ch lined the stream. Advancing
again, they ingeniously discharged flights of rockets and with these
novel missiles they not only disorganized the militia in front of them
but also stampeded the battery mules. Most of the American army promptly
followed the mules and endeavored to set a new record for a foot race
from Bladensburg to Washington. The Cabinet members and other dignified
spectators were swept along in the rout.

Commodore Joshua Barney and his four hundred weather-beaten bluejackets
declined to join this speed contest. They were used to rolling decks and
had no aptitude for sprinting, besides which they held the simple-minded
notion that their duty was to fight. Up to this time they had been held
back by orders and now arrived just as the American lines broke in wild
confusion. With them were five guns which they dragged into position
across the main highway and speedily unlimbered. The British were
hastening to overtake the fleeing enemy when they encountered this
awkward obstacle. Three times they charged Barney's battery and were
three times repulsed by sailors and marines who fought them with
muskets, cutlasses, and handspikes, and who served those five guns with
an efficiency which would have pleased Isaac Hull or Bainbridge.

Unwilling to pay the price of direct attack, the British General Ross
wisely ordered his infantry to surround Barney's stubborn contingent.
The American troops who were presumed to support and protect this naval
battery failed to hold their ground and melted into the mob which was
swirling toward Washington. The sailors, though abandoned, continued to
fight until the British were firing into them from the rear and from
both flanks. Barney fell wounded and some of his gunners were bayoneted
with lighted fuses in their hands. Snarling, undaunted, the sailors
broke through the cordon and saved themselves, the last to leave a
battlefield upon which not one American soldier was visible. They had
used their ammunition to the end and they faced five thousand British
veterans; wherefore they had done what the navy expected of them. On a
day so shameful that no self-respecting American can read of it without
blushing they had enacted the one redeeming episode. Commodore Barney
described this action in a manner blunt and unadorned:

The engagement continued, the enemy advancing and our own army
retreating before them, apparently in much disorder. At length the
enemy made hi