We need not be detained by the reasons Britain went to war with Russia in 1854. These men, I suggest, caused more casualties among the Light Cavalry Brigade than the artillery pieces ranged against them.īefore the most riveting mistake in the history of the British Army can be unpicked, however, its background needs to be examined. Worse still, the deployment and deadly efficiency of two regiments of Russian riflemen have largely been ignored. Many theories about which target the Light Cavalry Brigade was meant to attack do not hold water because the authors have not walked the ground, and, unforgivably, they have used accounts from people who have been there but cannot read a map! Now, anyone with a passing knowledge of military matters will have a view on Balaklava, but, I contend, most modern writing on the subject is nonsense. Throw in a tangled love story and pique people’s interest with some politically charged cinema, and you have the perfect military historian’s cocktail. In his first article (below), he discusses the shockingly poor quality of some of the senior officers responsible for the débâcle, and in his second he delivers a blow-by-blow account of exactly what happened, when, where, and why.Īn officer of the 11th Hussars c.1850 one of the two regiments commanded by Lord Cardigan before the Crimean War, and part of the Light Brigade in the famous charge at Balaklava.Ĭlearly, Tennyson’s wonderful poems (commemorating both Light and Heavy Cavalry Brigades) have much to do with this, as does the whole romance of the occasion – dashing, brilliantly dressed centaurs, brave Britons gallant in defeat, and, of course, a clash of lords and noblemen. In our special, Patrick Mercer is at pains to analyse Balaklava afresh, to place it in its wider context, and to review the events on the battlefield on the basis of his own intimate knowledge of the ground. Much bigger and more significant battles than Balaklava were fought by the British during the Crimean campaign – on the Alma, at Inkerman, and at the Great Redan. This is a very small engagement in a struggle between great European powers.Ĭompare it with the Battle of Solferino, for example, where, in 1859, 120,000 French and Italians confronted an equal number of Austrians, and French casualties alone were 12,000. Only about 2,500 British soldiers were actively engaged, and about 600 became casualties. Whatever one thinks of the message – and Patrick Mercer in our special this time pulls no punches so far as British military stupidity is concerned – the effect of the popular focus on the Charge of the Light Brigade has been to exaggerate the Battle of Balaklava’s importance. Ever since, the event has become synonymous with deadly military incompetence. The Charge of the Light Brigade on 25 October 1854. In the context of the Vietnam War, the message was inescapable: incompetent elites preside over military disasters. The Richardson film relied heavily for its inspiration on The Reason Why, and it was very much an anti-establishment and anti-war film. More significant still have been two films, a Michael Curtiz film released in 1936, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and a Tony Richardson film released in 1968, with an all-star cast that included Trevor Howard, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett, and David Hemmings. Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why: the story of the fatal charge of the Light Brigade, published in 1953 in anticipation of the centenary, turned into a bestseller. It began with contemporary newspaper reports and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous narrative poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, published before the end of 1854. The Battle of Balaklava as a whole – little more, in reality, than three somewhat disjointed skirmishes, at least from the British perspective – has been inflated in popular culture out of all proportion to its real historical significance. It happened, of course, but it has become embedded in an essentially false narrative framework. He Charge of the Light Brigade is a military myth.
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