Brussels had before Waterloo fell. The bewildered crowds were employed in conveying valuables out of the city, and an endless procession of coaches and chaises, with flurried-looking occupants, went streaming out of the Capital. Mr. Madison and his secretaries were at Bladensburg, the field of battle, and his wife was unwilling to leave Washington until he returned. In spite of her great anxiety she kept brave and cheerful, and even planned a dinner party for the night which was to witness the burning of the Capital. She saw one official after another go out of the city, but heroically refused to desert her post and, though the British Admiral sent her the startling word that he would make his bow in her drawing-room, not until a messenger from her husband arrived, crying, "Clear out, clear out! General Armstrong has ordered a retreat!" did she turn her back upon the White House. And even then she took time to save a carriage load of cabinet papers and the White House silver. Then, reluctantly, she took her departure. "I longed, instead," she affirmed with spirit, "to have a cannon from every window."
She barely escaped the marauding British troops, for it was only a few hours later that they entered Washington, and set fire to the Capitol. By the lurid light of that burning building the destroying army marched down Pennsylvania avenue to the White House, where they partook of the wines and viands that had been prepared for Dolly Madison's dinner party. Mrs. Madison, meantime, with her little train of followers, was journeying to meet Mr. Madison, as some penciled notes from him had directed. Of the next few days' wanderings of the President and his wife, which, to us, in our later century, read like a comedy of errors, it can only be said that had President Madison showed the same coolness and judgment as his wife, much of the ridicule to which he was subjected would have been avoided.
