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15 Minutes Training On the evening of August 23 1814, 700 Virginians under the command of Lt. Col. George Minor arrived in Washington. They arrived with no weapons and no ammunition, so Minor went directly to the arsenal to get these supplies. They spent the morning of the 24th handing out weapons to the troopers and working with a young clerk who carefully counted each and every flint distributed to the men. But the time they moved off to go to the Battle of Bladensburg; they met the American army rushing into the city in headlong retreat. It should be noted that they did stand their ground and fire at least one volley at the enemy. So here you have a group of men, many of them who had not fired a musket in their lives, getting their weapons in the morning and having to fire them in anger that afternoon. Not surprisingly their actions did not change the course of the battle.
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