In Our Time - The Charge of the Light Brigade

Episode Date: January 10, 2008

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Charge of the Light - an event of no military significance that has become iconic in the British historical imagination. On November 14th 1854 The Times newspaper reported on a minor cavalry skirmish in the Crimean War: “They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war... At the distance of 1200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain”.This is the debacle of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which made little difference to the Crimean War yet has become deeply embedded in British culture. It helped to provoke the resignation of a Prime Minister and it profoundly changed British attitudes to war and to the soldiers who fought in them. It also brought censorship to bear on previously uncensored war reporting and inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to sit down and write “All in the Valley of Death rode the six hundred”.With Mike Broers, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall; Trudi Tate, Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Saul David, Visiting Professor of Military History at the University of Hull

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, on November the 14th, 1854, W.H. Russell, in the Times newspaper, reported on a minor cavalry skirmish in the Crimean War. Quote, they swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun, in all the pride and splendour of war. We could hardly believe the evidence of our senses. Surely that handful of men were not going to charge an army in position. At a distance of 1,200 yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth from 30 iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks by dead men and horses,

by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plane. This is the charge of the Light Brigade, an event of no military significance that's become iconic in the British imagination because of its aristocratic courage, its glorious failure, and its spectacular incompetence. It helped to provoke the resignation of a prime minister, it changed British attitudes to war and the soldiers who fought in them, and it inspired Alfred Tennyson to write All in the Valley of Death, Road the 600. With me to discuss the charge of a light brigade,

Assault David, visiting professor of military history at the University of Hull, Trudy Tate, fellow in English literature at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and Mike Brer's lecturer in modern history at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Mike Brose, the Crimean War is not that well-known. It was the only major war in Europe between Waterloo and the First World War, and it was played for big stakes. How did Britain get involved?

Well, obviously, in any major conflict, you're dealing with things on several different levels. British involvement goes back, really, to a conversation between Zara, Sanger the 2nd, and the British Prime Minister in 1853. When the Tsar outlines his vision to him that basically Russia is going to kick the ordnance out of the Balkans and create a Balkans as we know them now of small independent countries, all Slavic, and really all sort of under Russian influence, and that would include a Russian occupation of Constantinople and the Dardanelles, which frightens the British to death.

They're really drawn into it because the conflict starts between France and Russia. France is unnerved by the Russians too, and there's a dispute between the Russians and the French over who controls, who has protection over the holy places in Palestine, particularly the Church of the Nativity. The French are drawn into the conflict because Napoleon III, who's the new French emperor, is beholden to the Catholic Church

in a big way for having seized power. So he has to face up to the Russians. But when he does, he finds a very ready ally in the British, and that's really how it begins. So we start with the causes, but the cause of the war is given as the protection of the holy places, which the Russians say that the Ottoman Empire, Turks are not pursuing well enough. But they're drawn into war because of strategic and tactical reasons.

They don't want the Russians to take Constantin and O'Oval. They don't want the Russians to be a present eastern Mediterranean. They don't want the Russians to have access to the Suez Canal and interfere with the great game over India. And so we've got a good old strategic battle going on there. How was that war initially presented to the British public? Well, the British public is ready for this. Again, this is where we're operating on different levels.

The British government's worried about the Great Game. But if you go back to 18... The Great Game being in the East. Sorry, yes, the Great Game is really control of India, control of the Eastern Mediterranean, control of Egypt. But for the British public, Russia has been, for several years, an ogre. You know, Britain, obviously, in the 19th century, pins its identity on an attachment to liberal parliamentary government.

There's a revolution in Hungary in 1849 when the Hungarians try to break away from the Austrian Empire. The Austrians are busy fighting elsewhere in Italy and in Germany. And the Russians step in. The then-Zar, Nicholas first, calls himself the gendarme of Europe. And he sends in a Russian army to crush the Hungarians. And the Hungarian leader at the time was a man, called Louis Casuth. And Louis Casuth, in 1848-49, was at least as popular in Britain as Garibaldi as a champion of liberal parliamentary values. The Hungarian revolution is ruthlessly crushed by a

Russian army. Cosuth flees to London where he's lionised by the chattering classes. And so really, it's very, very easy for the British government to get the public onside. We're beginning to see ourselves not without some cause as the bastion of liberal democracy. and at that part of century, and the public's rather proud of that, especially the rising middle classes will come back to them, the ever-rising middle classes, but we'll come back to them recently. So the mood is okay, as it were, if we're taking on this ogo. We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got the men.

We've got the guns, is it? We've got the money to, and da-da-da-da-da-da, but Russia shall not have Constantinople. Yeah. So they're ready for it. Very much so. Russia has been portrayed as a dark force of reaction. Britain's been actually part of a liberal group in Western Europe with France. They've been intervening in Spain, for example, with the French since the 1830s to bolster a constitutional regime against a Spanish rebellion

who's only backer as Russia, a reactionary Spanish peasant revolt. So the overmighty Russia is what they're against. Trudy Tate, the Times sent out a report on Irishman, W.H. Russell, he'd been sent there to report on the war, but he was extremely significant in this war. Can you say a little about him and what he did that was so significant? Okay. Russell is seen as the first war correspondent. In fact, he wasn't the first, but he's probably the most important of the early ones. He was the first to do eyewitness reports.

In earlier wars, you tended to get reports written by serving officers or else newspapers just stole them from other newspapers, usually abroad. So there's this idea of organizing the war correspondent. sending him out, he looks, he has eyewitness reports, he also talks to lots of people. I should perhaps add, too, that there's no censorship at that stage, so what Russell says, by and large, is true, or certainly true as he understands it.

Can I say more about that at this point? Okay. That seems to be one of the most important things. It's the birth of modern war reporting, but also what Tennyson or Dickens were reading in the newspaper over their breakfast about the Crimean War was much more accurate than anything we've ever had about what.

warfare, and that's because there is no censorship. Censorship is introduced at the end of the war. And so, yeah, I think I'd want to make that point. And also, it was helped, in that sense, by the extension of the telegraph to Vienna, from London to Vienna. So it took much less time than hitherto to get the news back to London. It wasn't back in a flash, but it was back in much nearer a flash than ever in history before. Yes, I mean, depending on where the war was, of course, yes.

I mean, it still took close to three weeks to get back. I think sometimes it's misrepresented as if it came instantly. It didn't. But three weeks did seem like a short time, and people worried about that, that we're talking about it, we're writing about it too quickly before we've had time to think about it. That's quite an issue at the time. But his access was extraordinary.

He will come to Lord Raglan. Let's come to Rod Rugglin. No, he's directing operations. He's sitting there on the spine, the causeway, looking down the two valleys and looking at the guns and so and so forth. And next to him is Russell. Yeah, well, Russell's all over the places in all sorts of different places. But yes, he sees so much.

And the access, and the idea of going for the men who did the work was bred into him in his early days in Irish politics, wasn't it? Absolutely, yeah. I mean, he'd long been interested in things military from childhood. But yes, he was a reporter in Irish politics. And Philip Knightley makes the point that when he went to cover an Irish election, where everybody else was going to the polling stations, he went to the hospital

because he thought everybody would pass through the casualty ward, everybody that was interesting and important. And so he stationed himself in the casualty ward and learned what was going on. And the Times was very happy with him. They saw him as very resourceful. So although it was three weeks later, it still felt very present to the British public

to a hugely growing British reading public and of all classes. And what was the generally, what was the public response to these graphic and beautifully written from even my recitation? reading of his report, a bit of it from the beginning. What was the public's general reaction? What happened?

Okay, yes. I think it's very complicated. You get a new idea of public opinion emerging at that time, okay? And the Times plays a pivotal role, where we tend to say the Times represented public opinion, aren't they clever? If we want to know what the public thinks, we read the Times. But in fact, the public isn't writing the Times.

They're reading it, whether they agreed with it, I think it's actually much more complicated Let's cut through, though. The public was outraged, and it affected people like Flores Nightingale to guard there, a Mary Seacolde got there. Let's go on the general point. Sorry, you're so blunt.

The public read this, and they were outraged by what he wrote, and so just tell us about that, and it moved, Floris Nightingale, and so on. Okay, yeah. Russell represents the kind of suffering of the soldiers, and people start to look at soldiers much more favourably, I think, rather than regarding them as rather low. So there's this sense that the soldiers are doing a really good job of fighting,

but the administration is doing a really bad job. The aristocrats who run the army can't manage to get the men and the tents and the food all at the same place at the same time. So there's a real reaction against that. His description of the soldiers is all the more galling because he points out that the French are treating their soldiers better, they're housing them, housing,

they're tenting them better, their medical treatment is better, they have nuns there as nurses, and we are treating our soldiers, diabolically, there's no food, there's very little protection. He's really going for it. And the British public is, on the whole, very moved by this. And people like, Forrest Nightgaly, Mary Siegel, go out there.

Let's talk about the command now, Saul Davis, of the British Army and the current military. Can you give us some view of that? Yes, I mean, it's often been portrayed as aristocrats leading these very noble soldiers. And, of course, we can mirror that with the First World War, the lions led by donkeys. And this was really the first time that image began to, gain play, I suppose, in the minds of British people, of course, because of the press, as Trudy's been pointed out, there is some truth in this. In fact, there's a fair bit of truth

in this. So who's actually commanding the army in the Crimea, Lord Raglan. Now, he's ennobled because of his army service, but he is the son of a duke. He is a man who comes from the typical class that would have held the upper commands in the British army at this time. We're not talking about only aristocrats, but we're talking about aristocrats, greater gentry and incredibly rich merchants. We are talking about people with money. Why people with money? Because the purchase system is what got you the commission in the first place. In the cavalry? In the army generally. Everyone in the army, apart from engineers and artillery, had to buy their commission. That means the vast majority of officers that had to purchase

their commission. And we are not talking about insignificant amounts either, because if you bought the colonelcy of a cavalry regiment, for example, you would not only have to pay, the standard price, which was about £6,000, depending on which regiment it was. Six thousand pounds, their money? £6,000 and their money, multiply that by 50 to 60 times today. You would also have to pay a surcharge.

You're talking about £300,000, but you'd also have to pay a surcharge. It's said that Lord Cardigan, one of the commanders in the Crimea, paid £30,000 for his commission in the 11thazars, his command of the 11thazars, the colonel. So that's...

We're getting on for a million, though, right? We're talking about a lot of money. Only the richest people in the country could afford that sort of cash, and they tended to be aristocrats or the very rich, as I pointed out. Can we narrow this down, Saul, David, for a moment? We're talking about Lord Cardigan. Sorry, Lord Raglan, 65 had fought with Wellington, but never led troops in battle.

We're talking about Lord Lucan, who's the Major General. Going back to Concerating on the Light Brigade, now focusing here, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan. Let's say these are three aristocrats involved for our story. One of the problems was that Lucan and Cardigan had been brothers-in-law, but they didn't speak to each other. They literally didn't speak to each other, even though they were giving orders, supposed to be giving orders and taking orders from each other. Now, can you just talk about those three and give us a bit of background? Cardigan kept a yacht in the Black Sea, insisted that his light brigade of 600 men had cherry-colored trousers and glittering uniforms and so on.

Can we just have a bit more about those three? Well, first point to make about ragging, you've alluded to it. He hasn't fought a war for 40 years. His last experience is the Battle of Waterloo, at which he fought as a senior staff officer, military secretary to the Duke of Wellington, and that's quite important. That's one of the reasons he gets the command in 1854 in the first place

because he's associated with Wellington, the greatest soldier that Britain's ever produced. Certainly the Victorians would have seen him in that way. But the point about Raglands, he's never actually commanded troops. He's been a staff officer and a very good one, but that is very different to actually commanding troops in the field. He's given the field command in the Crimea,

and his cavalry, which is almost the always the most glamorous arm of the military, is under the control, as you say, of these two aristocrats. Lucan is the divisional commander. He has two brigades under him, the heavy brigade and the Light Brigade. The Light Brigade is commanded by Lord Cardigan. They are brothers-in-law in the sense that he's still technically married to Cardigan's sister. Lucan is still technically married. But they've fallen out badly.

They're separated, and as you say, the brothers aren't speaking to each other. Now, when Raglan heard that those two were appointed to those positions, he immediately objected and said, this is madness. He was a very good friend of Cardigans, I might add, not so much of Lucans, a personal social friend of Cardigans. So he was quite happy with Cardigans' appointment, but not so much with Lukens, and with very good reason. Not only was there this feuding, which of course could and ultimately did lead, or at least contributed to the disaster of the charge, but there was also a sense that these two had got their positions, simply because they had cash and because they had connections. Neither Cardigan nor Lucan had ever commanded troops in battle before. Lukan had a little bit of experience fighting with the Russians, ironically,

against the Turks in an earlier war, but neither of them had any proper experience of war. Can you tell us just briefly a little about the Light Brigade, 657 men, horses, just give us some idea of their efficiency, their status where they were in the British Army in Crimea? Apart from the guards regiments, the foot guards regiments in the infantry, the cavalry were the most glamorous regiments. They were the regiments that the higher social status you had,

those were the sort of regiments you would have aspired to. They were the most expensive to get into, and they were the most expensive to maintain yourself when you were in there. Because not only did you have to pay for your horse, and usually more than one horse of your own officer, you also had these gorgeous uniform to contend with. But what actually did the cavalry do? Well, Raglan knew the cavalry well from the peninsular war

and also the wars generally at the Napoleonic period. And almost in every case, they had been handled badly. There was a sense among senior officers with experience in the British Army that the cavalry were a bit of a loose cannon, if that's not mixing my metaphors too much. For the simple reason that its stated aim was in the Light Brigade's case to act as reconnaissance troops, support troops, and to mop up a defeated enemy.

The Heavory Cavalry is slightly different. The Heavy Brigade is used more for shock taxes. But the Light Brigade were never really intended to be used for charges, and certainly not against fixed gun positions. And I'll pass over quickly the business that the British and the French had been at each other's threats for several centuries. They came together for this. They came together more and more in the 19th century.

And even though Lord Raglan kept calling the enemy the French, I forgot the day of the Russians, they still operated together. Let's go on to this. We were trying to explain. get the Russian naval base at the Bastopol. There was the siege and then the attack. Let's go for the Light Brigade charge. Can I start with you, Mike? Please all join in. An order came down. Who's got the order? I've got it in front of him. Is anyone want to read it? No, right. The Russians' counterattack took away some guns from little redoubts defended by

the Turkish army. Raglan saw the guns going and in his mind was that Wellington had never lost a gun in his entire career. This must be stopped. So he sent an eye. order down, he was overlooking the whole battle and he said, Lord Raglan wishes the cabal to advance rapidly to the front, following the enemy, followed the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany.

French cavalry is on your left. Immediate. Right, then what happened? Well, they charged the wrong position. No, first of all, Captain Nolan. Captain Nolan? Yeah. He gave the order to Captain Nolan to gather because he was the best galloper that he had. He could go down this escarpment faster than anybody else. Right. Back to

saw. Yeah, they give it to Captain Nolan. It's an unfortunate choice. He's known, as you say, as the best galloper, the best rider on the staff. In other words, he can get the order there the quickest. But what is also known and what is not taking account of is that Nolan is very angry. He's a relatively junior staff officer. He's a captain. He's on the staff of the quartermaster general airy who actually writes out the order, although it's dictated by Ragdon himself. And it's well known that Nolan does not believe the cavalry of being well handled. He wants them to be more aggressively, and this is his opportunity. And I am absolutely convinced that when he gets down onto the valley floor with this order,

and he seeks out the man who's the order is sent to, Lucan, who's in command of the cavalry, he does more than it actually says on the order. At no stage, I have never been able to find a single document that actually confirms the opinion of some historians that Raglan himself said he must attack immediately. Mike, because he was still in dispute as to where the blunder was. We're talking about the blunderer. Someone had blundered. Now then Raglan sends this.

which is reasonably clear, I think, but anyway, Nolan takes it. Nolan has his own agenda, which we think because he was killed immediately at the charge started. We think that Nolan, as Saul has said, interpreted because of his own lights as to what the coverer should do. Right. What do you think? Well, I'm inclined to agree with Saul, because the order that was given is a perfectly sensible order. because what you're doing is using light cavalry to pursue retreating troops or maneuvering troops and that's what you do with light cavalry.

They're there to hurry, they're there to make trouble. That's the order that was given. When you stop to think about it, successful cavalry charges all through the 19th century are carried out by heavy cavalry. They're the impact players. The Scots Grays at Waterloo, is the classic British example. Murat turned it into an art form.

Murat was Napoleon. cavalry commander who turned the French cavalry from being a joke into the weapon of mass destruction, really, of the Napoleonic Wars. And what you do is you use light cavalry, like the Light Brigade, Lancers, Hazars, to pursue to Harry. So the order that was given is a classic order from someone who served in the Napoleonic Wars. Artillery are very vulnerable unless they're in front of you firing. If you get in among them, you'll take the guns. So what you do is you send light troops to pursue lightly armed skirmishers who'll be defending the guns. You would never send light cavalry up the valley.

That is a classic error, and someone who served in the Napoleonic Wars would know that. Right, Trude, do you want to come in? Because what he's got, you see, he's got two lots of guns. He's got the guns being hauled away by the Russians in one part of the valley, and he's got the great guns in position, two miles away at the end of the valley. but Lucan and Cardigan, when Nolan comes in the... Can't see the two lots of guns. All they can see is the big army guns at the end.

So this might be the cause of the confusion. Exactly, yes, that's the point I was going to make, that they're down low and they can't see. One of the interesting things is everybody sees something different in this event, and that's why everybody argues about it afterwards. It's always an issue in military history, I think. So the order comes down. It may well have been quite clear, but if you can't see the guns,

what guns are we supposed to take, they say? and that's where it's alleged that Nolan points down the valley. Yes. Go on then. One of you... I would dispute that because you would know. Your training would tell you that you do not use light cavalry to charge heavy gun positions. That is just the way it is. And especially someone who's learned it by the book, as these people have, would never, ever look at a big gun emplacement like that and say,

I'm going to use his ours to take it. Let's stay with the blunder for a moment or two, then get to the charge. So what happened? Did, because we don't, we haven't got, Nolan had no time to give evidence. If they didn't know that, Mike, if you're absolutely right, and they're not going to charge you at the heavy guns, because that's their training. Is it because Nolan was misinterpreted? Or because Lucan didn't pass on a message to Cardigan?

Because Cardigan wouldn't question Lucan because they weren't talking to each other. Where are we? Yeah, I think all of those. And it is alleged, and there's a very good source for this, a man who was actually present during the conversation between Nolan and Lucan, which it seems that Nolan has actually taught. haunting Lukan. In other words, if you don't do what I'm telling you, Raglan wants you to do, it seems like you're actually afraid. Now, this has to be seen in context because Lukan has actually

got the nickname, Look-on, Lord Look-on. A little unfairly, I might add, because actually if anyone was holding the cavalry back in the campaign preceding this, it was actually Raglan himself, who Mike has already pointed out, was very suspicious of cavalry from his experience in the Napoleonic Wars. That's the British cavalry rather than the French cavalry, which was much more reflective. But I think this taunting of Luchin meant that Luchin was just wanted to get out of Nolan's company. He sort of sends him off and then goes to speak to Cardigan. And because he and Cardigan are barely speaking because of this personal feud, they don't have a chance to really say, do you know what, this order is madness. Light troops are never to be expected to be used in

this way. Let's question the order. Let's send a Gallup back up to Raglan and find out what's going on. So they didn't. And the charge began. Now then. The guns are two miles away down the valley, and there's an order in which this is taken. Another background is the light brigade wanted to get involved in the old. They were fed up with being, you know, the thin red line, largely, this isn't a class carry on at the moment, but largely working class. There had been Wellington's great invention. The enemy broke against your thin red line. The cavalry wanted to get involved.

They also, started looking at being taunted as, why were they never used? Why were they in their posh uniform? They wanted to get involved. So there's that too. Anyway, they started. Who's going to talk? They lined up, away they went, they started to walk, and then what?

Well, it's a classic cavalry charge. Which is? You build up gradually to the charge. If you're two miles away, even if you're a mile away from the enemy's positions, you cannot start a horse from a dead start.

You have to bring a horse gradually into a charge, and that's how they go. And it's also important tactically because we have this heroic image of the great cavalry commanders leading from the front. Hollywood's great at presenting it. It's not at all like that. A cavalry commander is more like a traffic cop. He's standing at the front to begin with, directing operations. You there, you there, speed up, slow down. He usually winds up about the middle of the charge. You have to build up to a charge.

Let's be as specific as we can, not general. So these men on this occasion, and they got two miles ago, start to walk, then they go into a trot, then they go into counter, their information, they're holding their discipline, and then, as Russell said, in a fantastic report, the guns, 30 guns start going at them. And then what? Well, it's, it's, I've seen many accounts, both at the time and more recently, implying that they were being fired on by three sides at the same time, three, three different forms of cannon. They were marching into, effectively think of it as a jaw. They were riding, sorry, they were riding at various speeds and ultimately charging

into the jaws. Now, the reason that metaphor works is because you've got fire from three sides. You've got the Russians on three sides of this valley and they're going to the top of the valley. At the end of the valley is this battery that in theory is the objective. But you've also got batteries on both sides.

So they have to run the gauntlet of three different separate batteries of artillery. Those are clusters. Clusters. And those batteries are firing on them at separate times. So they come within range of one and then they're being fired out by that battery. then they go through that and then they come with the range of the second one

and finally the third battery and all the while they're also being fired at by infantrymen so they've got musket balls and their ranks are thinning all the time but incredibly and possibly due to this extreme discipline imposed by Cardigan himself they retain formation and they keep going do you want to come in Trudy? Yes and I think the interesting thing is that they speed up right at the end even though people are falling away

and there's a wonderful phrase that it's difficult to be a coward in a cavalry charge because you've got this incredible momentum. And at the end of the charge, it looks as if something like 400, 500 have fallen. In fact, it's nothing like as many. It's, in fact, under 200 who are actually killed. But quite a lot wounded. Oh, a lot wounded, yes, and the horses as well, too.

And then it was terribly cold, and they didn't have enough tents, and so a lot of people died in the coming. We're not worried about tents at the moment. We're still in this charge. And so they go through the guns, and the incredible thing to me is they get through the guns, and then they take on two or three thousand Russian heavy-car. at the end of the valley.

Those cavalry weren't in a position to charge. This is one of the interesting things that we were talking about, momentum. They're closely packed. And they're whirling their sabres, the light brigade. They're wielding their sabres, they've got the momentum. It is remarkable in one sense that light cavalry can crash into heavy cavalry

and inflict the damage they did. But when you remember the positions that the Russian cavalry were in, cavalry themselves can be sitting ducks if they don't have the space to maneuver, and the Russian cavalry were kind of being held in a reserve. So in one sense, it was a rat caught in a trap. The other thing that helped enormously was the poor Russian material.

The Russians are still using muskets. The figures I've seen indicate that the whole Russian army has only 6,000 rifles. The difference between a rifle is it loads quickly, it fires repeating. The Russians are still using old-fashioned muskets that fire one shot at a time. So although the Light Brigade is taking a lot of fire,

it's taking intermittent fire. If they'd been using rifles, if they'd been charging against French troops, for example, they would have been slaughtered. And then they come back, some of them, as Trudy said, it was, 200 were dead, but a lot were wounded and left on the field, and they'd limped back in various ways over the next minute.

They came back. And then Saul, we'll just finish this, Rothel report, it's a fantastic report. And he says, then, to the eternal disgrace of Russia, the Russian heavy cavalry followed him, and the guns kept firing on their own cavalry, as well as the light brigade. Yes, and a curious thing happens after they've pushed this Russian cavalry, which I might add has been badly mauled by the heavy brigade

and in an action preceding the charge of the light brigade. So they're already very jittery the Russian cavalry. And they push them all the way back to an aqueduct where they can't actually go any further. And it's at this point that the Russian cavalry turn on this tiny force. You're only talking about two or 300 cavalrymen still horsed at this stage and realise that maybe we've got the uphand on this. So they then start pushing the British cavalry back, and the British cavalry realized, you know, they better get back to their lines if they're going to survive. And another force of Russian cavalry tries to cut them off, lancers, 500 lancers.

So even a bigger force and even the total British force then cuts them off. And there's a wonderful quote by Lord George Padgett, who was one of Cardigans. He was Cardigan second in command, who said, we passed through them, almost like a knife through butter. And even a regiment of English ladies could have prevented us from getting back. but the Russians were so feeble, we went through them like a knife through butter and got back to the top of the valley. But only 195, I think, is the number still horsed after this action from an original total of about 670. So now come to Trudy now. Trudy, this is this very brilliant reporting, unbelievable reporting and powerful stuff.

It hits the breakfast table, as you said, Greg, at the time of the beginning of the programme of Dickinson and Tenderson and many others, including the royal family. Queen Victoria got involved and so forth what was the first reaction to that was the blame everywhere was the wonder was the horror can you just give us a view I think all of those things I think people kind of

couldn't believe it had happened someone had to be blamed and so there's a lot of talk about that some people blame Nolan in fact even Tennyson's when he writes the poem about the Pachar to the Light Brigade initially sort of implies blame for Nolan

but I think it quickly moves beyond simply blaming an individual but to kind of wondering at the event and wondering what it means and I think that question remains with us today what did the charge mean? What does Tennyson's poem mean? We'll talk about that a bit more later.

Let's talk about what the charge means. Yeah, what did the charge mean? Well, on the one hand, you've got these aristocrats who are tremendously brave and rather colourful and so forth, so we should honour them, we should give honour to what they have done.

On the other hand, you've got a kind of real-class warfare going, on between the middle classes and the aristocracy. The army's the last place. The aristocracy has real power, especially the cavalry. So the worst the army looks, the worse the leadership looks, the worse the cavalry look, the better for the middle classes. And I think we need to keep that in mind when we're thinking about the Times reports, which are so influential. The Times is the voice of the middle classes. Was the Times under pressure? No. No. The Times, the News said, under pressure?

No. No. No. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. It was, wasn't it? Okay, well, in one way, the Times was more powerful than the government. The government felt under pressure from the Times. That's why I said no so strongly. There's no censorship. The government, yes, the government is saying, hey, don't do, you know, don't make us look so bad, don't make the army look so bad.

But the Times goes its own merry way. And in a way, it's flexing its muscles. It's saying, we are the voice of the middle classes, which it may or may not have been, but it certainly regarded itself as such. This event is a perfect event to show that the aristocracy shouldn't be allowed to run anything because, look, they're so stupid they're charged into. the guns. Having said that at the same time, it's so impressive that

even Russell, even Tennyson people, middle-class people who actually didn't have much time for aristocracy, would think, would say, these people are really quite special. If we get rid of them, what will the army look like? Would you like to take that up? Let's talk about the poem,

the Tennyson poem, which arguably is one of the reasons why it is so remember-read, as it were, because it was written about so well. In one sitting, we're told, Tennis has sat down and drove that poem through, published in the examiner, took off, as they say, and read everywhere and brought it to even wider, well, as wider audience, and perhaps more effectively than the Russell report. It's a fascinating piece in many ways. On one level, when you consider Tennyson was

poet laureate, and there's the line in it that said, someone blundered, is quite something for someone holding an official government position to write. Even the heroic poem doesn't try to hide that. But I think there's... a deeper level here. Coming back to the point of the aristocracy, the individual heroism, the whole ethos

of Victorian schooling was to try to imbue a rising middle class with something of that character. I don't think it's a coincidence that two years after that poem was written, in 1856, right at the end of the Crimean

War, Tennyson begins to write the Idols of the King, which is his reworking of the Arthurian legend for a generation of Victorians. And this idea of classical heroism, but imbued with a Christian spirit that the old aristocracy of the 18th century, the 19th century was lacking, is very present in that poem. This idea of the heroism of the individual, the heroism of a small group of men against the odds. It's on one level, yes, it's the old aristocracy you're talking about. But on another, it's, it. about individual courage and people

imbued with a certain ideal. But it seems in many ways foreign to us now the pride in valour, the reverence for courage, and then the praising of glorious defeat. But look what they got out of it, look what they gave to it. These are values and qualities

that we, the British, have, even in defeat, and we're demonstrating. There was all that in the pub. I know you have a slightly, you say, He was being ironic. I don't see much the irony, Rudy. I really don't.

Oh, no, I'm not saying he's being ironic. No, I think it's actually, it's ambiguous. It's ambivalent, if you like. He loves the Light Brigade. He honours them. But he's also aware that it was a blunder. I mean, both these feelings are there, and I think that's... I don't think that's an ambivalent.

He just says, though it was a blunder. I mean, that doesn't mean he's ambivalent. He's not ambivalent about the Light Brigade. He thinks they were badly informed. That doesn't mean he thinks the less of them. My reading of the poem, actually, is more that he has reverence for the ordinary soldier, because let's face it, there are our officers, of course, involved,

and quite a few of them. But the majority of the Light Brigade are ordinary soldiers. And they do not come from anything other than agricultural backgrounds. These are people of the lower echelons of society, as they were in all areas of the army, slightly higher than an ordinary infantryman. It's true. But they still come from a very modest background.

And I think what Tennis is really trying to say is, this is classic, almost English yeoman virtue, shown here during this charge. And I don't think he's got a lot of time, Tennyson, that is, for the sort of aristocratic commanders who he would have seen at the upper echelons of the army, including men like Cardigan himself. Sorry.

Yeah, but I wouldn't at all argue it's ironic. No, but I think it's saying two different things at once, and that's what I mean by ambivalence, is both love and hate simultaneously, or love and despair simultaneously. I think that's what's going on in the poem. It's often read as just straightforwardly patriotic hurrah, but I think, no, it's actually much more complex.

It's mourning, if you like. It's celebrating the courage, but it's also mourning the loss. Mike Obrose, the charge rather obscures the fact that the Crimean War was won by the British and French, largely by the French, and arguably the only successful invasion of Russia in modern times. This had huge repercussions in Russia, didn't it, this defeat of Russia? Can you briefly say what that was? Well, countries who lose wars are more deeply affected than countries who win them. and I think the major thing that comes out of it

is the Tsar Alexander II turns around and says you cannot win wars anymore with fast peasant armies you need a modern industrial economy to do so the first thing he does is initiate a program to liberate the Russian serfs to end serfdom in Russia it doesn't work properly of course that's part of the reason we wind up with 1917

but it's the huge initiative it's earth shattering in terms of Russia it's meant to change a whole society. And it stops Russia, by getting Sebastopol, their only real access to all your port. It stops on at least a couple of years sort of trading and moving around, as it were, shows the power of the West. The Russians suffer humiliating, unprecedented peace terms in 1856. They are not allowed to keep a military fleet in the Black Sea. In their own national waters, they are not allowed to keep.

keep their own Navy. That is humiliating by any standards. And Russia's always been regarded as the great military power in Europe in the early 19th century after the defeat of France. That myth is shattered now. Saul David, how is what effect did the Crimean War have on the British army? We've rather neglected that. Russell moved tens of thousands of people. Queen Victoria visited the wounded when they came back to this country. People, the contribution. charities reformed. Florence Nightingale, we've mentioned it and so and so forth. And there was, we must reform this.

We mustn't let our troops be thus badly treated that far off. There's a great search. But what actually happened? Well, it actually had a huge effect on the British Army. The real key mid-19th century reforms, mid-to-late-century reforms, are instituted as a direct result of the Crimean War. The first thing, some of them take time.

The first thing that happens is they try and resolve the administrative chaos, that had led that they believe had caused so many deaths. There were too many competing agencies in control of different areas of the army. The Treasury, for example, ran the commissariat. The Master General of the Ordinance ran the artillery, the commander-in-chief, the infantry and the cavalry.

And all these competing agencies crossed over each other. There was funding coming from different directions. So the first thing they tried to do is rationalise that. But I suppose more importantly, they began to see that the only long-term solution was to create a meritocratic professional army and the way to do this was, first of all, to get rid of the purchase system, which they did in 1871, it took a while like it always does. Vested interest tried to oppose it.

Chiefly, the commanding chief of the British Army, the Duke of Cambridge, who was the first cousin to the Queen, had fought in the Crimea, not terribly well, I might add, but he'd fought there. And he was seen as a very conservative character, who thought, like the Duke of Wellington, that the purchase system underpinned the class-based system that would guarantee that the army would never be involved in politics or a coup d'etat. So that was quite important, at least in Cambridge's thinking. But if you got rid of the purchase system,

you could then get people into the army on a proper examination system. They would learn their trade. They would be promoted because they were decent soldiers rather than because they had money or because they were connected to someone. And sooner or later, this would mean that the army would become more professional, which indeed it did, but let's not exaggerate because it took an awful long time. And the sort of people who were still officers at the end of the 19th century weren't that different in terms of their class than earlier on.

And particularly a lot of British public opinion was horrified by the comparative professionalism of the French and should I say the junior partner in the war, the Piedmontese. Trudy, can you tell us briefly the significance of the war reporter, how that developed after the Crimean War? Okay, well, as I said before, that Russell was one of the first of having an organised war reporting and eyewitness reports. And daily, you get a kind of serial daily account in the newspapers that people follow very carefully. And so the war reporter affects the politics of the war. I don't think the actual fighting probably at all, but certainly it affects the government hugely, the politics, the representation. People read what's in the papers and then they start, you know,

they have views on the government. The government's very frustrated because they think that the Times, people think that the Times represents government views, which it doesn't. It's really quite hostile to the government most of the time. But Russell sets a pattern, doesn't he? Absolutely, yes. There should be war reporters. They should be with the troops.

They should say everything they can send back, after crime, and ironically, censorship is established. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. We know what the people at home to be told too much in case it endangers our troops on the front. Yes, and I think it's realized that what the war reporter says is incredibly influential,

which is why governments then start to try to control it after 1856. Why do you think, each of you briefly, I'm afraid, because coming to end of the programme, why do you think that this defeat was seen in such golden light? I go around the table, starting with you, Frank. Old-fashioned heroism. This is a war that sees a model railway built behind the lines at Sebastopol. It sees the French use the first ironclad warship.

It's a war won by technology. And yet here in the middle of it all is good old-fashioned heroic chivalric virtue. So on? I think it goes back to this kind of knightly virtue, the men on horseback. It's not a coincidence that this is a charge. Although we've got a very poor record, the British Army, that is. of successful charges. This, in very brief, narrow, tactical terms, was a minor success.

And if it had been supported by infantry, it could have been huge success. We always see it as a glorious defeat. And, of course, the charge of the Light Brigade led to, effectively, the loss of the Light Brigade because it never really could be used thereafter in an operational sense. But I think that it harked back to a time when the glamorous knightly soldier would charge and succeed. And although, of course, you know, ultimately it was a great design. that the courage was remembered. And truly.

I agree with all of that, and also I'd say, because of Tennyson, that's why we remember it. Because of the poem. Because of the poem. So it was the poem what'd done it. Yes.

Okay, well, thank you all very, very much indeed. There's so much more to say, but I'm sure people will rush to your books and your words in learned journals. Next week we'll be talking about the pursuit of the enigmatic and mysterious figure of the Fisher King in medieval and romance literature.

the keeper of the grail. Thank you all very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.ukuk forward slash radio 4.