Conditions in the Russian siege lines at Sevastopol. Captain Robert Adolf Hodasevich fought for ‘Holy Russia’. (Central Armed Forces Museum Moscow)
The Heavy Brigade regiments were too intermingled to immediately pursue the Russians as the psychological reaction to the stress of the moment set in. ‘The realities of war were very apparent,’ a Scots Grey officer recalled. ‘Excited cheering and congratulations from men covered with blood and cut about dreadfully.’ Eight minutes of psyched-up adrenalin, terror and unremitting laying about left and right with their swords had physically and emotionally drained them. They realised with surprise and gratification that they lived, and had unexpectedly carried all before them, against the odds. Only minutes before every onlooker had given them up for lost. ‘A cheer burst from every lip’ on the Sapoune Heights, Russell remembered, puncturing eight minutes of gut-wrenching silence. ‘In the enthusiasm, officers and men took off their caps and shouted with delight’ and, like spectators in an opera box, ‘clapped their hands again and again’.1
Sitting or standing by their horses 500 yards away and watching it all was the Light Brigade, with Cardigan already grumbling, ‘those heavies have the laugh of us this day’. ‘All this time we sat expecting an order to pursue,’ remembered Private Albert Mitchell with the 13th Light Dragoons, ‘but no order came.’ An opportunity was slipping away. Private James Wightman watched as his Commanding Officer Captain Morris ‘moved out and spoke very earnestly to Lord Cardigan’ in front of the brigade. ‘My Lord, are you not going to charge the flying enemy?’ he pleaded. ‘No,’ Cardigan peremptorily replied, ‘we have orders to remain here’. Morris, a veteran of the Sikh Wars, was aghast; he had charged with the 16th Lancers at Aliwal. ‘But my Lord it is our positive duty to follow up this advantage,’ he insisted, yet Cardigan rebuffed him three times. He had no instinctive feel for the course of this battle, he was a parade ground soldier. Completely inexperienced, he lacked sense, but not courage. He was both bewildered by the unexpected outcome of the Heavies’ audacious charge and supremely self-satisfied that he might deny Lucan some success by refusing to budge. There was a distinct murmuring from the ranks behind that he should get going, and Cardigan was not going to be influenced by that. Momentous decisions were the business of officers, not the other ranks. All the men heard, according to Wightman, were ‘hoarse sharp closing words’ terminating the exchange of views. ‘No, no, sir!’
Morris wheeled his horse about and rejoined his right squadron, muttering, ‘My God, my god, what a chance we are losing!’ He sharply slapped the blade of his sword against his leg in frustration or in anger. ‘I among others distinctly heard the words and marked the gesture,’ Wightman observed. Clearly ‘Cardigan had rebuffed him’.2
Lord George Paget with the 4th Light Dragoons was also surprised at the stunning result of the Heavy Brigade charge. ‘Could it then have been foreseen that the affair would terminate as it did,’ he admitted, ‘the Light Brigade might have been made available.’ But he indicated the difficulties. They were not best placed he felt, on elevated ground slightly to the rear, to intervene. They would have to cover a quarter mile ‘down a somewhat steep and broken descent’. Intelligent reading of the battle would have suggested the need to react in some capacity, aggressive or defensive, but psychologically they were unprepared for the moment. ‘The probabilities were against the actual result,’ Paget concluded, lamely adding the Russians were of course looking out for ‘an attack from another direction’. A convincing rout of Ryzhov’s cavalry would likely have deterred Liprandi from continuing the action, but the opportunity was allowed to quietly slip away. ‘I was never so vexed in my life,’ recalled an NCO with the 1st Royals: ‘To think that 3,000 Russian cavalry were within the grasp of our small force, and our commander allowing them to retire unmolested!’
‘We felt certain that if we had been sent in pursuit,’ an exasperated Mitchell remembered, ‘we should have cut up many of them, besides capturing many prisoners.’ But it was not to be. They moved off by threes to the right and went back through their old camp, before crossing over the ridgeline of the Causeway Heights further down to enter the other side of the North Valley.3
Ryzhov’s cavalry regiments quit the Heights and galloped back in some disorder through the North Valley back to the Chorgun Gorge. He was badly shaken, his adjutant and orderly were wounded and his horse had been killed beneath him. His performance, he knew, would be perceived as underwhelming. General Liprandi judiciously made scant mention of the debacle in his report at the end of the day and Prince Menshikov in overall command chose to omit any mention of the cavalry advance and rout in front of Kadikoi. The Russian cavalry reformed in depth at the eastern end of the valley, behind a screen of eight 6-pounders belonging to the 3rd Don Cossack Battery. This screen was linked to ten guns on the Fedioukine Heights to their right, where Major General Jobokritsky’s column had established itself to cover the Russian northern flank. On the left side of the North Valley were four battalions of the Odessa Regiment’s infantry, sited between captured redoubts 3 and 4 with a battery of six guns. The valley was now enclosed from three directions.
‘The enemy being gone, and we all right, had time to look around,’ remembered Lieutenant Temple Godman with the 5th Dragoon Guards. ‘The ground was covered with dead and dying men and horses.’ All around were ‘swords, broken and whole, trumpets, helmets and carbines etc.’. Fanny Duberly came to look and was struck by the transition of ‘a few minutes – moments as it seemed to me – and all that occupied that lately crowded spot were men and horses, lying strewn on the ground’. Cornet Daniel Moodie with the Scots Greys observed ‘an awful spectacle’; dead and dying horses lay in all directions among the bodies of many Russians. ‘The place was stinking so much that I was glad to get out of it,’ he remembered. The exuberant Inniskilling officer who had revelled in the moment – ‘oh such a charge’ – had now to confront the carnage they had caused. ‘I cannot depict my feelings when we returned,’ he admitted. ‘I sat down completely exhausted and unable to eat, although deadly hungry, and wept. All my uniform, my hands, my very face were bespattered with blood.’
The blood was Russian. Lieutenant Alexander Elliot’s brother officers came to his tent after the battle to find him gazing in a looking glass. His cocked hat had attracted much of the violence that would otherwise have been directed at his general, Scarlett. ‘Haloa, Elliot, beautifying are you?’ they asked. ‘Yes,’ came the response, ‘I am sticking on my nose.’ It had been nearly slashed off his face during the brutal melee.4
Infantryman Lieutenant Colonel George Bell walking the ground saw one Russian dragoon had nearly reached the British tents. ‘He lies quiet on his back, with a sabre cut almost through his head, and his long beard is matted in crimson gore.’ Nearly all the dead he noticed had been pierced rather than slashed with the sword:
That man is more hideous to look upon, a sabre point let out his life blood under the bridle arm and he is smashed too about the face with the broad sword of England. Here’s another lying on his back in a bath of his own blood, both hands clenched tight in the agony of his departing spirit.
Another, where ‘a home thrust through the abdomen finished his career’, a fair-haired young man in blue hussar uniform had been ‘first gashed about the head and then let out his life below the left arm’. Fanny Duberly, with characteristic Victorian sentimentality, focused on the horses. ‘One horse galloped up to where we stood,’ she remembered, ‘a round shot had taken him in the haunch, and a gaping wound it made.’ She was particularly distressed by another hit in the nostrils by shell splinters, ‘which staggered feebly up to Bob [her own horse], suffocating from inability to breathe’ before it toppled over. George Bell decided ‘not go any further’ checking out the fallen; ‘only one redcoat lay here.’5
At about 10 a.m. the Duke of Cambridge’s 1st Infantry division began to descend the Sapoune Heights and entered the North Valley. Their prompt departure put them forty minutes ahead of Sir George Cathcart’s 4th Division, which had yet to reach the entry point at the Col to the right of Raglan’s viewing point. The battlefield looked inactive, a lull that was to last some ninety minutes. The North Valley appeared mostly empty, except for the main Russian force massed at the far end, obscured faintly by haze. At the near end to Raglan’s observation platform, the Heights on either side could be seen occupied with grey-clad infantry mixed between batteries of cannon.
Captain Arthur Hardinge, delivering messages from Raglan’s staff to Lucan, had taken the opportunity to join the Greys during their mad dash with the Heavy Brigade. He now galloped up to Raglan’s group to describe in breathless and animated language what Brigadier General Scarlett had done. With his tunic clearly ruffled, and the straps of his overalls slashed apart, he was the envy of the rest of the staff. Flushed and triumphant he saw war correspondent William Russell, ‘Did you see it all?’ he asked as he passed by on the slope. ‘Was it not glorious!’ Raglan had already dispatched an aide to Scarlett to say ‘well done!’ and he sincerely meant it. The short fifteen-minute action had changed everything. The British had regained the initiative, demonstrated by increasing numbers of British infantry coming down onto the plain and North Valley. Raglan intuitively perceived the Russian Army had been rattled by the audacious charge by the Heavy Brigade and probably only needed to be threatened again by British cavalry in order to withdraw. Indignation and impatience was surfacing on the British side in the valley below as Lucan and the cavalry appeared to sit motionless in their saddles.6
‘Butcher’ Jack Vahey from the 17th Lancers, hungover and still semi-intoxicated, arrived at the scene of the Heavy Brigade charge alongside his equally boozy partner Paddy Heffernan with the Royals. They had absconded from the Light Brigade detention tent determined to be part of the ongoing ‘fun’. ‘The heavies had already charged the Russian cavalry,’ Vahey recalled, ‘and emptied a good many saddles.’ Riderless horses were galloping around in all directions and they separated to apprehend a mount. He captured ‘a tidy little iron-grey nag’ which he assessed from the quality of its gear was an officer’s charger. ‘It was easy to see from the state of the saddle,’ he recalled, ‘that the former rider had been desperately wounded, and the reins too were bloodier than a dainty man would have liked; but I was noways squeamish.’ He mounted and attached himself to the left flank of the Royals, where his pantomime appearance elicited a lot of laughter. ‘There’s no mistake,’ he admitted, ‘I was not much of a credit to them.’ He was bare-headed with hair ‘like a birch-broom in a fit’, no jacket, shirt sleeves rolled up to the shoulder with ‘my shirt, face and bare arms all splashed and darkened with blood’, offal smeared from butchering the day before. He wore thigh-long ‘greasy’ jackboots with an axe instead of sword at the shoulder looking ‘as regimental as you please’. The horse’s previous Russian rider was likely very short, ‘for my knees were up to my nose in his stirrups’. An eruption of mirth spread through the ranks, attracting the ire of Regimental Sergeant Major John Lees. ‘Taking me all in all, I was a hot looking member,’ Vahey admitted, as well as being ‘fully half-seas over’. Lees was not amused and came up at the gallop roaring, ‘Go to Hell out of that!’
Vahey, meanwhile, had caught sight of the ‘light bobs’ up ahead and swung out of the line and spurred off in pursuit. ‘Behind me,’ he remembered, were a couple of officers from the Greys, ‘who tried to stop me for decency’s sake’. All around the Heavy Brigade troopers laughed and cheered in astonishment. Vahey intended joining his unit.7
Raglan felt he could relax. For the first time since the battle had opened early that morning, he was able to take decisions free of crisis. Nevertheless, he was becoming impatient. At 9.30 a.m. he dispatched an order to Lucan: ‘Cavalry to advance,’ he directed, ‘and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. They will be supported by infantry, which have been ordered to advance on two fronts.’ Raglan could see British infantry on the Woronzov road, but Cathcart’s 4th Infantry Division was taking too long.
When Cathcart’s infantry had left the plateau amid all the excitement, he was instructed by Raglan’s Chief of Staff Airey to recapture the lost redoubts. But neither of the two infantry division commanders had been told they were to advance in conjunction with the cavalry. Cathcart was entering the South Valley, completely out of sight of the cavalry on the other side of the Causeway Heights in between. When the redoubts were pointed out to him by Captain Ewart, Airey’s staff officer, his immediate response was ‘you must be mistaken’, muttering, ‘it is impossible that there can be one [on Canrobert’s Hill] as far away as that.’ Not only was Raglan’s coordination of the cavalry and infantry advance a failure; the orders regarding objectives appeared equally unrealistic. ‘Well, it is the most extraordinary thing I ever saw,’ Cathcart complained. ‘The position is more extensive than that occupied by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.’ He had been there, and Wellington’s army then had been four to five times larger.8
Raglan’s Olympian view from the Heights enabled him to see everything, but at valley level the ground was broken and undulating. The angle of the sun at this time of the day and year makes the outline of the valley lines indistinct. From the Heights, the hills and curves of the valley floor appeared flatter than they were. Raglan overlooked the fact that what was below him, was above the cavalry. Men on the Causeway Heights could not see into the valleys, and those on the valley floor could not see what was happening on the Heights above. Lucan, seeking clarification of his orders, could see no infantry. Convinced his commander would not wish him to attack alone, he determined to wait for their arrival. He had seen Russians to the left and right of the valley where his brigades were lined up. He would need infantry to clear them. Raglan, looking down, perceived Lucan for some inexplicable and exasperating reason was not following his orders.
The ante was raised on the Sapoune Heights when a sharp-eyed staff officer pointed out that Russian artillery horses had come forward to tow away the captured British guns. Cathcart’s infantry were taking too long, the enemy remained still, and Lucan’s cavalry remained motionless. Clearly irritated, Raglan urgently dictated another order to Airey, the fourth of the day. ‘Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front,’ he wrote, ‘follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns.’ Wellington had never lost a gun in the Peninsular Campaign, and Raglan consciously aped his benefactor. It was a point of honour not to lose guns in battle, they were for artillery, the equivalent of colours to the infantry. ‘Troop Horse Artillery may accompany,’ Raglan added, ‘French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.’ Raglan wanted the removal of these guns threatened by a cavalry advance, he was not ordering an uphill charge. But the men who were to receive the order in the valley below could not even see these guns.
Captain Louis Nolan was recognised as one of the army’s most accomplished equestrians, and he was chosen instead of the next ADC – Lieutenant Somerset Calthorpe – in line for duty. The most direct route was a precipitous track 650ft down to the plain below. Nolan would make the best time. Staff ‘gallopers’ always asked if there were any supplementary verbal observations to add. Raglan called out as he set off, ‘Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack immediately.’ This was music to the ears of the highly opinionated and professional equestrian commentator Nolan, who sped off, galloping past Mrs Fanny Duberly. As Nolan descended, the whole perspective of the valley sides and floor changed. Intent on guiding his horse and maintaining a precarious foothold on the track, the staff officer would not have noticed the fundamentally changed terrain perspective until he arrived at the valley floor.
A myth has since grown around an apparently impetuous Nolan, fuelled by Hollywood characterisations played by screen icons such as Errol Flynn in the 1930s and Terence Stamp’s portrayal in the 1970s, in epic film recreations of The Charge of the Light Brigade. That Nolan held strong opinions is evidenced by his journal, which is critical of both Raglan and Lucan. However, an ambitious young cavalry officer seeking advancement would hardly have aired these publicly. His published treatise on cavalry appears obsessed with the tactical virtues of light cavalry, even able, he suggested, to charge directly at artillery. He was as surprised as everyone else at the remarkable accomplishment of the Heavy Brigade that day, at variance to his own embedded theories. Contrary to colourful personality myths since, serious research around Nolan’s career suggests he got on well with his superiors, as one would expect from a selected Aide-de-Camp. Future advancement would be dependent upon senior sponsors. His treatises on cavalry give no intimation of a reckless, hotheaded or impatient individual, they rather espouse scholarly and analytical study. Utter conviction might be mistaken for arrogance, but modesty was not a common trait among his Victorian cavalry officer peers. Nolan sought and garnered positive reactions to his ideas from the popular press. He was clearly someone who shrewdly watched and listened. Despite his enthusiasm to transmit Raglan’s immediate and aggressive intent to his Commanding General, Nolan was unlikely, like any deferential junior officer, to pick a verbal fight with his superior officer.
Nolan’s ride took fifteen minutes, arriving at the assembled Light Brigade and cavalry staff shortly after 11 a.m. ‘Where is Lord Lucan?’ he shouted to his friend Captain William Morris, waiting ahead of the 17th Lancers. ‘What’s it to be, Nolan?’ he was asked, as he directed him on, ‘are we to charge?’ It was an exciting moment. ‘You’ll see! You’ll see!’ he responded. Private Albert Mitchell watched Nolan ‘come galloping down’ from the 13th Light Dragoon lines, ‘and handed a paper to Lord Lucan’. There was a palpable air of expectation; ‘we now felt certain,’ he recalled, ‘there was something cut out for us.’9
Lucan read and re-read the order but was totally nonplussed. There was no mention of Heights, simply to ‘the front’. No word of the infantry he had been waiting for since the previous order forty-five minutes before. He was to ‘follow the enemy’ but he could not see any Russians on the move, ‘and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns’. Both he and Nolan appeared to be exasperated according to the many eyewitness accounts during the verbal exchanges that followed. Nolan insisted ‘Lord Raglan’s orders are that the cavalry should attack immediately.’ Lucan could not see this was a continuation of the order he had received just before. ‘Attack Sir! Attack what?’ he asked irritably. ‘What guns sir? Where and what to do?’ Nolan had seen the guns from the Heights, but they were lost from sight on entering the valley. He was still re-orientating himself having ridden the precarious descent. It is conceivable he was not entirely sure, when he pointed, apparently with some exasperation, ‘There my Lord! There is your enemy! There are your guns.’ ‘I saw Lucan’s evident astonishment at the message,’ remembered Captain Arthur Tremayne with the 13th Light Dragoons nearby, ‘because Nolan pointed right down the valley.’ This was a sobering moment. ‘Surprised and irritated at the impetuous and disrespectful attitude and tone of Captain Nolan,’ according to Sir John Blunt, Lucan’s Turkish interpreter, which could conceivably also have been interpreted as urgency, Lucan ‘looked at him sternly, but made no answer’. It seemed they had been directed to commit virtual suicide.10
Raglan’s viewing point on the Sapoune Heights was several hundred yards south-west of the present Russian Great Patriotic War Museum, where most tourist guides claim he stood. Standing at the same point at almost the same time, day and time of year when the order was given reveals how difficult it is to discern the line of the North Valley and Causeway Heights. This is because of the hazy view presented by the angle of the sun, shining directly face-on. The ground below looks disarmingly flat and gentle from this height. Nolan’s difficult mounted descent into the North Valley looks all the more remarkable. He would have had eyes only for the route he was hurriedly following, not for the Russian positions, now coming into three-dimensional view. Driving by car to the point where Nolan met Lucan’s staff, near the present-day petrol station, one is struck by the total change of scenery and perspective. The gentle downward slope of the North Valley floor is ominously overlooked by the medium rise of flanking valley sides, which were occupied by Russian artillery and infantry. Lucan could see little from his position at the head of the valley, but would have seen a lot more if he had ridden his horse up the small rise upon which the petrol station sits today. It is a dramatic and disorientating contrast from the Sapoune Heights behind, which appear massively high, with the white speck of the present-day museum readily discernible, just below the horizon, offering ready identification of Raglan’s viewing point to its left. Nolan would have faced this same confusing, disorientating perspective when asked by Lucan to precisely point out the guns he was to attack. They were not visible from Lucan’s staff group. Nolan was perhaps understandably vague, pointing in what was roughly the approximate direction, because he had clearly seen the guns from above, but not now. All this left Lucan at his wits’ end. Raglan’s vague formulation of orders all that day had made little sense, the last direction often contradicting the previous. There appeared no connection between the third instruction received forty-five minutes before this one. Surely Raglan did not expect him to advance uphill with cavalry unsupported by infantry? By now the 1st Division infantry had arrived, but the 4th were out of sight on the other side of the Causeway Heights in dead ground to the North Valley.
It has been attractive for historians to explain the muddled transmission of orders in terms of a dramatic personality clash. Lucan was predictably on a short fuse following a series of conflicting directions, and now this young ‘bookish’ aide was arrogantly, to his mind, demanding he follow Raglan’s latest incomprehensible demand. Nolan’s urgency was less conceit stemming from his own experience and strongly held tactical views on cavalry, but likely more about his keen desire to participate in the pending action. Like the lucky Hardinge, the aide who had attached himself to the Heavy Brigade charge, here was Nolan’s chance to bathe in some reflected glory. If Lucan demurred, he would have to ride back to Raglan to clarify, or the moment might slip away, as in the case of Cardigan’s failure to strike the retreating Russian cavalry ninety minutes before. William Russell recalled: ‘the Russians had succeeded in carrying off our guns out of the Turkish redoubts before Captain Nolan had well left the plateau’. The situation on the valley floor was constantly shifting. The guns were already disappearing into the rear of the Russian lines.
Much of the evidence about Nolan’s earlier career suggests he was not only a paternal officer, who cared for his men, but he was non-confrontational. He was a messenger, and also common to many of the Light Brigade cavalry troopers that morning, increasingly indignant he might miss out on the action. It was clearly incumbent on Lucan, as the senior cavalry commander, to respond in some way to Raglan’s confusing directive himself.11
After the crushingly successful charge of the Heavy Brigade, the inaction that followed suggested to many troopers in the Light Brigade that the battle was actually over. ‘Considering all immediate action was over,’ recalled Captain J.D. Shakespear, with the accompanying horse artillery, ‘if not indeed, the whole thing for the day, I rode over to the [Causeway] Heights to reconnoitre.’ Russian troops were consolidating their positions on both sides of the valley. The Light Brigade waited, amid the familiar smell of horses and manure, bits jingling as they shook their heads, free momentarily from the stench of battle. Troopers patted horse necks and comfortingly muttered to steady them amid the occasional bang of an artillery piece. Officers shared flasks of rum in the cold morning. Some of the men had dismounted, utilising the pause to peel and munch hard-boiled eggs. Jemmy, the rough-haired terrier belonging to an 8th Hussars officer, was gently teased; the dog was a favourite, like ‘Boxer’, the adopted mascot with the 11th Hussars. The arrival of French cavalry with the Chasseurs d’Afrique, who formed to the left of the brigade, elicited predictable ribald comments and jesting, common between units.12
Eighth Hussar Private John Doyle was ‘warming our noses each with a short black pipe’ he recalled, ‘and thinking no harm of the matter’. His view was not shared by his Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Shewell, who was a strict disciplinarian and pious Christian. Shewell had risen from his sick bed to lead his men during the early morning sudden flap and was not in the best mood. Doyle was disturbed to see as ‘all at once his face expressed the greatest astonishment, and even anger’. He peremptorily asked: ‘What’s this? What’s this? One, two, three, four, six, seven men smoking! Sergeant! Sergeant Pickworth!’
The NCO appeared and was ordered to ‘advance and take these men’s names’. This caused a momentary stir in the ranks, and Doyle acknowledged ‘it might not be quite according to regulation to be smoking sword in hand, when the charge might be sounded at any moment’. The inquisition gathered momentum when Shewell rode through the 8th Hussars’ ranks. A hapless Sergeant Williams was confronted by ‘did you not hear what I said about smoking just now?’ ‘I have not lit my pipe yet, sir,’ the Sergeant answered respectfully, but others had: ‘Fall back to the rear, and take off your belts. Why here’s another! To the rear, fall back. I’ll have this breach of discipline punished.’
Without realising it, Shewell had condemned Sergeant Williams to conduct the coming charge unarmed. He was not a popular commander. Lord Paget in front of the 4th Light Dragoons, cigar in mouth, heard all the commotion in the ranks to the right. ‘Am I to set this bad example,’ he considered, ‘or should I throw away a good cigar?’ Life, as he had already witnessed that morning, could be nasty, brutish and short. ‘Well, the cigar carried the day’ he decided and it was still clamped between his teeth when they subsequently charged.13
Artillery Captain Shakespear had already discerned Russian positions on both sides of the North Valley on his reconnaissance ahead of the forming Light Brigade. Scanning the Heights, he picked out ten cannon 1,500 yards opposite and ‘there were other guns further on to the left of these’. There were also cavalry, infantry and artillery up ahead, strung out across the plain, and he saw the Russians occupied the former Turkish redoubts: 1, 2 and 3 to his right. Sharp-eyed cavalry troopers had also identified the impending trap. Albert Mitchell with the 13th Light Dragoons had dismounted and was peering down the valley:
Soon we could see the enemy had placed a number of guns across the lower part of the valley nearly a mile and a half from us. At the same time a field battery ascended a hill on our left front, where it was placed in position facing us. They also placed a field battery on the slope between the redoubts and the valley on our right.
Russian infantry was very much in evidence around these guns. The North Valley was shaping up to be a deathtrap.14
It was at this moment that Captain Nolan arrived. Realising something was going to happen, all eyes were on Lord Lucan as he trotted across to Cardigan to share the contents of Raglan’s imprecise order. Shared mutual loathing cloaked in the formality of rank was to contribute to the events that followed. ‘Lord Cardigan, you will attack the Russians in the valley,’ Lucan directed. Cardigan was quick to object, stating he would be subjected to flanking as well as frontal fire. ‘I know it,’ Lucan cut him short, but ‘Lord Raglan would have it,’ having decided to accept the command without formally challenging it, beyond the brief exchange with Nolan. ‘Certainly my Lord,’ Cardigan responded, saluting with his sword, ‘but allow me to point out to you that there is a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and the ground is covered with Russian riflemen.’
Formal Victorian deference and mutual personal hostility precluded any form of rational discussion of the order’s contents. Both men assumed Raglan’s intent was to attack the guns 1¼ miles to their front, almost indiscernible at the end of the valley. Later recriminations over whether it was ‘attack’ or ‘advance’ were irrelevant. No horse could sustain a galloping charge over that distance. Raglan’s imprecise direction thus far in this campaign made it impractical for Lucan to refuse or demur, while seeking further information. Honour was at stake as was the remorseless passage of time. It would take an hour to question and respond to further clarity and the situation might well have changed by then.15
Action for the Light Brigade was now pending, but not what anyone could have envisaged. Every officer down to private soldier appreciated the likely outcome. ‘Then we got the order to advance,’ remembered Private Thomas Williams with the 11th Hussars. ‘I could see what would be the result of it, and so could all of us,’ he later wrote to his father. ‘But of course, as we had got the order, it was our duty to obey.’
Lord George Paget commanding the 4th Light Dragoons had never really got on with his second in command Major John Halkett; they hardly spoke to each other. Paget, thinking through the consequences of what lay ahead, suddenly offered him his flask, a gesture of reconciliation. They were not to know that Halkett had barely twenty minutes to live. The brief flurry of activity in the 13th Dragoon lines, as they readied themselves for an advance, increased Lieutenant Percy Smith’s feelings of vulnerability. His right hand had been maimed in a past shooting accident, but he was accepted for active service. An iron guard, especially made for him by his brother officers, normally held it up but he had mislaid it during the sudden alarm that morning. Smith would ride the charge unarmed, all he could do was cheer his men on.
Private James Wightman with the 17th Lancers was suddenly startled by the bizarre spectacle of ‘Butcher Jack’ Vahey galloping up, with belt and arms festooned over his white canvas butcher’s smock, ‘face, arms and hands smeared in blood’. He obviously ‘had some drink in him’ because he shouted ‘that he’d be damned if he was going to be left behind his regiment and so lose the fun’. His comical arrival was something of a morale boost, ‘a gruesome yet laughable figure’ Wightman agreed. The Adjutant Cornet John Chadwick and an NCO directed him to rein back and join his own troop in the second squadron. He still had an axe at the slope on his shoulder.
‘I suppose you would like to know what I had about me through all this danger,’ Lieutenant Edward Seager later wrote home to his wife Jane. He had a picture of her in his sabretache, the flat decorative leather satchel suspended by long straps at the thigh; inside he also carried the ‘darling children’s picture’, with his mother’s prayer book. ‘In the pocket of my jacket was your letter,’ he recalled, ‘containing little Emily’s hair’ and ‘around my neck was the dear locket you gave me in Exeter’. Seager was festooned with talismans, which numerous eyewitness commentaries appreciated they would need, because it appeared that they were about to charge the whole of the Russian army. Troop Sergeant Major George Smith with the 11th Hussars knew they were ‘to attack the battery of guns which was placed across the valley immediately in our front about a mile off’. Private John Richardson saw ‘the thirty guns which we had to take were stretched right across the valley’. Smith also knew there was ‘a battery of guns on the Fedioukine Heights on our left and the enemy had possession of the redoubts on our right,’ where another battery and riflemen were posted. It did not look good. He judged they were attacking an ‘army in position numbering about 24,000 and we, the Light Brigade, not quite 700’.16
In the ranks there was realisation that some officers were uneasy about this order. It made so little sense. But as Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson suggested in his later epic poem, Victorian soldiers were expected to do what they were told: ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die’. Private Edward Woodham chatted with Private Wootten, ‘an unsophisticated west countryman’ in the second line with the 11th Hussars. ‘Ted, old fellow,’ he confided, ‘I know we shall charge,’ at which Woodham scoffed, ‘Oh nonsense! Look at the strength in front of us. We’re never going to charge there.’ Wootten would be proven correct, but would not live to make the point.17
At the end of the North Valley, Russian Lieutenant Koribut Kubitovich, lined up with Colonel Yeropkin’s composite lancer regiment, watched as Russian units consolidated either side of the valley during the lull. General Liprandi, he believed, anticipated an advance after the debacle of the Heavy Brigade attack, and ‘saw it was necessary to make some changes in his troop deployments and reinforce his right flank’. The North Valley was gradually boxed in, and ‘the right flank was deployed in stepped back echelons,’ which included eight guns from Bojanov’s battery and the Odessa Jäger Regiment. Kubitovich’s lancer regiment was redeployed from the left to the right side of the North Valley, where it waited between redoubts 2 and 3.
‘I cannot say with certainty,’ recalled Major General Ryzhov, ‘but I believe that about an hour and a half went by in which there was absolutely no activity on the enemy side.’ The Russians put this to good use, consolidating their grip on the far end of the Causeway Heights, despite the cavalry setback. Ryzhov surmised ‘it appeared that the battle could be considered at an end’. He was at the far eastern side of the North Valley, discussing the day’s events with Colonel Prince Obolensky, whose Don Battery Number 3 was positioned across to block any Allied approach. To his right were ten guns under battery commander Colonel Brombeuss, dispersed in twos and threes among Major General Zhabokritsky’s infantry. These pointed out from the lower re-entrants of the Fedioukine Heights and completely covered the North Valley opposite Bojanov’s battery on the other side. The left, centre and right of North Valley was boxed in by twenty-six or so cannon. The Russian artillery was the most technically proficient arm of the Tsar’s army. White willow wands were already set out in the North Valley to measure and indicate the key ranges. Massed behind the Don Battery were two Hussar regiments lined up in echelon. Swarms of Russian infantry dominated the high ground, enabling the supporting artillery batteries to sweep the North Valley below. Liprandi now felt able to draw breath and await Raglan’s next move. Lieutenant Kubitovich felt they were in an unassailable position because any advance would ‘have to pass through a crossfire from our artillery and riflemen, and afterwards – when in disorder due to enemy fire – he would have to meet an attack by Russian cavalry’.
There seemed little likelihood of further action that day. Both sides were in strong face-off positions, except the British had regained a psychological ascendency.18
Sharp-eyed troopers waiting with the Light Brigade had picked out much of this movement. Private Robert Farquharson overheard a man muttering what they all suspected, that ‘many of us will not get back to the lines again’. Twenty-one-year-old William Pennington had only been with the 11th Hussars for six months and had reconciled himself to acceptance that ‘he had no hope of life’. ‘A child might have seen the trap that was laid for us,’ Captain Thomas Hutton, waiting with the 4th Light Dragoons rear ranks, observed. ‘Every private dragoon did.’ Private William Nicholson with the 13th Light Dragoons thought the same: ‘we knew that the order was a blunder, and when we started we never expected to come back alive.’
‘All we had to do was obey orders,’ Nicholson remembered. ‘I can safely say,’ Private Thomas Williams with the 11th Hussars insisted, ‘that there was not a man in the Light Brigade that day but what did his duty to his Queen and Country.’19
Unlike the Heavy Brigade, the distinguishing colour of Cardigan’s Light Brigade was blue, albeit faded and showing signs of campaign wear and tear. They formed the first echelon with the 13th Light Dragoons to the right in front with the 17th Lancers to the left. Lances were held at the vertical carry, pennants fluttering in a light breeze. The 9ft lance coupled with the momentum and weight of the horse could be a formidable weapon. They were placed in the front line to intimidate the Russians and inflict maximum damage on first contact. The small pennant just short of the spearhead was designed to confuse the horses of opposing cavalry, only later being retained for parades and ceremonial heraldry.
Regiments in the brigade were identifiable by strikingly different headdress. The 17th on the left had leather chapskas, which were square-topped caps resembling academic mortar boards, but with a peak. To their right the 13th Light Dragoons were distinguishable by beaver-skin shakos, shaped like a top hat with a peak. Behind them in the second echelon line were the 11th Hussars, who wore fur busbys like a shako, without a peak, with a decorative bag arrangement hanging on one side. Bringing up the third echelon to the rear were the 4th Light Dragoons on the left and the 8th Hussars right, likewise distinguishable by their headgear.
Wellington’s cavalry advice had always been to attack in three such lines and European cavalry tactics had hardly evolved since the Napoleonic Wars. The idea was that the first and second lines, with 400 to 500 yards between them, should strike two successive blows across a consolidated front. The second line aimed to avoid the initial melee and hit the enemy line at a steady pace. The third line, a similar distance behind, constituted the ready reserve to fight off enemy cavalry counter-attacks. Bringing the greatest number of sabres to bear over as wide a front as practical aimed at immediately enveloping and overflowing the enemy’s flanks. The problem, in the emotional pell-mell of a charge, was for officers and NCOs to prevent their two lines merging into one. Moreover, the pace of the clash with the enemy had to be at a speed that maximised the controlled use of sabre cut and thrust and lance. Cardigan’s force numbered 664 officers and men, advancing on a two-squadron front of some 140 yards, with about 125 men in the front rank.
Behind the Light Brigade came Scarlett’s distinctive red-tunic Heavy Brigade, riding in close support. They were led by Lucan, the senior cavalry commander, well out in front, so as to maintain contact with the advance Light Brigade. Despite the desperate action just ninety minutes before, the ‘Heavies’ were still in good shape. Behind them came long trains of horse artillery, jogging along, ready to peel off and provide close-in artillery support.
‘I remember as if it were but yesterday,’ recalled Private James Wightman, the smell of the horses and dust raised by the squadrons forming line. Up ahead he saw: ‘Cardigan’s figure and attitude as he faced the brigade and in his strong hoarse voice gave the momentous word of command: “The Brigade will advance! First squadron 17th Lancers direct!”’20
Conditions in the Russian siege lines at Sevastopol. Captain Robert Adolf Hodasevich fought for ‘Holy Russia’. (Central Armed Forces Museum Moscow)
Sevastopol under attack. (Sevastopol Cyclorama)
Conditions in the Russian siege lines. (Sevastopol Cyclorama)
The Russians blockaded Sevastopol harbour with sunken ships. (Moscow Museum)
Sevastopol harbour today, near the former sunken line of ships. (Author’s collection)
Infantrymen like Sergeant Timothy Gowing had tight-fitting uniforms that were totally unsuited to static siege warfare and reduced to patched rags. (Author’s collection)
The Bracker farmhouse, Lord Raglan’s HQ. (Author’s collection)
A noxious stench from rubbish mixed with stinking offal from slaughtered animals emanated from Balaclava harbour, packed with ships. (Library of Congress)
Ismail Pacha and Turkish soldiers. Corporal Thomas Morley with the 17th Lancers declared ‘one Englishman is worth six Turks’, they are ‘filthy and lazy’. (Library of Congress)
This contemporary photograph of a Turkish irregular in the Crimea, with his ‘camp follower’, encapsulated the disdain felt by many common British soldiers to their erstwhile ally. (Author’s collection)
The 55-year-old Brigadier General Sir James Scarlett, the commander of the Heavy Brigade, coolly dealt with the overwhelming Russian force that emerged on his flank. (Library of Congress)
Four squadrons of Russian cavalry detached themselves from the mass and charged down the slope toward the ‘thin red line’ covering Balaclava harbour. (Sevastopol Fort Museum)
They were heading for the British logistics park at Kadikoi village outside Balaclava. (Library of Congress)
The Turks retreated through the camp lines shown here to the left toward the ships in Balaclava harbour. (Library of Congress)
The site of the Heavy Brigade charge today, conducted uphill and marked by the white obelisk. (Author’s collection)
Lieutenant Halford rode with the 5th Dragoon Guards in the charge of the Heavy Brigade; his tight-fitting uniform and brass helmet were hardly suited for hard cavalry campaigning. (Library of Congress)
The area around the cavalry camps where much of the initial action took place. (Author’s collection)
A diminutive hillock, the site of the 93rd Regiment’s stand, on the battlefield today. (Author’s collection)
The resourceful veteran commander Sir Colin Campbell directed the fire of the 93rd Highlander’s ‘thin red line’. (Author’s collection)
Paymaster Henry Duberly, 8th Hussars, and Mrs Fanny Duberly who joined Raglan’s staff on top of the Sapoune Heights. (Author’s collection)
Fanny Duberly remembers riding through ‘the narrow and crowded streets’ of Balaclava as fast as she could. (Library of Congress)
The tangle of unloaded stores at Balaclava harbour. (Library of Congress)
Lord Raglan’s viewpoint, overlooking the Valley of Death and the site of the Heavy Brigade charge today. This photograph was taken at the same time of year, and the battlefield is indistinct. (Author’s collection)
Lord Raglan, the British Commander-in-Chief, dictated the order for the charge of the Light Brigade. (Library of Congress)
Lord Lucan, the Commander of the British Cavalry, received the order and ordered Cardigan to carry it out. (Public domain)
Lord Cardigan, the Commander of the Light Brigade, received and executed the order. (Public domain)
Captain Louis Nolan was Raglan’s ‘Galloper’ who delivered the order. (Illustrated London News)
The start point of the Light Brigade charge today, looking east toward the Russian guns. (Author’s collection)
The mid-point of the charge; the guns were beyond the modern poplars. (Author’s collection)
Lord George Paget was the 4th Light Dragoons Colonel and Cardigan’s deputy commander, riding to the left of the line in the third and final wave of the Light Brigade’s charge. (Library of Congress)
The scene encapsulated in Tony Richardson’s 1968 film, The Charge of the Light Brigade. (Author’s collection)
The mid-point today, showing the height of the redoubts beyond, to the right of the riders charging right to left. (Author’s collection)
The view ahead towards the guns today from the same point as previous. (Author’s collection)
William Simpson’s painting captures this view from the Russian-held Heights. (Library of Congress)
French General Bosquet captured by Roger Fenton in a similar pose in the Crimea, when he declared of the charge, ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre’. (Library of Congress)
By this time much of the charge formation had been shot to pieces. A still from Tony Richardson’s film. (Author’s collection)
The savage melee at the guns. (Public domain)
Cornet John Wilkin rode the charge of the Light Brigade as assistant surgeon with the 11th Hussars in the second wave. He wears the distinctive tight blue cloth jacket with crimson ‘cherry bum’ trousers, more suited to ceremonial parades than battle. (Library of Congress)
The uniforms of the Chasseurs D’Afrique, veterans of French colonial Morocco, were far more loose-fitting and suited to campaigning in the conditions of the Crimea. (Author’s collection)
The site of the Russian guns at the end of the Valley of Death today. (Author’s collection)
A cookhouse scene, with survivors from the 8th Hussars who rode to the left of the third wave of the charge of the Light Brigade. (Library of Congress)
A group of survivors from the charge of the Light Brigade attend one of the many commemorations in England, which began twenty-one years afterwards, in 1875. (National Army Museum, London / Bridgeman Images)