=282. Other Events of this War.=--The next year, 1814, which saw the end of the war, was marked by events few but important. In the summer the British with their vast fleet blockaded all our most important ports, and sailing up rivers and into unprotected harbors, they plundered without mercy the defenseless cities and towns. In August one of their fleet sailed up to Washington, the city being entirely unguarded. President Madison, the officers of the government, and many citizens fled, and General Ross marched unopposed into the city. Obeying instructions from his government, he burned the Capitol, the President's house, the Treasury, and other public buildings, with vast amounts of valuable books and records. This shameful act has always received the sharpest condemnation from the civilized world. Next the British army marched to Baltimore, where the fleet bombarded Fort McHenry all day and all night, but without avail. The next morning Francis Scott Key, then a prisoner on a British ship, seeing the flag still flying over the fort, hastily wrote in pencil, on the back of an old letter, the stirring song that we all know so well, "The Star-Spangled Banner." The British General Ross was killed, and his army hastened to the ships and sailed away. In September the English, with an army of fourteen thousand veterans, tried to force a way from Canada to New York through Lake Champlain. Their army marched from Quebec, while the fleet sailed down the lake, and both were at Plattsburg together. But our gallant flotilla under Commodore McDonough utterly destroyed the British squadron, far superior to ours. =283. How General Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans.=--Later in the year the British made a vigorous effort to capture New Orleans. More than ten thousand trained veterans, believed to be the finest troops in the world, were met by less than half that number of men under Andrew Jackson, afterwards President. The battle was short but decisive. The British general repeated the fatal error of Bunker Hill in marching his soldiers to attack men who were behind breastworks, and who knew how to hit every time they fired. Jackson's wall of cotton bales was assaulted time and again, but the red-coat lines broke and ran before the withering fire of the backwoods rifles. The sharpshooters of the South-west had worsted British veterans who had defeated the best soldiers of Napoleon. In less than an hour the enemy's leader, General Packenham, was killed, seven hundred of his men lay dead on the field, and the contest was over. The British lost over two thousand in all, the Americans only thirteen! Never had a British army met a more decisive defeat. This battle, fought on the eighth of January, 1815, was really needless; for peace had been made in Europe about two weeks before.