Washington by September 1, on which date Madison issued a proclamation calling on citizens to defend the District of Columbia. Congress did not return for three and a half weeks. When they did so, they assembled in special session on September 19 in the Post and Patent Office building at Blodgett's Hotel, one of the few buildings large enough to hold all members to be spared. Congress met in this building until December 1815, when construction of the Old Brick Capitol was complete. Most contemporary American observers, including newspapers representing anti-war Federalists, condemned the destruction of the public buildings as needless vandalism. Many in the British public were shocked by the burning of the Capitol and other buildings at Washington. Such actions were denounced by most leaders of continental Europe, where capital cities had been repeatedly occupied in the course of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars but always spared destruction. At least on the part of the occupiers – the famous burning of Moscow that occurred less than two years prior had been an act carried out by the defenders. According to The Annual Register, the burning had "brought a heavy censure on the British character", with some members of Parliament, including the anti-establishment MP Samuel Whitbread, joining in the criticism, declaring that the government was making much of the taking of a few buildings in a non-strategic swamp, as though it had captured Paris. The majority of British opinion imagined that the burnings were justified following the damage that United States forces had done with its incursions into Canada. They claimed that the United States had been the aggressor, declaring war and initiating it. This view did not regard American complaints about the kidnapping of American seamen. Several commentators regarded the damages as just revenge for the American destruction of the Parliament buildings and other public buildings in York, the provincial capital of Upper Canada, early in 1813. Sir George Prévost wrote that "as a just retribution, the proud capital at Washington has experienced a similar fate". The Reverend John Strachan, who as Rector of York had witnessed the American acts there, wrote to Thomas Jefferson that the damage to Washington "was a small retaliation after redress had been refused for burnings and depredations, not only of public but private property, committed by them in Canada". When they ultimately returned to Bermuda, the British forces took with them