The last time a mob stormed the Capitol was during the War of 1812. Here's what happened when the British invaded Washington.

President George Washington laid the Capitol building's cornerstone in 1793, and Congress met for the first time there in 1800.

Designed by William Thornton, the design featured a central building with two rectangular sections on its north and south ends for the Senate and the House of Representatives. The building also housed the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.

But by 1812, the US was at war with Great Britain, sparked in part by trade restrictions and maritime conflicts between the countries. In August 1814, around 4,500 "hardened" British fighters "fresh from the Napoleonic wars" landed southeast of Washington, the Washington Post reported.

When word of the incoming army reached Washington, DC, after the British victory in Bladensburg, Maryland, most of its residents fled, clearing the way for them to wreak havoc.

British soldiers torched the White House and the Capitol building in retaliation for when Americans burned the Canadian capital at York in 1813.

In the House of Representatives (now the National Statuary Hall), British forces covered furniture in gunpowder paste and set it ablaze, creating a fire so hot that it melted glass skylights and destroyed a statue of Liberty carved by Giuseppe Franzoni.

A fire fueled by the Library of Congress' 3,000 books also spread to the Senate Chamber.

According to the Washington Post, the fires could be seen from 50 miles away.

Madison was in the middle of writing a letter to her sister when she was evacuated from the White House.

"Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall," she wrote. "This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping. And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!"

The incident mirrors the 2021 riot by pro-Trump insurrectionists, when quick-thinking Senate aides saved the wooden boxes containing electoral votes as they left the Capitol building.

Aside from the extensive fire damage, the Capitol walls were marked with graffiti such as: "George Washington founded this city after a seven years' wars with England—James Madison lost it after a two years' war."

Latrobe had used sheet iron, marble, sandstone, zinc, and copper to construct the Capitol. The masonry vaulting — curved ceilings made from brick, stone, or concrete — also held up well in the fire.

The site of the Old Brick Capitol is now the location of the Supreme Court.

The Small House Rotunda in the Capitol's south wing consists of spaces from the entrance door on the first floor, up a grand staircase, and into the rotunda at the doorway of what is now the National Statuary Hall.

The room still contains the original sandstone columns designed by Latrobe and installed in 1807 and Seneca stone flooring.

There are, however, still scorch marks visible on the walls of the White House.

• Read more:
• The attempted coup by a pro-Trump mob was the most significant breach of the Capitol since the War of 1812
• 20 photos that show how the Capitol building has changed over the years
• How the White House's decor has changed over the years