The Cause Of The Charge Of Balaclava

This book revolves around an event known as 'Charge of the Light Brigade'. It was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task for which the light cavalry were well-suited. However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately, and the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains.

First hand accounts of the men who took part in the heroic and tragic Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava on the 25th October 1854. Previously unpublished biographies of the men and photographs bring their stories to life. What became of our heroes? Some died penniless while others found fame and fortune. Set within an unrelenting and cruel military campaign, where many would perish, unravelling the myths to find many of the missing Chargers was a massive undertaking.

Balaclava 1854 examines in detail the crucial battle of Balaclava during The Crimean War. The port of Balaclava was crucial in maintaining the supply lines for the Allied siege of Sevastapol. The Russian attack in October 1854 therefore posed a major threat to the survival of the Allied cause. This book includes: the attack on the redoubts; the action of 'the thin red line' in which an assortment of about 700 British troops, some invalids, were abandoned by their Turkish allies; the subsequent charge of the Heavy Brigade; and the most famous part of the battle: the infamous charge of the Light Brigade.

Unravels facts from fiction about one of the most controversial episodes in military history: the British cavalry’s Crimean War disaster. This book shatters many long-held conceptions of how and why this military action happened, and who was to blame. You’ll ride with the Regiments down the valley, visit the Russian guns as they frantically fire from three sides, before limping painfully back up the valley with the survivors. The story switches skillfully from the strategic and tactical problems of the battlefield to what it was like for the trooper in the valley or a Russian gunner serving his cannon. Through the novel use of sketches you can, at every stage, look down the on the battlefield from the same position as that used by the British commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan. You’ll see the situation as Raglan saw it when he gave each of his infamous four orders that led to the charge. The fourth order, that launched the Brigade down the valley of death, involved four “horsemen of calamity.” Raglan gave the order, Captain Nolan delivered it, Lord Lucan received it, and the Earl of Cardigan executed it. History has disagreed over the share of the blame. The author makes a masterly analysis of the probabilities and discusses factors previously overlooked. There is a cogent argument, never made before, that the blunder was deliberate. This book is probably the closest we will ever get to the truth about the charge of the Light Brigade.

An in-depth analysis of this disastrous action during the Battle of Balaklava in 1854.

Lord Cardigan's cavalry charge on 25 October 1854 at the battle of Balaclava 'into the valley of death' is surely one of the most famous actions in military history. Is there anything new to say about it in print? Yes there is, because most publications have concentrated on commanding officers Lucan, Cardigan and the fatal actions of Nolan. But there were 670 men in the charge and by collating the evidence from the many eyewitnesses James Bancroft offers a new and more accurate appraisal of events. Cardigan's description of the action was quoted at length in the House of Commons: '...with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left... when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire.' One question of course - which the author, who has been studying the subject for many years, addresses - is how anyone survived.

For James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, leading the Light Brigade at Balaclava was but one incident in a life of sensation and notoriety. Donald Thomas’s biography, originally published in 1977, and based on new material when originally published, shows this most controversial Victorian against a panorama of regimental intrigue and aristocratic luxury. Dismissed from the army for ‘revolting’ conduct, Cardigan bought the command of the 11th Hussars (the ‘Cherry Bums’) for £40,000 a few years later. Regimental rivalries led to the ‘Black Bottle’ scandal of 1840 and to a duel in which he shot a brother officer. Charged with attempted murder, Cardigan was the only Victorian peer to be tried by the House of Lords. Nonetheless, his seductions of other men’s wives rivalled his regimental misdemeanours in press reports. He was jeered int he streets, hissed at the theatre and burnt in effigy. It took the glory and the folly of Balaclava to turn ‘this plague-spot of the British army’ into ‘the most popular soldier in England’. Greeted everywhere by cheering crowds, their new hero fought duels and libel actions against those who denied his bravery before the Russian guns. For all his misbehaviour, Cardigan remains warm-blooded, generous, impulsive and courageous, as well as obstinate, proud and sometimes ridiculous. Hated by numerous men, and adored by many women, his elopement with the beautiful Adeline Horsey de Horsey was a triumph of his old age.

This history is a war story of astonishing courage and honor, of stupidity, of blood, death, agony -- and waste. Nothing in British campaign history has ever equaled the tragic farce that was the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War's Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854. In this fascinating study, Cecil Woodham-Smith shows that responsibility for the fatal mismanagement of the affair rested with the Earls of Cardigan and Lucan, brothers-in-law and sworn enemies for more than thirty years. In revealing the combination of pride and obstinacy that was to prove so fatal, Woodham-Smith gives us a picture of a vanished world, in which heroism and military glory guaranteed an immortality impossible in a more cynical age.