party, exhausted and humiliated. All his theoretical ideas about the value of democratic volunteers have been shattered.

“I could never have believed that so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day,” he remarks. At dusk, he too leaves the city.

From his handsome four-storey house at the corner of First and A streets, Washington’s leading physician, Dr. James Ewell, has been gloomily watching the retreat. He sees the Secretary of War in full flight, followed by crowds of riders, some of whom bawl out: “Fly, fly! The ruffians are at hand! … send off your wives and children!” In the distance a cloud of dust envelops the retreating army. Shaken with horror, the doctor turns to find his wife in convulsions, crying repeatedly, “Oh, what shall we do? What shall we do?” while his two daughters scream at her side. He decides to quit his own home and move his family to a neighbouring house. The owner, a Mrs. Orr, is so sick that Ewell is sure nobody will harm her or those she shelters.

General Ross and Rear-Admiral Cockburn enter the city at the head of the 3rd Brigade, which has escaped most of the fighting. From a large brick house on their right comes the crackle of musket fire, killing the General’s horse and hitting four soldiers, one mortally. At once the Admiral’s aide, James Scott, leads a party to the building and smashes down the door. The house, only recently occupied by Albert Gallatin, now treating for peace at Ghent, is empty. Up come the light companies of the 21st and demolish the building with Congreve rockets. At almost the same time, the retreating Americans blow up the navy yard. For the next forty-eight hours, Washington will be aglow.

The victors push into Capitol Square. Ahead lies the seat of government, a Greek temple, inviting destruction. It is not easy to fire the Capitol. In the lower storey only the frames, sashes, shutters, and doors will burn. The troops chop away with axes, tear open some rockets as tinder, and spread a trail of fire from room to room. In the House of Representatives there is better fodder for the incendiaries—galleries and stages of yellow pine, mahogany desks, tables, chairs. Piled in the centre of the great domed chamber, they make a gargantuan bonfire, the heat so intense that glass melts, stone cracks, columns are peeled of their skin, marble is burned to lime. So bright is this pyre that George Gleig, bivouacked outside the city, can see the faces of his men reflected in the glow. He recalls the burning of San Sebastian; except for that, he realizes, he has never in his life witnessed a scene more strikingly sublime. But to the people of Washington, so certain of victory that thousands made no preparation to flee, the spectacle is pure horror.

The Treasury building is next, then the President’s Mansion. Here an advance party finds a table set for forty, apparently in anticipation of a victory dinner. Instead, the real victors toast the Prince Regent while Cockburn sardonically raises his glass to “Jemmy,” as he calls the President. Looting precedes the flames. Everyone takes a souvenir. The Admiral urges a local bookseller to help himself—but not to anything expensive; the most luxurious items, he says, must feed the blaze. Ross helps pile furniture in the
Oval Room while some of the seamen procure fire from a nearby beer house.

That done, the Admiral and the General enjoy dinner at Barbara Suter’s boarding house. Cockburn blows out the candles, preferring, he says, the light cast by the burning buildings. An officer enters to ask if the War Department should be fired. Tomorrow, says the General; the men are exhausted.

Ross prepares to bed down in Dr. Ewell’s empty house, then apologizes when its owner arrives, offers to go elsewhere. When Ewell insists, the General reassures him that his family is quite safe.

“I am myself a married man, have several sweet children and venerate the sanctities of conjugal and domestic relations,” Ross declares—at least, that is the way the much-relieved physician remembers it.

Later Ross tells Ewell he regrets burning the Capitol library and says he would not have fired the President’s Mansion had the First Lady remained. “I make war neither against letters nor ladies,” he explains.

But the burning goes on the following day—private homes as well as public buildings to a value of more than a million dollars go up in smoke. Cockburn, riding a white mare with a black foal following, makes his way to the office of the violently anti-British newspaper, the
National Intelligencer
. Bowing to the entreaties of several women who fear the flames will spread to their homes, he spares the building but orders his men to destroy the contents. Out into the street go books, papers, type as the axes do their work.

“Be sure that all the C’s are destroyed,” says Cockburn, “so that the rascals can have no further means of abusing my name.…”

Dolley Madison, meanwhile, arriving at a small tavern sixteen miles from town, finds herself excoriated by a group of women fugitives who blame the administration for all their troubles. Her escort forces open the door against their protests just as a violent storm breaks. It is the worst in living memory.

In Washington, the sky goes black, a torrent of rain sweeps through the blazing buildings, damping the flames, while a hurricane tears
the roofs off houses, whirling them into the air like sheets of paper. George Gleig, camping on Capitol Hill with his company and used to the soft rains of the English countryside, has never experienced anything so terrifying. Only the jagged flashes of lightning relieve the darkness. His company is dispersed, the men fleeing for shelter or throwing themselves flat to the ground to prevent the tempest carrying them off. Several houses topple, burying thirty soldiers in the debris. The wind is so strong that two cannon are lifted from their mounts and hurled several yards.

For two hours the storm rages. When it is over, Ross decides it is time to move out. The withdrawal takes place at night and in secret, the populace ordered to remain indoors under pain of death. Fuel is added to the burning buildings and a handful of men detailed to leap about in the light of the flames to fool the enemy. The army moves out in silence. Four days later, unmolested, it is back at Benedict, embarking on the ships.

For the first time, the war has been carried to the heart of the United States. When Madison commenced hostilities two summers before, expecting an easy victory and, possibly, a new state in the Union, he could hardly have foreseen that he would one day be cowering in a hovel outside the capital, fearing imminent capture. Now, as the people of Washington return to their gutted city and Ross and Cockburn plan a new attack on Baltimore, another army of British regulars—the largest yet assembled—is preparing to cross the border and march on New York. What began as the invasion of Canada has now become the invasion of America, and in spite of the peace talks in Ghent, it is not yet over.

TWELVE
The Battle of Lake Champlain

September, 1814