The Burning of Washington
In 1814 the defeat of Napoleon freed British troops for deployment to the United States. Napoleon’s abdication removed the trade and maritime issues which had been so much cause for the war with America, and British merchants were demanding restoration of the American trade. Public opinion called for chastisement of the impudent Americans. The British both opened peace talks with the Americans and prepared a punitive expedition to the United States. Despite the early American victories at sea the British Navy ruled supreme in North American waters and with Napoleon defeated could concentrate even more ships to blockade American ports.
A joint naval and military expedition was dispatched to the Chesapeake Bay, with its primary goal the destruction of the Port of Baltimore. Led by Admiral George Cockburn and General Robert Ross, the expedition sailed up Chesapeake Bay, landed troops in Maryland which easily routed the militia and regulars opposing them at Bladensburg, and captured the capital of Washington. Public buildings and newspaper offices were burned by the British troops, including the Capitol, Treasury, and Executive Mansion. The Americans burned the Washington Navy Yard to deny its cache of supplies to the British.
After burning Washington the expedition continued to Baltimore where a joint land and sea attack was launched in September, 1814. There the militia and regulars held against the British troops ashore, and General Ross was killed by a sharpshooter. The naval attack was stymied by Fort McHenry which underwent a bombardment of more than 24 hours. Supported by emplaced cannon ashore, the island fortress was unassailable by British troops and Marines, and after failing to reduce the fort the British fleet picked up the troops ashore and sailed away. The British failed to force their way into Baltimore, despite naval superiority and veteran troops.
The burning of Washington was met with outrage throughout Europe, and even in England newspapers and politicians condemned the act as barbarous. Cockburn had directed the burning of the capital as a retaliation for the American burning of York in Canada, but the diplomats at the Congress of Vienna, redrawing the map of Europe after the end of the French Empire, were critical of the British for the act, which occurred as peace talks were being conducted between the British and the Americans. Following the destruction of Washington and the defeat at Baltimore the British withdrew to Bermuda.
The British also sent aid to the remaining Red Sticks, which brought the wrath of Andrew Jackson down upon them in at Pensacola in Spanish Florida. British efforts to take the port of Mobile were repulsed by Jackson’s troops. After defeating the British and Red Sticks in Florida and Alabama, Jackson moved his army to New Orleans, rightly expecting another British thrust at the Mississippi. As 1814 drew to a close and the peace negotiations continued, the British prepared an assault on the American south, despite comments by the Duke of Wellington that further operations in American were of no value.