Action by the Light Brigade was about to become even more
opportune and necessary, for it now became apparent that the Russian cavalry
mass was recoiling, being pushed back, swaying uphill. Now was the moment for
the coup de grâce and it was delivered by the 4th Dragoon Guards, who had been
held in reserve and were now ordered to charge by Lucan. Crashing into the
Russian right and charging head on, the regiment went right through the enemy
force. ‘The great Russian mass,’ wrote Cecil Woodham-Smith, ‘swayed, rocked,
gave a gigantic heave, broke, and, disintegrating it seemed in a moment, fled.’
If ever there was a moment for pursuit to finish the thing off and write finis
to the battle of Balaklava, it was now. If only Cardigan had seized this moment
and charged then, the victory would have been complete and the Russian cavalry
would not have been allowed to escape. But Cardigan was not a man to act
without specific orders. Initiative, except in designing bizarre uniforms or
ogling pretty women, was foreign to his nature. What Cardigan could not or
would not see, others did, and urged him to act. Captain Morris, commanding the
17th Lancers, urgently pressed his brigade commander: ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘it
is our positive duty to follow up this advantage.’ Cardigan insisted that they
must remain put. Morris further implored him to allow his own regiment to
charge the enemy who were in such disorder. Cardigan was adamant. Furious and
frustrated, Morris appealed to his fellow officers: ‘Gentlemen, you are
witnesses of my request.’ Cardigan’s refusal to act was even more reprehensible
than Grouchy’s inactivity at Waterloo for he could at least see what was going
on.
The moment passed, and the Russian cavalry, unmolested
further and complete with their artillery, were allowed to establish themselves
at the eastern end of the North Valley, guns unlimbered and ready for action.
They would not have long to wait. Yet if the Charge of the Light Brigade had
been enacted during the Russian disorder and flight, no such controlled
movement would have been possible by the enemy. In short, the Russians would
have been unable to redeploy at the eastern end of the North Valley, and thus
there would have been no such objective for Raglan to concern himself with and
about whose capture he was now to issue further wholly confusing orders. We may
perhaps conclude this particular speculation by observing that had the Light
Brigade charged when it should have done, the two actions of the Heavy and
Light Brigades would have become one, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson would have had
to confine himself to one poem rather than two.
Lord Raglan now set about the business of making confusion
worse confounded. His third order was given when, as a result of the Heavy
Brigade’s action, the Russians recrossed the Causeway Heights and were to the
north of them. Raglan determined to recapture the Redoubts, the Causeway
Heights and the Woronzoff Road. To take and hold ground would, of course,
demand infantry. The 1st Division was at hand, but the 4th Division, under
command of a disgruntled, almost insubordinate Sir George Cathcart, was taking
its time to get forward. Not wishing to lose his chance, Raglan conceived the
idea of recovering the Heights with cavalry, who would then hand over to the
infantry divisions. But Raglan’s third order was once more a masterpiece of
ambiguity. Moreover, the version of it retained by him differed from that which
reached Lucan. What Raglan had intended was that the cavalry should advance at
once, recapture the Redoubts and control the Heights until the infantry came
up. But the order which reached Lucan implied that he should wait until the
infantry were there to support him before advancing. In other words Lucan’s
reading of the order – not to advance until supported by infantry – was the exact
opposite of what Raglan intended. It was therefore with mounting impatience
that Raglan gazed down at the action which Lucan did take – to mount the
Cavalry Division, positioning the Light Brigade at the western end of the North
Valley, while the Heavy Brigade was drawn up behind them on Woronzoff Road.
Thus deployed, Lucan waited for the infantry.
Raglan, in his certainty that an advance by the cavalry
would oblige the enemy to withdraw from the Redoubts, could not understand why
Lucan made no move, and when he saw that parties of Russian artillerymen were
preparing to take their guns away from the Redoubts, his agitation knew no
bounds. It was then that Raglan sent out the fatally misunderstood fourth and
last order to Lucan. It read: ‘Lord Raglan wishes 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.’ This order had been written out by General Airey from Raglan’s
instructions. We have seen that lack of precision in the third order resulted
in its not being carried out. If it had been clear and executed as intended by
Lucan, the fourth order would never have been needed. Yet here with this fourth
order we see again that a precise word or two substituted for an imprecise
phrase would have removed all ambiguity. What ‘to the front’ means to one man
is very different from what it means to another. Had Raglan so phrased the
order that it clearly complemented his previous one, the one relating
specifically to the Causeway Heights, as he meant it to, how differently Lucan
would have read it. Had it said, ‘Cavalry to advance to the Causeway Heights to
prevent enemy carrying away the guns from the Redoubts,’ Lucan would have been
in no doubt as to what his Commander-in-Chief wanted.
This is the first great If which could have prevented the
Noble Six Hundred from riding into the Valley of Death. The second is that if
only any aide-de-camp other than Captain Nolan of the 15th Hussars had carried
the order to Lucan, there might have been some chance of Lucan’s realizing what
Raglan actually intended. As it was, Nolan, who had endured agonies of
humiliation and frustration at the Light Brigade’s inexplicable inactivity when
so splendid and classic an opportunity following the Heavy Brigade’s charge had
presented itself, was given the task. Moreover, Raglan aggravated both the
imprecision of his order and the furious impetuosity of Captain Nolan by
calling out to him as he rode off, ‘Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack at
once.’
To Lord Lucan this new written order, which he regarded as
quite unrelated to the previous one, was not merely obscure, it was crazy. The
only guns that he could see were those at the eastern end of the North Valley –
to his front. For cavalry to attack batteries of guns frontally and alone was
to contravene every tactical principle and to invite destruction. As Lucan read
and re-read the order with mounting consternation, Nolan, almost beside himself
at Lucan’s apparent reluctance to take immediate and decisive action, repeated
in tones of arrogant contempt the Commander-in-Chief’s urgent postscript that the
Cavalry should attack at once. Small wonder that Lucan should have burst out
angrily, ‘Attack, sir? Attack what? What guns, sir? Where and what to do?’ It
was then that Nolan threw away the last chance of the operation going according
to plan. With a furious gesture but, alas, one fatally lacking in proper
direction, he pointed, or appeared to point, at the very guns that Lucan could
see, those at the end of the North Valley, accompanying his gesture with words
full of insolence and empty of precision: ‘There, my lord, is your enemy, there
are your guns!’
Here we may pause for an instant and insert another If. If
only, at that very last moment, Nolan had curbed his frantic impatience and
calmly explained to Lucan that the guns in question were those on the Redoubts
and that therefore the Light Brigade must advance to the Causeway Heights, all
might yet have gone well. But after this ill-tempered exchange, Nolan rode over
to Captain Morris, 17th Lancers, and asked if he might ride with the Regiment.
Morris agreed. Meanwhile, Lucan had passed on the order to Lord Cardigan. Even
Cardigan felt obliged to point out that the valley was commanded by guns not
only to the front, but to the right and left as well. Lucan acknowledged his
objection, but insisted that it was the Commander-in-Chief’s wish and that
there was no choice but to obey.
Thus the position when Cardigan deployed his brigade in
readiness to advance was that the Russians occupied the Fedioukine Heights with
horse, foot and guns, and the Causeway Heights including the 1st, 2nd and 3rd
Redoubts with infantry and guns. At the head, that is, the eastern end, of
North Valley were twelve Russian guns and behind them their main body of
cavalry. About a mile and a half away, at the western end of the valley, was
the Light Brigade. By this time the British infantry had come up, the 1st
Division occupying ground held by the 93rd Highlanders, while the 4th Division
was in the area of the 4th Redoubt. After receiving his orders from Lucan,
Cardigan rode over to speak to Colonel Lord George Paget, commanding the 4th
Light Dragoons, who was to command the second line of the brigade. Cardigan
told Paget that he would expect his best support. Paget had been enjoying a
‘remarkably good’ cigar while Nolan and Lucan had their angry exchange, and
when he heard Colonel Shewell of the 8th Hussars reprimanding his men for
smoking their pipes – in Shewell’s words, ‘disgracing the Regiment by smoking
in the presence of the enemy’ – he could not but wonder whether he was disgracing
his regiment with his cigar. ‘Am I to set this bad example?’ he asked himself.
A good cigar, however, was no ‘common article in those days’ and he determined
to keep it. The 4th Light Dragoons had a reputation to maintain. They were
known as ‘Paget’s Irregular Horse’, and the cigar lasted until the charge was
over.
It might be supposed that Lucan had already contributed
enough to the day’s work, but even now he interfered further. Cardigan had
placed three regiments, the 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers and 11th Hussars,
in the front line, while the second line had the 8th Hussars and 4th Light
Dragoons. Lucan ordered Colonel Douglas, commanding 11th Hussars, Cardigan’s
own regiment, to drop back to a position supporting the front line. As the
charge proceeded Paget, conscious of Cardigan’s insistence on his best support,
had brought the 4th Light Dragoons up to the left of the 11th Hussars, thus
forming a new second line, with the 8th Hussars to the right rear. ‘Walk march.
Trot:’ Cardigan gave the order. His trumpeter sounded ‘March’. The charge was
on. Captain Portal, 4th Light Dragoons, recalled later that they had ridden
only a quarter of a mile, galloping now, when the most fearful fire opened on
them from both sides, dealing death and destruction in the ranks. They kept
going, did their work among the enemy guns, which with support – of which there
was none – they could have brought back with them, and then retired in good
order, still at the gallop and again through murderous crossfire. Neither Portal
nor anyone else seeing what had to be done thought that those still alive after
the charge would ever get back.
One of the 8th Hussars, Lieutenant Calthorpe, who was
serving on the staff and did not take part in the charge, observed it all, his
own regiment and the others thundering along the valley at an awful pace,
unchecked by the fearful slaughter, disregarding all but their objective,
rendering havoc amongst the enemy’s artillery. This was the time, Calthorpe
recorded, when the brigade commander should have rallied his men, gripped the
situation and given the necessary orders. But according to Calthorpe,
Cardigan’s horse took fright, wheeled round and galloped back down the valley.
Calthorpe was mistaken here. Neither Cardigan nor his charger had taken fright.
Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole affair was Cardigan’s
absolute indifference to the hazards of the charge or the fate of his brigade
once it had charged. He evaded some threatening Cossacks by galloping back
through the enemy guns, and judging his duty now done, calmly rode back down
the valley.
It was left to the combined efforts of Paget and Shewell to
take control and salvage what was left of the Light Brigade. As the Brigade
charged home, the leading lines of the 13th Light Dragoons and 17th Lancers
suffered terrible casualties as the guns in front of them opened fire. Those
surviving, about fifty, galloped through the guns, sabres and lances at work,
and on to rout some Russian Hussars, until they were checked by numerous
Cossacks. Then the 11th Hussars came right through the guns in pursuit of
fleeing enemy Lancers. Paget was leading the 4th Light Dragoons at full gallop
on to the enemy gunners, and to their right the 8th Hussars under the iron hand
of Colonel Shewell went through the battery and pulled up on the far side. Now
the survivors faced a double threat, from a huge body of enemy cavalry in front
and from six squadrons of Russian Lancers who had descended from the Fedioukine
Heights, endangering their withdrawal. In the absence of Cardigan, Paget
rallied the 4th Light Dragoons and 11th Hussars, charged towards the enemy
Lancers and brushed past them. Shewell did the same with seventy troopers, and
the retreat, worse by far than the charge itself, began. Mrs Duberley, wife of
the 8th Hussar paymaster, observing pitiful groups of men making their way back
down the valley and realizing who they were, exclaimed: ‘Good God! It is the
Light Brigade.’
One of Paget’s comments on the bearing of riderless horses
during the charge itself is revealing and shows what terror these noble
creatures could feel without the reassuring presence of their riders:
They made dashes at me, some advancing with me a
considerable distance . . . cringing in on me, and positively squeezing me, as
the round shot came bounding by them, tearing up the earth under their noses .
. . I remarked their eyes, betokening as keen a sense of the perils around them
as we human beings experienced . . . The bearing of the horse I was riding, in
contrast to these, was remarkable. He had been struck, but showed no signs of
fear . . . And so, on we went through this scene of carnage, wondering each
moment which would be our last.
‘Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred’, wrote
Tennyson. Someone had blundered all right, but who was it? Was Lord Raglan
justified in accusing Lord Lucan, ‘You have lost the Light Brigade’? When
things go right in a battle, there is no shortage of those claiming credit for
it. When things go awry, the number who step forward as candiates for
recognition tends to be smaller. We may recall that during the battle of Balaklava,
Raglan issued four orders. None of them was precise. None of them was properly
understood. None of them was executed in the way that had been intended. The
whole affair may be regarded as a series of unfortunate chances, preceded,
however, by one golden chance, one unique opportunity, one classic moment for
decision, which if taken, seized and exploited would have ended the battle on a
note of triumph for the British cavalry in particular and the British army in
general. This moment was, of course, when the Russian cavalry was fleeing from
the Heavy Brigade’s charge, and the Light Brigade failed to turn the dismayed
enemy flight into absolute rout. Then, with the aid of the advancing infantry
divisions, Raglan could have inflicted such a defeat on the Russian forces at
Balaklava that they might have lost stomach for a continued campaign there and
then. Sebastopol would have fallen and the Crimean War would have been over.
But given that this chance was lost, we must remember the
other less welcome chances – the chance position of Raglan from which he and
his staff were quite unable to appreciate what Lucan could or could not see;
the chance of his totally inadequate orders, which did not define either line
of advance or object of attack; the further chance of Raglan’s not making it
clear that the cavalry was to move at once, not to wait for the infantry to
arrive; and the chance of choosing Nolan of all men to deliver both the written
order and the further urging of Lucan to attack at once. If all or any of these
blunders had not been committed, the Light Brigade would have prevented the
guns from being removed from the Redoubts and the battle could have proceeded
with the infantry’s arrival. It was not only Lucan who had lost the Light
Brigade, although he must bear heavy responsibility. Between them all – Raglan,
Airey, Lucan, Cardigan, Nolan – they saw to it that chance governed all and
that chaos umpired the whole sorry business.
It is to the Noble Six Hundred that we must give the
accolade. Riding back down the valley at the rear of what was left of the 4th
Light Dragoons and the 11th Hussars, Paget noted the last mile strewn with dead
and dying, all of them friends, some of them limping or crawling back, horses
in agony, struggling to rise, only to flounder again on their mutilated riders.
It had been, in Cardigan’s words, ‘a mad-brained trick’, but all the regiments
of the Light Brigade had covered themselves with glory. Even in ‘the jaws of
death’ discipline had been superb in completing the business of ‘sabring the
gunners there’. Some of those who rode back even told Cardigan that they were
ready to go again.
Honour the Light Brigade! Magnificent, but not war. This was
a French observer’s judgement. The French were reliable and competent Allies in
1854.
