It’s the 25th of October 1854
near the city of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.
Lord Raglan is commander of the British forces.
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James Thomas Brudenell,
7th Earl of Cardigan,
stands by with the unit under his command,
the Light Brigade of the British Cavalry.
It is a force of 607 men,
riding horses without armor
and armed with sabers and lances.
They are the technology of the day
for fast and agile skirmishes and quick attacks.
Lord Raglan watches over the battlefield
from the heights of a nearby hill.
He is commanding the Siege of Sevastopol,
a British, French, and Ottoman operation
to capture Russia’s main naval base on the Black Sea.
Today they are facing off a Russian counterattack
near the village of Balaclava.
The battle is not going well,
having lost important positions in the nearby Causeway Heights.
Watching the abandoned positions
Raglan spots Russian forces
capturing and taking away his artillery pieces left behind.
He’s furious…
But it gives him an idea.
He realizes the Russians would be
weighed down by the artillery
and reasons that
if charged by a quick cavalry unit
they would be forced to either abandon the weapons
or get cut down.
It’s an opportunity not to be missed.
He turns to his Brigadier Richard Airey
and tells him to order the Light Brigade
to attack the pillaging Russians.
Airey writes down the order.
“Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry
to advance rapidly to the front –
follow the enemy
and try to prevent the enemy
carrying away the guns. Immediate.”
He gives the written order to Captain Louis Nolan
who then rides down to the bottom of the hill
to give it to Lieutenant General George Bingham,
3rd Earl of Lucan, commander of the Cavalry.
Lucan is confused upon receiving the order.
It doesn’t mention the location of the artillery
and he cannot see any enemies
carrying away guns from his position,
they are out of sight on hills to the south.
Lucan questions Nolan as to what the order means.
Nolan answers by waving broadly to the east
and shouting at him
“Attack immediately!”
Nolan doesn’t know it,
but he just sent the Light Brigade to their doom.
Towards the East, where Nolan gestured,
there is another
Russian artillery battalion ready to fire.
They’re one and a half miles away,
straight down an exposed valley,
flanked on either side by hills
occupied by the enemy.
Lucan is shocked,
such an attack is suicidal,
but the order seems clear
and he has no option but to fulfill it.
Nolan rides away, unaware of what has happened.
It’s just a colossal error.
Lucan reaches The Earl of Cardigan
and relays the order;
Cardigan is equally shocked
and immediately questions the sanity of such an attack.
While Lucan agrees with Cardigan,
he reminds him
it’s a direct order from Raglan,
so they have no choice but to obey.
Lucan leaves to rally the Heavy brigade.
Cardigan steels himself.
Faced with an order for a suicidal charge,
he raises his blade and rallies his men.
The dangers are obvious to everyone,
but orders are orders.
The 600 cavalrymen
take their attack formation led in the front by Cardigan.
As Cardigan and his light brigade
move towards the Valley of Death,
the first movements are steps.
Slow and deliberate.
Then they move faster, into a trot.
Nolan watches the events unfold.
Something has gone terribly wrong.
As 600 charge into battle,
Nolan jumps on his horse
and races desperately to stop them.
He overtakes
and cuts across in front of the Brigade
as they enter the valley,
trying to intercept Cardigan.
He calls to him but is too far.
The first explosions of cannon fire
echo through the air as Nolan approaches Cardigan.
Cardigan sees him,
Nolan opens his mouth to tell him,
and a shell explodes right in front of him.
Nolan falls off his horse, lifeless,
his message undelivered.
Lord Raglan can do nothing but watch
horrified
as his men push on into the mouth of Hell.
Into the Valley of Death rode the 600.
The Light Brigade have good horses.
But the brigade know they can’t go full gallop
all the way to the end of the valley.
So they have to go relatively slow at first.
All the time under withering fire from the left and right.
Decimating the brigade.
The Cossacks at the end of the Valley
open fire with cannon balls
and dirt is thrown into the air.
The light brigade push on into a canter
and then a full gallop.
Charging the enemy,
sabers drawn and lances leveled,
screaming battle cries.
As they get closer to the Cossacks
they fire canister shots,
a horrific experience for any attacker.
Horses and soldiers fall.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
They evade the fallen as they charge,
each impact covering them in dirt and blood.
Behind them Lucan sees the devastation
and halts the Heavy brigade at the mouth of the valley.
The charge is pointless.
Lucan turns them back for safety.
There is nothing he can do.
Simultaneously a French cavalry unit
observes the event
and springs into action.
They storm the hills to the north
and take the artillery positions,
saving the Light Brigade from further punishment from that flank.
Cardigan doesn’t see any of the horrors taking place.
He is ahead of it all,
saber in hand,
charging unrivaled commitment,
the explosions drowning out
the cries of the men falling in the valley.
The bloodied and wounded Brigade
fast approaches the end of the charge
and they’re met by a wall of artillery
pointing straight towards them.
The artillery fires,
mowing down the front line.
They fire again,
more men fall.
The guns disappear behind a wall of smoke
as shot after shot mows down
dozens brave soldiers each volley.
Cardigan gallops through the smoke
and swipes at the enemy with his saber
followed closely by his men.
They storm the line, cutting through the artillerymen
and charging Russian infantry behind them,
swinging their sabers indiscriminately.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Russians fire upon them with their muskets,
more men fall to the ground,
injured or their horses killed from underneath them.
The Russians charge these fallen riders
and a brutal brawl ensues,
fighting hand on hand
amidst the piles of the fallen.
The Light brigade smashes through the infantry
into the Russian light cavalry.
Russian Cossacks and hussars
falter under the assault of the Light Brigade –
and some are even then routed as they try
to get some distance
between themselves and these crazy British cavalrymen.
Cardigan retreats,
his orders fulfilled,
but in the heat of the battle
he neglects to order the rest of his men to retreat.
The enemy cavalry smashes against the British still fighting.
It’s a brutal fight
and, faced with overwhelming odds,
the light brigade begin
to return back along the valley
with the Russian cavalry in pursuit,
ready to hack at any stragglers and survivors.
At this point
The Russian artillery from the Southern heights
join in and shoot at the British.
But due to heavy dust and gun smoke
they shoot at friend and foe alike,
inflicting casualties both on British
and Russian cavalrymen.
Cardigan gallops back through the Valley of Death
and returns unscathed.
Less than half of his men
would get to say the same.
Then they rode back.
But not... not the six handred.
Of the 607-strong force
118 would perish in the valley that day
with a further 127 wounded
and 60 taken prisoner.
Horse casualties were more severe,
reducing the Light brigade to 195 men still with mounts.
Wounded soldiers were to return from this charge
for the rest of this day and throughout the night.
Despite the many allied blunders
Sevastopol would fall
on September 11th, 1855,
ending the Crimean War
in favor of the British.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
would spark controversy
as Raglan, Lucan, and Cardigan
would blame each other for the disaster.
Raglan passed away on June 28th, 1855,
still on the front.
Lucan would survive the war.
He was recalled in disgrace after the charge,
the blame landing mostly on him.
However, his name would be cleared after the war
by fellow officers and soldiers who served alongside him.
Cardigan also survived.
He returned to England and he received a hero’s welcome.
He widely exaggerated
and boasted about his performance that day,
making him a nationwide celebrity.
But the end of Tennyson’s poem
captures the public’s reaction to that fateful moment in history.
The day when a mistaken order was carried out
by brave men who didn’t flinch from their duty
but rode
Into the jaws of Death and
Into the mouth of hell
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
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