“At length the enemy made his appearance on the main road in force and in front of my battery, and on seeing us made a halt. I reserved our fire. In a few minutes the enemy again advanced, when I ordered an eighteen-pounder to be fired, which completely cleared the road; shortly after, a second and a third attempt was made by the enemy to come forward, but all were destroyed. They then crossed over into an open field, and attempted to flank our right. He was met there by three twelve-pounders, the marines under Captain Miller, and my men acting as infantry, and again was totally cut up. By this time not a vestige of the American army remained, except a body of five or six hundred posted on a height on my right, from which I expected much support from their fine situation.” Such a battle could not long continue. The British turned Barney’s right; the corps on the height broke and fled,[237] and the British, getting into the rear, fired down upon the sailors. The British themselves were most outspoken in praise of Barney’s men. “Not only did they serve their guns with a quickness and precision that astonished their assailants,” said the Subaltern, “but they stood till some of them were actually bayoneted 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, that they left the field.” Barney held his position nearly half an hour, and then, being severely wounded, ordered his officers to leave him where he lay. There he was taken by the British advance, and carried to their hospital at Bladensburg. The British officers, admiring his gallantry, treated him, he said, “with the most marked attention, respect, and politeness as if I was a brother,”--as though to show their opinion that Barney instead of Winder should have led the American army. After the sailors retired, at about four o’clock, the British stopped two hours to rest. Their victory, easy as it seemed, was not cheaply bought. General Ross officially reported sixty-four killed and one hundred and eighty-five wounded.[238] A loss of two hundred and fifty men among fifteen hundred said to be engaged[239] was not small; but Gleig, an officer of the light brigade, himself wounded, made twice, at long intervals, an assertion which he must have intended as a contradiction of the official report. “The loss on the part of the English was severe,” he said,[240] “since out of two thirds of the army which were engaged upward of five hundred men were killed and wounded.” According to this assertion, Ross lost five hundred men among three thousand engaged, or one in six. Had Winder inflicted that loss while the British were still on the Patuxent, Ross would have thought long before risking more, especially as Colonel Thornton was among the severely injured. The Americans reported only twenty-six killed and fifty-one wounded.