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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
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