History of Washington, D.C. problems, and plans for further construction to reach the Ohio River were abandoned. During the War of 1812, British forces conducted an expedition between August 19 and 29, 1814, that took and burned the capital city. On August 24, the British routed an American militia, which had gathered at Bladensburg, Maryland to protect the capital (see Battle of Bladensburg). The militia then abandoned Washington without a fight. President James Madison and the remainder of the U.S. government fled the capital shortly before the British arrived. The British then entered and burned the capital during the most notably destructive raid of
Burned house horizon (McPherron and Christopher 1988; Chapman 2000; and Stevanovic 1997). Although the phenomenon of house burning is pervasive throughout the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture's existence, it was by no means the only southeastern European Neolithic society that experienced this. The British-American archaeologist Ruth Tringham has coined the term "Burned House Horizon" to describe the extent of the geographical region that indicates this repetitive practice of house burning in southeast Europe. She, along with Serbian archaeologist Mirjana Stevanović, mapped out this phenomenon from archaeological sites throughout the entire region, and came to the conclusion that: Although I have referred to the ubiquity of burned