WASHINGTON (AP) - The fires reddened the sky in towers of flame that could be seen 50 miles away.

The deck officers on the ships in the British invasion fleet, anchored in the darkness of the Patuxent River near Chesapeake Bay, remarked there was a fire in the direction of Washington.

A British Army lieutenant, returning from Bladensburg, the Maryland battlefield where the American forces had been routed, recalled that the fires so brilliantly lit the sky that "a dark red light was thrown upon the road sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his comrade's face."

At Georgetown College, on the heights above the Potomac River, John McElroy, the school's bookkeeper, looked across the city, then at his pocket watch.

He made a neat journal entry: "Aug. 24, 1814 - This evening about dark the British arrived in W.C. (Washington City), fired the Capitol about 9:06."

President James Madison, a fugitive on horseback in the Virginia countryside, saw the burning city and shuddered at what a member of his party called "the dismal sight."

The latest telling of the story is by Anthony S. Pitch in "The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814," published by the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, Md.

The late summer of 1814 had been hot, steamy and rainless. The war between Britain and the United States that had sputtered for two years had been a distant rumble at best.

But the defeat of Napoleon in Spain that spring had freed the veterans of the Duke of Wellington's army for duty in America. Their officers were in a mood for reprisal. The year before, U.S. forces had burned government buildings in York (now Toronto), the capital of the Canadian province of Ontario.

The Americans, seeking to keep vital supplies out of British hands, struck the first match, lighting fuses at the Washington Navy Yard to destroy ammunition, sails, masts, lumber, pitch, ropes, even a frigate at its moorings.

At the Capitol, the two British commanders, Army Gen. Robert Ross and Adm. George Cockburn, ordered rockets fired through the roof of the House chamber.

"When the roof failed to ignite, a few soldiers clambered up, only to find it covered with sheet iron," Pitch writes. "Undeterred, they made a bonfire of wooden furniture in the center of the chamber, setting it alight with the rocket's combustible material. Flames quickly engulfed the mahogany desks, tables and chairs ...."

With the Capitol burning behind him, Cockburn led a file of silent British sailors the mile down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

First lady Dolley Madison had remained at the president's house as long as possible. But by 3 p.m. she could hear distant cannon. Messengers soon arrived with word the battle had been lost. In a famous action, she ordered Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington to be taken from its frame and carted away.

When Cockburn arrived he found the White House deserted. But the table in the State Dining Room was set for 40, with food and wine ready to serve.

The British officers consumed their commandeered dinner with toasts to success and sneers at "little Jemmy Madison." Then, one of Cockburn's lieutenants remembered, "they finished by setting fire to the house that had so liberally entertained them."

"Our sailors were artists at their work," wrote Army Capt. Harry Smith. The interior of the president's house collapsed within a shell of fire-scorched sandstone walls.

And then, around midnight, came a storm whose pure destructive fury would have been talked about for years even if it had not been associated with the end of an invasion.

"Bolts of lightning illuminated scenes of chaos," Pitch writes. Whipping winds ripped off roofs and "carried away feather beds." Several British cannon were tumbled away like a hand sweeping paperweights off a table.

And the fires slowly sputtered and died.

"Great God, madam, is this the kind of storm you are accustomed to in this infernal country?" Cockburn asked one of the many Washingtonians who kept journals of the events of 1814.

The victorious British Army was soon marching out of Washington. Unexpectedly, the War of 1812 had just two more acts.

The British fleet and army were repulsed before Baltimore, where Gen. Ross was killed. Francis Scott Key, scribbling by "the rockets red glare," wrote the words to "The Star Spangled Banner." The British were defeated again, this time decisively, at New Orleans. By then a peace treaty ending the war had been signed.

Now, 185 hot and steamy summers later, President Clinton enjoys ushering visitors, especially the British, onto the Truman Balcony of the White House.

There, a square of sandstone wall has been left unpainted. The black soot marks of the British fire are etched into the absorbent stone.

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