![]() ![]() ![]() This insistence on the madness of the Light Brigade subverts a wider discussion of whether the charge was suicidal and who should have been held accountable for the military debacle. Both the British and Russians who witnessed the charge suggested that, whilst brave, it could be viewed as lunacy and thus incomprehensible in rational terms. However, both British and Russian eyewitnesses also referred to the charge as an act of insanity as Markovits says, “madness and glory coalesce in Tennyson’s poem” ( Markovits para. The British blend of mourning and pride in reaction to the Light Brigade’s charge is well documented in Stefanie Markovits’s The Crimean War in the British Imagination and her BRANCH entry on the charge. Thomas Rommel has characterized this response as “the discrepancy between chivalric heroism and military incompetence,” which he finds to be a hallmark of poetry on the charge (110). As a result, even monuments to the Crimean War such as that in Waterloo Place or those in Sevastopol attest to loss as much as victory, and like the charge of the Light Brigade itself represent heroic failure.Īlthough Alfred, Lord Tennyson claimed that “all the world wondered” in his poem on the bravery of the charge of the Light Brigade, the event has always produced an ambivalent response, eliciting reactions poised between admiration for the heroism of the cavalry and grief at the senseless waste of life. Both the British and Russians had difficulty in coming to terms with this incident, as they did with the Crimean War as a whole, because it was neither wholly a victory nor defeat for either side. Russian cavalry officers were convinced that their British counterparts were brave but deranged “valiant lunatics” after witnessing the charge. Tennyson’s polyvocal term “wild” in particular holds in suspense both admiration and the suggestion that it was an insane act, which resonates with accounts by Russians on the receiving end of the charge. ![]() Even though he was writing at a remove of time and distance from the action, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem echoes the conflicted reactions of both British and Russian witnesses who characterized the charge both as heroic and an act of insanity. Incredibly, they reached the Russian lines and began to attack the gunners.The charge of the Light Brigade has always elicited ambivalent responses from eyewitnesses. British commander Lord Cardigan lead from the front of the charge as the horsemen were pummelled from three sides, suffering heavy losses. Louis Nolan, the man who had received the orders, had just realised his mistake when he was killed by a Russian shell, and around him his fellow cavalrymen charged onwards. Instead of questioning these suicidal instructions, the Light Brigade started to gallop towards the enemy position. However, in one of the most infamous military blunders in history, the horsemen were given the wrong orders and began to charge a heavily defended Russian position well protected by large guns. This was a task well suited to light cavalry, who rode smaller faster horses and were suited to chasing lightly armed enemy troops. At this point in the battle the brigade of British Light Cavalry were ordered to charge Russian gunners who were trying to clear the captured Ottoman positions. The Russian attacks initially overwhelmed Ottoman defences but were then rebuffed by a “thin red line” of Scottish infantry and a counterattack from the heavy cavalry brigade. Determined to avoid Sevastopol’s capture, the Russians regrouped and attacked at the battle of Balaclava on 25 October. In September 1854 allied troops landed in the Russian-held Crimean peninsula and defeated the more technologically backward Russian armies at Alma, before marching on the strategically important port of Sevastopol. Watch Now A military blunder of epic proportions In this fascinating discussion with Dan Snow, Cambridge University’s Dr Kate Fleet takes us on a tour of the hugely successful and long lasting empire, and questions how we should view its legacy in the modern era. ![]()
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