sentences:  Stricker, as Brigadier General and commander of the Third Brigade (also known as the "City Brigade" or the "Baltimore Brigade") of the Maryland state militia, was ordered by Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith (commander of the Maryland and Baltimore militia and some U.S. Army regular units) to delay the British advance up the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula, in order to buy enough time to complete the building of defensive fortifications around the eastern side Baltimore on Loudenschlager's Hill and adjacent Potter's Hill (also later known as "Hampstead Hill", today's western slope of Patterson Park).The Fifth Regiment of the Maryland state militia, of mostly Baltimore City troops, commanded by Lt. Col. Joseph Sterrett, having already been bloodied a month earlier at the infamous Battle of Bladensburg, on the northeast outskirts of Washington, D.C. in Bladensburg of Prince George's County, was now assigned the task of holding the right flank of the American armed forces, and withstood two hours of Congreve rocket fire and artillery before eventually being ordered to fall back to the newly constructed line of trenches to the east outside Baltimore on Hampstead Hill.The British Army, many of whom were veterans of the recently concluded Napoleonic Wars, were surprised by the strong resistance of these Maryland Militiamen, unlike their earlier experience at Bladensburg and, having taken around 300 casualties, they withdrew and stayed on the eastern flank of the battlefield near an old Methodist meeting house to tend to their wounded and recoup after the previous morning's sniper shooting of their commanding General Robert Ross, by American sharpshooters/snipers.