The Misunderstood Order That Sent 660 British Light Cavalrymen Into the Wrong Valley at Balaclava on 25 October 1854 and Killed 110 of Them

The Crimean War of 1853-1856 was a coalition war fought by Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia-Piedmont against Imperial Russia. The allied strategic objective was the capture of the Russian naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea. The allied army had landed in the Crimea in September 1854 and was conducting a long siege of Sevastopol.

The Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 was a Russian field-army attempt to break through to the British supply base at the small Crimean port of Balaclava. The battle ran through most of the morning. The Russian initial assault had been repulsed by the Scottish 93rd Highlanders (“the Thin Red Line”) and by a charge of the British Heavy Cavalry Brigade. By midday the Russian withdrawal had begun.

Russian artillery had captured several British naval guns from the Causeway Heights overlooking the valley between the South Valley (where the British camp was) and the North Valley. The Russian gunners were dismantling the captured British guns and beginning to remove them.

The order

The British commander-in-chief Lord Raglan — observing the action from the Sapouné Heights above the valleys — wanted to recover the British naval guns before the Russians could remove them. He dictated a written order to his aide-de-camp Captain Louis Nolan:

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.

From Raglan’s elevated position the captured British guns on the Causeway Heights were visible. From the cavalry commander Lord Lucan’s position in the valley they were not. The only Russian guns Lucan could see were the Russian artillery battery at the far end of the North Valley — approximately 1.5 miles distant, on the eastern slope, with Russian infantry and cavalry deployed on both flanking ridges.

Nolan delivered the order. Lucan asked which guns. Nolan pointed — by most contemporary accounts indicating the direction of the visible Russian battery at the end of the North Valley rather than the captured British guns on the Causeway Heights. Lucan, baffled but following the chain of command, ordered the Light Brigade under his brother-in-law Lord Cardigan to charge the wrong guns.

The Light Brigade had 673 mounted officers and men at the start of the charge — though only about 660 reached the launch point in the valley.

The charge

The charge began at approximately 11:10 a.m. on 25 October 1854. The Light Brigade — 4th, 8th, 11th, 13th, and 17th Light Dragoons and Hussars and Lancers — moved down the North Valley at an initial trot, then at a canter, then at a full gallop.

The Russian artillery battery at the end of the valley opened fire at maximum range. Russian infantry on both flanking ridges opened rifle fire on the cavalry as it passed. The Light Brigade was within a fire envelope from three sides for the duration of the 1.5-mile charge.

Captain Nolan — riding in front of the brigade — was killed by the first artillery shell within the first minute. His final shouted action, which witnesses later described, appeared to be an attempt to wave the brigade off the wrong direction and to redirect it toward the captured British guns. He was dead before his intent could be communicated.

The surviving British cavalry reached the Russian battery at the end of the valley after approximately seven minutes. They sabred the Russian gunners, broke through the immediate Russian cavalry counter-attack, and then began the return ride back through the same fire-envelope they had just survived.

The total elapsed time from order-given to brigade-returned was approximately 20 minutes. The Light Brigade lost 110 men killed, 161 wounded, 57 captured, and 375 horses killed. Effective brigade strength at the end of the engagement was 195 mounted officers and men.

The aftermath

The French general Pierre Bosquet — observing the charge from the heights — reportedly said to a British liaison officer:

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. C’est de la folie. (“It is magnificent, but it is not war. It is madness.”)

The phrase has been quoted continuously since.

The recriminations among the senior British officers — Raglan, Lucan, Cardigan, Nolan (posthumously) — about responsibility for the order produced a public scandal in Britain through the winter of 1854-55. The conclusion of the contemporary military court of inquiry was that no single officer had been individually responsible; the order had been ambiguous, the relay had been imperfect, the chain of command had failed. Lucan was recalled to London on 27 February 1855 over Raglan’s objection but was eventually exonerated. Cardigan returned to England as a popular hero.

Tennyson

The British poet laureate Alfred Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade during early December 1854 in response to the Times dispatches by William Howard Russell — the first modern war correspondent. The poem was published in the Examiner on 9 December 1854, approximately six weeks after the events.

The poem’s six stanzas — “Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward, / All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred” — codified the heroic memory of the charge in the English language. The poem’s moral framing — the courage of obedience to a flawed order — is the Victorian-era reconstruction. The actual contemporary military assessment had been that the charge was a disaster of command and a misuse of an elite formation.

Tennyson’s version won.

The survivors

Approximately 100 of the original 600 survivors of the charge were still alive at the 50th anniversary in 1904. Approximately 20 were at the 60th anniversary in 1914. The last surviving member of the Light Brigade was Edwin Hughes of the 13th Light Dragoons, who had been 23 at the charge. He died at Blackpool on 18 May 1927, aged 96 — 73 years after the engagement.

The British military reformed the cavalry-officer training and command-relay procedures across 1855-1856 directly in response to the Balaclava failure. The post-Crimean restructuring of the British Army — which would produce the 1870s Cardwell reforms — was driven by the broader command-failure pattern that the Light Brigade charge had exemplified.

The Russian battery at the end of the North Valley is now a small commemorative site. The captured British naval guns from the Causeway Heights, which Raglan had originally been trying to recover, were indeed removed by the Russians later the same afternoon. They were never seen again.