Branch and he intended to fire the lower bridge. Surprised, Stansbury was seized by an irrational fear that his right flank could be turned. Instead of strengthening his commanding position, he immediately decamped and marched his exhausted troops across Bladensburg bridge, which he did not burn, to a brickyard further on. He had thus thrown away almost every tactical advantage available to him. Meanwhile, in Washington, every government department was hastily packing its records and evacuating them to Maryland or Virginia, in requisitioned or hired carts or river boats. Battle U.S. dispositions Winder now had at least 1,000 regulars from the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps, plus about 7,000 less than dependable militia and volunteers from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Official reports of his strength range from 5,000 to 9,000 men. Winder's report to the Secretary of War stated that he was able "By the most active and harassing movement of the troops to interpose before the enemy at Bladensburg about 5,000." Ross, the British commander, estimated the American force at between 8,000 and 9,000 men, with 300–400 cavalry. From other contemporary sources, the forces available for the defense of Washington probably numbered about 7,170, of which 6,370 were at Bladensburg. Stansbury's force consisted of the 1st (Ragan's), 2nd (Schutz's), and 5th (Sterrett's) regiments of Maryland Militia, three companies of volunteer riflemen commanded by Major William Pinkney (a former United States Attorney General), and two companies of Baltimore artillery, with six 6-pounder guns. Ragan's and Schutz's regiments were hastily organised amalgamations of companies, all without uniforms. Sterrett's 5th Maryland Regiment was a "Dandy" regiment of uniformed volunteers. Stansbury chose a defensible position, though hardly the best one available, on the west side of the Eastern Branch of the Potomac opposite the town of Bladensburg. The artillery was posted in an earthwork hastily constructed by Colonel Decius Wadsworth, the Army's Commissary General of Ordnance, to the north of the bridge. The earthwork had been designed for heavier weapons, and the 6-pounder field guns had a restricted field of fire through its embrasures. They could not use oblique fire to prevent the bridge from being seized. The Maryland militia infantry regiments were posted in a line of battle south of the earthwork, too far away to protect the artillery and exposed to British fire. Both Winder and Secretary of State James Monroe later tinkered with Stansbury's