The Charge of the Light Brigade

History's Most Famous Cavalry Charge Told Through Eye Witness Accounts, Newspaper Reports, Memoirs and Diaries

John Grehan

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848329423
• eBook ISBN: 9781848329447
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

A "compelling" portrait of the fateful Crimean War cavalry charge told through the soldiers' own words ( Historical Novels Review).
The most notorious, and most contentious, cavalry charge in history still remains an enigma. Though numerous books have been written about the charge, all claiming to reveal the truth or to understand the reason why, exactly what happened at Balaklava on October 25, 1854 continues to be fiercely debated.
Voices from the Past: The Charge of the Light Brigade relives that fateful day not through the opinions of historians but from the words of those that were there. This is the story of the charge told by the soldiers of both sides, in the most detailed description of the Battle of Balaklava yet written. Gallop with the light dragoons and lancers into the mouths of the Russian cannon as the shells and cannonballs decimate their ranks. Read of the desperate efforts to return down the Valley of Death as the enemy pressed around the remnants of the Light Brigade, and of the nine Victoria Crosses won that day.
Possibly more significant are the accusations and counter-arguments that followed the loss of the Light Brigade. Just who was responsible for that terrible blunder? The leading figures all defended their own positions, leading to presentations in Parliament and legal action. Yet one of those senior figures made an astonishing admission immediately after the battle, only to change his story when the charge became headline news. Just who was it that made the fatal error that cost the British Army its Light Brigade?
"Quotations from contemporary sources skillfully woven together . . . How literate those Victorians were, even the private soldiers!" — Historical Novels Review

Chapter 1

The Price of Glory

‘The enemy, strongly posted on the highest point of the ridges, and with a gun to indicate the whereabouts of their artillery, kept up a steady fire upon the division as it approached,’ ran the words of a report in The Times:

While with his heavy cavalry the Duke [of Cambridge] occupied their attention on his left, his right was quickly thrown forward, so as to turn their position. First came England’s Brigade, and then, taking ground still further on, the brigade of Guards, each throwing out skirmishers and keeping up a steady fire supported by the batteries. At charging pace, and with fixed bayonets, a battalion of Sir Richard England’s Brigade, carried the heights. The other battalions, following quickly and deploying, extended their line to the right. Then came the Guards still farther on, and the batteries between the intervals. Lockyer’s Brigade, in the attempt to get forward to the extreme right behind the Guards, was so impeded by the ground that it could not execute the movement in time, but its place was supplied by the light cavalry regiments and the guns of the Horse Artillery.

The report was not, as might be thought, a description of an early engagement in the Crimea. This action, in fact, took place a little more than twelve months earlier than the opening shots of the Russian war and the difficult ground described by the journalist was the rolling heath land around Chobham in Surrey. What The Times was reporting on was the first large-scale manoeuvres undertaken by the British Army since the Napoleonic Wars.

In the intervening decades the nature of the operations undertaken by the Army had changed significantly. The large field force assembled by the Duke of Wellington, complete with its highly-sophisticated logistics and command structure, which had campaigned for six years in the Iberian Peninsula and then Belgium, had long been dissolved. Britain’s enemies were no longer to be found in Europe and its army fought its battles against African chieftains or the Indian princes. Once a territory had been conquered and added to the ever-expanding Empire, the troops settled down to garrison and police the new colony.

Few troops remained in the United Kingdom but with no threat to the nation’s stability other than internal ones, this was of no great concern. As it transpired, it was internal conflict that raised public awareness of the weakened state of Britain’s home defence. In 1843 antitaxation riots in Wales put such a severe strain upon the army that Lieutenant General Sir Henry Hardinge, the Secretary at State for War, was obliged to introduce a bill which allowed the Government to call the ‘out-pensioners’ from Chelsea Hospital to act in aid of the civil powers if required. If the Army could not put down a riot without the help of pensioners then the country was clearly in a highly vulnerable state.

This was highlighted when relations between Britain and France deteriorated just three years later over the possible union of the French and Spanish thrones. This dispute, known as ‘The Affair of the Spanish Marriages’ led to calls for the embodiment of the Militia but this was rejected on the grounds of cost.

Britain remained in this potentially dangerous state until 1848 when events in France mirrored those of an earlier generation when Britain stood alone against the might of Napoleon. A revolution in France led to the declaration of a Second French Republic. Preaching yet again the ideals of the First Republic, liberté, égalité, fraternité, it was once more a Bonaparte that led its revolutionary government. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the nephew of Napoleon I and, like his uncle, he was not satisfied with merely being President of the Republic. In 1851 in a bizarre ‘self-coup’ he toppled his own regime to impose, the following year, a Second French Empire with himself as Napoleon III, Emperor of the French.

This, finally, concentrated the minds of ministers in Britain. Calls were once again made for embodying the Militia and for an increase in the establishment of the Army by changing the criteria of enlistment. In the debate on this subject in the House of Commons on 29 March 1852, Mr. W. Williams, the Member for Lambeth, asked why there was a need for further spending on the armed forces when there was already some 160,000 men under arms, Spencer Walpole, the recently appointed Home Secretary, replied:

It is true you have a large Army; but that Army is not a quarter of the army of Russia; not half the army of Prussia, not a third of the army of France, and very little more than the army of Belgium: but your Empire is ruled over by a Queen who has under her dominion one-sixth of the population and one-eighth of the surface of the habitable globe. You have colonial possessions which exhaust a great part of your forces. Other Powers have more compact dominions, and can, therefore, more readily concentrate their forces. Their troops are not spread abroad in weak detachments, which cannot be withdrawn, like those belonging to this country. The very greatness of your Empire, therefore is, in one sense of the word, a source of weakness.1

Walpole then set out the proposed changes to the terms of enlistment:

The House is aware that a recruit enlisting in the Army must not be more than 25 years of age, and that the standard of height is 5 feet 6 inches. We propose that the ages during which persons may volunteer or be balloted for, shall extend from 18 to 35 years. The consequence is, that with regard to those men who are upwards of 25 years of age, we shall not interfere with the recruiting for the Army, and as to those under that age, we shall not prevent them from enlisting if so disposed. With reference to the question of height, I may observe that the standard required by the present militia law is 5 feet 4 inches. The standard of height of the Russian infantry of the line is 5 feet 4 inches, in France it is 5 feet 1 inch English measure. [Laughter in the House.] Hon. Gentlemen may laugh at that; but, though I am speaking in the English House of Commons, we ought never to forgot that a nobler or more gallant soldiery never existed in the world than the French soldiery—and if we find that this people, who have fought throughout the length and breadth of Europe, have taken into their armies men of 5 feet 1 inch, we ought not to assume the military capacity is not to be found in men of 5 feet 2 inches.

Size, both in that of the men and in the total numbers of the Army, was not the British military’s only concern. Brigade and divisional structures, with all the support services, particularly the commissariat, had, under Wellington, evolved into remarkably efficient bodies. With so many regiments away from home for many years at a time garrisoning the Empire, those structures had long since been broken up. Britain no longer had the systems in place to enable it to campaign against a modern European army. Lord Panmure, a former Secretary-at-War, raised this point in the Commons in March 1852:

The system by which an army should be provisioned, moved, brought to action … is non-existent … We have no means of making general officers or of forming an efficient staff … For great operations we are inadequate.’2

It is the method, or lack of it, of ‘making of general officers’, which is generally considered to have been the prime reason for the mistakes that led to the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. It was not that the British Army lacked senior officers, the Army had plenty of those. What Pammure meant by ‘making’ was making them fit in terms of practise and experience in commanding large bodies of troops on campaign and in battle.

This was because it was possible for an officer to rise to senior rank without actually having any experience of battle due to the system by which commissions could be purchased. The prices of commissions were laid down in Army Regulations and ranged from £840 for an ensign in an ordinary infantry regiment to £9,000 (little short of £750,000 in today’s terms) for a lieutenant colonelcy in the Foot Guards. On promotion an officer sold his original commission, which meant that he only had to pay the additional sum for the next rank. So a captain in a cavalry regiment could sell his commission for £3,225 and would therefore only need to find £1,350 to be able to purchase a majority at the regulation price of £4.575. In peace time, when opportunities for promotion were limited, few commissions were sold for the regulation price. Often a ‘regimental value’ was added to each commissioned rank with the more prestigious regiments commanding up to twice the regulation price. This tended to disappear in wartime as casualties led to many more vacancies and supply and demand levelled out. Another factor that influenced the value of a commission was whether a regiment was due to go on overseas service or was returning from an overseas posting. Generally, when a regiment was ordered overseas, wealthy officers would sell their commissions and purchase another one in a regiment that was staying in the UK. Thus a rich officer could move through the ranks of the Army and never see service beyond Britain’s shores. Above the rank of lieutenant colonel promotion was usually dependent upon seniority.

The effect this had upon the Army in general was exemplified by the Duke of York’s Adjutant-General, writing towards the end of the eighteenth century:

There is not a young man in the Army that cares one farthing whether his commanding officer, the brigadier or the commander-in-chief approves his conduct or not. His promotion depends not on their smiles or frowns. His friends [or his family] can give him a thousand pounds which with to go to the auction rooms in Charles Street and in a fortnight he becomes a captain. Out of fifteen regiments of cavalry and twenty-six of infantry which we have here [in Flanders], twenty-one are commanded literally by boys or idiots.

The origins of the system of purchase date back to the days of Oliver Cromwell whose so-called ‘Commonwealth of England’ was nothing short of a military dictatorship enforced by his generals who were professional soldiers. After the Restoration of the monarchy it was the agreed policy of the state that the Army should never again be led by professional military men. To ensure this, not only was the pay for officers meagre but each commission and step in rank had to be purchased. This meant that only the wealthiest of individuals could afford to become senior officers and such men were the rich landowners, the very people who had the least, or nothing, to gain from a military revolution. As Lord Palmerston explained:

It was very desirable to connect the higher classes of Society with the Army … If the connection between the Army and the higher class of society were dissolved, then the Army would present a dangerous and unconstitutional appearance. It was only when the Army was unconnected with those whose property gave them an interest in the country, and was commanded by unprincipled military adventurers, that it ever became formidable to the liberties of the nation.3

The purchase system certainly ensured that there would never be a revolution in Britain as the Army was led, from top to bottom, by the aristocracy, the wealthy merchants and land owners; in other words, those that did not rely upon their pay and whose fortunes were dependent upon the continuance of the status quo. This led to a stability not seen in other countries and, in turn, allowed industry and trade to flourish. The purchase system contributed in no small measure to Britain becoming the most dominant nation of the nineteenth century.

Yet wealth and breeding does not necessarily equate to ability and many of the senior regimental ranks were filled with men of limited skill and little experience. Whilst officers could reach the rank of lieutenant colonel by purchase, they had to do so step by step, with a minimum period of time having to be spent at each grade. This was supposed to ensure they gained experience at every level of command but the speed at which an individual rose through the ranks depended upon how much money that person was able or willing to spend. Once the rank of lieutenant colonel had been attained, promotion through to full general was normally a matter of seniority, though the position of colonel was often an honorary one. It was possible for a deserving officer to be promoted on merit, but this was by far the exception.

Except in wartime, demand for first commissions usually outstripped supply, which of course pushed up prices, and limited the opportunities for the less wealthy. The Duke of York put in place one significant improvement, which was that those who had graduated from the recently-formed Royal Military College should be given priority for first commissions without purchase, though there was only ever a small number of such openings. Then, in 1849, it was necessary for new candidates to pass a qualifying examination before being placed on the list of potential new officers kept at the Horse Guards. The exam, though was only a formality, for it was almost unknown for anyone to fail, and being placed on the list did not mean obtaining a commission. For those without money or influence the chance of obtaining a commission was slight, as a report on the purchase system revealed:

[they] were told that their son’s names might be put down in the list, but that there was such a number before them that it was impossible that they would get commissions, and they did not get them. At that very time, a man with good interest [i.e. influence] would have got a commission at once.4

Notwithstanding the supposed requirement for commissions to be purchased, there were always free commissions to be had, not least because commissions were firmly ruled not to be heritable property and therefore the death of an officer automatically offered a free promotion to the most senior man below him and so on down, until ultimately creating a non-purchase vacancy for a new entrant as an ensign or second lieutenant. Where commissions were available with or without purchase within a regiment, such promotion was decided upon entirely by seniority – providing, in the case of purchased commissions, the eligible applicant had the necessary funds. Therefore, no officer was permitted to be promoted over the heads of more senior officers unless those ahead of him could not afford the asking price. Only if no officers in the regiment could afford the price of the next step in rank could that position be offered to someone from another regiment. This merely compounded the problem of entirely unsatisfactory, but wealthy, officers reaching high rank and of more deserving, but poor men, remaining in the junior ranks for decades.

Whilst it may seem clear that such a system of obtaining commissions, whether it be by purchase or seniority, was, by the mid-eighteenth century, an anachronism which had no place in the world’s leading industrial democracy, it still had many supporters. Sir Frederick Peel, the Member of Parliament for Bury, stood up in the House of Commons on 4 March 1856 to give his views on the subject:

Assuming it to be true that all men who entered the army did so with the desire of attaining as speedily as possible to the rank of colonel or general, or to some position of higher authority and greater responsibility than they were likely to reach in private life or in a civil profession, he could not understand how a system, the effect of which was to accelerate the accomplishment of such objects, could he viewed otherwise than with favour by those who had the means of bringing themselves within its operation by the purchase of commissions.5

This, then, was the accepted system of promotion in the British Army at the time of the Crimean War. When it became obvious that a war with Russia was unavoidable, the men at Horse Guards had to choose general officers to lead an expeditionary force from a pool of wealthy, influential men, many of whom had little or no combat experience, and who had purchased their way to the top, as a report after the war made clear:

Whenever the … advisors of the crown are obliged to … recommend Her Majesty to name a commander for her army in the field, they must necessarily select from among those who had obtained high rank in the army. The great majority of these officers, however, will have risen by purchase, obtaining their rank not from any acknowledged fitness, but from the current of promotion and the opportunities of buying advancement. This country will therefore commence the operations of war under a disadvantage compared with foreign states, where all the officers in the higher grades will have been subjected to general selections and may, therefore, if the power of selection has been honestly and wisely exercised, be all men of known efficiency and merit.

The first selection to be made for the expected operations against Russia was that of Commander-in-Chief. Of those officers considered most suitable, Lord Hardinge, Lord Gough, Lord Combermere and Lord Raglan, were all at the pinnacle of their professions. All, were either full generals or field marshals who had held high positions within the Army and had an enormous wealth of experience in the field. Unfortunately, only one, Lord Raglan, was under the age of seventy.

FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, had become the military secretary to Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, at the age of just twenty-two. He had proven to be extraordinarily brave, leading one of the assaulting parties that famously stormed the fortress of Badajoz in 1812. When his right arm was shattered towards the end of the Battle of Waterloo he simply walked to the rear to find a surgeon. When Somerset reached the makeshift operating theatre the surgeon told him to lie down on a table. He then removed Somerset’s arm between the shoulder and the elbow with a saw. FitzRoy Somers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 The Price of Glory
• Chapter 2 Holy War
• Chapter 3 Inaction at the Alma
• Chapter 4 The Flank March
• Chapter 5 The Siege of Sevastopol
• Chapter 6 ‘The Brilliant Attack’
• Chapter 7 ‘That Thin Red Streak’
• Chapter 8 ‘Forward the Light Brigade’
• Chapter 9 ‘Magnificent But Not War’
• Chapter 10 ‘To Do or Die’
• Chapter 11 ‘Someone Had Blundered’
• Chapter 12 ‘Honour the Light Brigade’
• Chapter 13 Tarnished Glory
• References and Notes
• Bibliography and Sources
• Plate section