Half A League, Half A League...

Half A League, Half A League...

Originally shared by Dirk Puehl

25 October 1854, #onthisday the Charge of the Light Brigade was ordered during the Battle of Balaclava near Sevastopol.


It was as if the whole chain of command was competing to win Monty Python’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year” award. Admittedly, the prize should have been given to Field Marshal FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, GCB PC, without much ado anyway. Lord Raglan, then 65, had last seen action at Waterloo 40 years before and was one of the most inept commanders in military history. At the height of the Battle of Balaclava now, after issuing a series of hare-brained commands, he saw an artillery position of his Turkish allies taken by the Russians on the Fedioukine Heights and ordered “…the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate." General Lord Airey, slightly challenged by anything beyond a steeple chase, copied down Raglan’s command and sent his galloper, Captain Nolan, with the verbal addition “post haste” to Lord Lucan, commander of the British cavalry in the valley below, who had already been given the nom de guerre “Lord Look-On” for being held in reserve during the Battle of Alma a few weeks before. Sensibly enough, Lucan asked to which guns, pray, Raglan was referring, since he couldn’t see the redoubts up the hills. Unfortunately, there was a Russian battery at the end of the valley, well emplaced, and unfortunately, Captain Nolan, a bit of an authority in all cavalry matters, thought Lucan was a dullard, and, unfortunately, Lord Lucan hated his brother-in-law and subordinate, the Lord Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade, and then Nolan waved his sword about and pointed at the Russian position in the valley, crying “There! There is your enemy, my lord!” and Lord Lucan ordered Lord Cardigan to advance the Light Brigade.


But read more on:

http://wunderkammertales.blogspot.de/2014/10/there-there-is-your-enemy-my-lord.html


Depicted below is Richard Caton Woodville’s: "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1898)



#europeanhistory #history #militaryhistory #victoriana

Comments

  1. Geo. TirebiterOctober 25, 2016 at 3:51 AM

    and that's why you question orders, if not, the commanders forget the charge of the light brigade.

    ReplyDelete

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