Military Disasters: The Charge of the Light Brigade

DID YOU KNOW? On August 9, 1974, in the face of impeachment due to the Watergate scandal, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President of the United States and was succeeded by Vice President Gerald R. Ford. In 1854, Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" made heroes of British soldiers who had recently died meaningless deaths in an obscure part of Russia. The famous tragedy might never have happened had the unit attacked the right target. During the war for control of Russia's Crimean peninsula, some 25,000 Russian troops advanced toward the town of Balaclava on October 25. After capturing a series of hilltop forts overlooking a valley outside Balaclava, their advance was stopped by the charge of the Heavy Brigade--one of British cavalry commander Lord Lucan's two brigades. The Russians fell back and formed lines at one end of the valley and along the hills on either side. Lord Raglan, the British high commander, sent a written order to Lucan to retake the hills, but the wording of the order led Lucan to believe he should attack only if an opportunity presented itself. So he waited. When a second order to advance arrived, Lucan was unsure if the hills were still the intended target. Raglan's messenger, Capt. Nolan, impertinently gestured toward the end of the valley and said, "There, my lord, is your enemy." So, Lucan ordered the 673 men of his other brigade, the Light Brigade, into the valley. Some witnesses reported seeing Capt. Nolan racing out on his horse, pointing toward the hills, but he was killed by the first Russian cannon shot. Taking fire from three sides, some of the brigade still managed to reach the Russian lines, but with no reinforcements in sight, they had to retreat. Nearly 40 percent of the unit was killed or wounded. The battle ended as a stalemate, but Tennyson's poem turned the disastrous charge into a proud moment in Britain's ultimately victorious campaign. His second poem about the battle--"The Charge of the Heavy Brigade"--is mostly forgotten.