If you ask a dozen people on the street if they’ve heard of the Charge of the Light Brigade, they’ll almost certainly all say yes. If you ask them definitively what went wrong, few if any will know. So we are going to tell the story of this glorious disaster that occurred during the Battle of Balaclava, on October 25, 1854.
The commanding officer of the British Army was Lord Raglan. He wanted to prevent the Russians from taking the naval guns from the redoubts they had captured on the other side of the hill, called Causeway Heights, which formed the left side of the valley. This is the valley named by Alfred, Lord Tennyson as “The Valley of Death” in his famous poem.
The order, which I give verbatim, was issued by Lord Raglan and drawn up by Brigadier Richard Airey. It said as follows;
“Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to move quickly to the front, follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy from taking the weapons. The horse artillery can accompany it. The French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.”
Now this was all very good and great for Raglan, for he could see what was happening, perched as he was on top of Causeway Heights in the west of the valley. However, the commanding officer of the cavalry, Lieutenant General, Count de Lucan, on the other hand, along with his cavalry, had no idea what was going on due to the lay of the land where they were situated.
The officer in charge of carrying the message was Captain Louis Nolan. In addition, he was charged with the oral instruction that the cavalry should attack immediately.
Nolan obediently gave the message to Lucan, adding the oral instruction. He remembers that Lucan couldn’t see, so he asked Nolan what weapons he was referring to. Nolan apparently gave an indication with a wave of his arm, the Russian guns were concentrated at the end of the valley, not those in the redoubts on the Causeway. Why he blundered so disastrously no one will ever know, since he was killed in the ensuing battle.
The Light Brigade itself was under the command of the Major General, the Earl of Cardigan, and consisted of the 4th. and 13 Light Dragons, the 17th Lanza, and the 8th. and 11 Hussars.
Lucan responded to Raglan’s order by telling Cardigan to lead his cavalry, some 673, (although the exact number is disputed), straight into the valley between Causeway Heights and Fedyukhin Heights. Lucan would follow with his Heavy Brigade.
It didn’t help that Lucan and Cardigan were brothers-in-law who had hated each other with a passion for thirty years.
Was this Lucan’s chance to get rid of his personal enemy?
