Funny you should mention that: 1. At the time, we had declared peace from the war in 1812. It was a shitty war. The British had agreed, but the message wasn't passed on, so we stopped fighting at that time, and the British decided to continue with orders, not knowing it was over. So the Brits had decided to start looting and pillaging.
D.C. Was a swamp with open water access all around.
There were about a half-dozen soldiers, and James Madison had little if no security. Literally, Thomas Jefferson answered the door at the White House.
The Brits decided to burn the town down before attacking, from the outside. On the 'you're an asshole scale' this is an eleven.
Once again, there was peace. And all the sudden, the Brits show up, burning the town down from the outside, attempting to rape women, and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down because they realized there were no soldiers. Many of the Brit soldiers wrote back afterwards about fighting with their own men during the raid because of their intense bastardry.
The President barely got out alive. If he had been assasinated by sneak attack, on a town that thought it was at peace, that would have been very, very bad for England. Their reputation worldwide would have been ruined. Almost permanently.