The Charge of the Light Brigade, 160 Years Ago
History.Com - On October 25, 1854, the commander-in-chief of British troops during the Crimean War issued an ambiguous order that his subordinates misinterpreted, resulting in the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade against a heavily defended Russian position. Facing artillery and musket fire on three sides, British cavalrymen were slaughtered in droves as they galloped headlong down the so-called “valley of death.” Yet because they maintained discipline amid the chaos and even managed to briefly scatter the Russians, the British public glorified them. One participant would later describe it as “the most magnificent assault known in military annals and the greatest blunder known to military tactics.”
A major conflict of the 19th century, the Crimean War claimed at least 750,000 lives, more than even the American Civil War, and had a profound impact on such renowned personalities as British nurse Florence Nightingale and Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It got its start in and around Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire, where Orthodox Christian and Catholic monks had been engaging in fierce, sometimes deadly brawls for years over who would control various holy sites. Following one such violent squabble in 1852, Czar Nicholas I of Russia, a self-proclaimed defender of Orthodox Christianity, demanded the right to exercise protection over the Ottoman Empire’s millions of Christian subjects. Upon being rejected, he then sent his army, the largest in the world, to occupy two Ottoman principalities in present-day Romania. The czar also purportedly had his eyes on Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, which if taken would give his navy unfettered access to the Mediterranean Sea. Unnerved by this expansionism, Britain and France sent their own warships to the area and vowed to defend Ottoman sovereignty.
Fighting officially broke out in October 1853, and the following month the Russians decimated the Ottoman fleet in a surprise attack. But although Nicholas referred to the declining Ottoman Empire as the “sick man of Europe,” his land forces made little progress in their push south, underscored by the failed siege of a fortress in present-day Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in March 1854, Britain and France declared war and immediately bombarded the then-Russian city of Odessa. With Austria likewise threatening to jump into the fray, Nicholas withdrew from Romania. Rather than declare victory, however, Britain and France decided to punitively target the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, located on the Crimean Peninsula. On September 13, 1854, a joint allied force of over 60,000 troops sailed into Kalamita Bay, about 33 miles north of their objective. Due to stormy weather, it took five days for them to fully disembark. Believing the conflict would be over quickly, they brought neither winter clothing nor medical supplies. They moreover lacked accurate maps, had little idea how many Russian troops opposed them and flouted the dietary restrictions of the Muslim Ottoman soldiers within their ranks. To make matters worse, a cholera outbreak erupted.
