Charge of The Light Brigade: Someone Blundered

The Charge of the Light Brigade rides high in the annals of military history for its incompetence, courage, and sheer bloody-mindedness, but it was in reality a minor engagement in a much broader conflict. The Crimean War, which was to be a calamity for all participants, was being fought to stabilise and defend a tottering Ottoman Empire against Russian aggression. Britain, France and their allies feared the Russians would take Constantinople and they were desperate to deny the Russian Navy access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Allies did not land at Kalamita Bay on the Crimean peninsula until July, 1854, already 8 months into the war which up to that point had been fought largely on the Baltic coast and the outlying western regions of the Ottoman Empire. The landing itself had been unopposed and the allies were able to establish a camp at Balaclava which quickly became their main port of supply, and following an early victory at the Battle of Alma they very rapidly laid siege to the Crimean city of Sevastopol, the capture of which was their main strategic priority.

Prince Menshikov, the Russian military commander, who had declined to fully engage the Allied forces since the shock defeat at Alma, where a vastly superior Russian army had been cleared from the heights surrounding Balaclava, now gathered his forces for an all out assault on the port itself. If he could capture the Allies only access for re-supply then they would be stranded and would either have to abandon the peninsula or, in time, be forced to surrender. On 25 October, 1854, he attacked. The allies were heavily outnumbered and taken completely by surprise. Balaclava was defended by a ring of Redoubts (large fortified pits armed with artillery) but these proved to be ineffective as the Turkish troops manning them put up only patchy resistance and they were speedily abandoned. The Russian cavalry were now swooping down from the heights unopposed. Chaos reigned in the Allied camp as no one quite seemed to know what was happening. The attack was only stalled by the quick thinking of General Sir Colin Campbell who led his 93rd Highland Brigade into the fray and held up the Russian cavalry at bayonet point, the famous ‘Thin Red Line.’ The Highlanders had provided the allies with enough time to organise and soon after the Russian cavalry were assailed by General Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade and were pushed back in a ferocious struggle which because overnight rain had moistened uniforms and blunted swords actually resulted in very few fatalities.