Thanks alone to one corner of the Crimean peninsula, October 25th, 1854 was what journalists called a busy news day.
Its main headline grabber was the spectacularly disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade, immortalised in poetry by Tennyson and in irony by an incredulous French general who commented: “C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre.”
Elsewhere at the Battle of Balaclava, the “Thin Red Line” (a phrase coined by Dubliner William Russell, war reporter with the London Times) became proverbial after a fearless Scottish stand against Russian cavalry.
Relegated to the inside pages of history, meanwhile, was the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.
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Unlike the celebrated catastrophe later the same morning, that was a success, although whether it was a charge at all is debatable. The Heavies had to attack uphill, from a standing start, so it may have been more of a drag.
Their victory would have been even greater had the watching Light Brigade joined in to rout the retreating Russians. Instead, and in contrast with the recklessness for which they would soon be famous (and in many cases dead), they were held back.
Tennyson wrote about the Heavy Brigade’s charge too. But whereas he eulogised the Lights’ disaster in the immediate aftermath, his celebration of the Heavies came 28 years later, in 1882, by which time his fame had outrun his talent.
He was paid five guineas a line for “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava”. Alas, like many big-budget sequels, it was not a critical success. The Irish Times review first quibbled with its portrait of General James Scarlet’s dashing attack:
“Mr Tennyson’s notion of praising the leader for galloping far ahead away from his men, and acting like an Englishman in a simply insane and unprofessional proceeding, must be attributed to his ignorance of military precepts; nor is the allusion to ‘an Englishman’ in this case very flattering to national military characteristics.”
From there, the paper’s critic launched his own all-out assault:
“As for likening the charge to cannon shots, bursting thunderbolts(!), hurricanes, and so forth, and the firmness of the men to rocks in stormy seas, we certainly cannot envy the reader who find pleasure in these old and stale comparisons, which have long been the property of all writers, but are now scarcely expected to be put into use outside the literature of street ballads.”
While Tennyson played up the heroic Englishman angle, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade was heavily Irish too. The Fourth Dragoon Guards attacked the Russians with the old Gaelic war-cry “Faugh-a-Ballagh” (“Clear the way”). And among the many veterans of the engagement was a horse called Dickie Bird, whose skeleton is now displayed at Collins Barracks in Dublin.
Overall, about one-third of the British army in the Crimean War was Irish. And although English, all the main leaders at Balaclava – incompetent and otherwise – had strong connections with Ireland too.
These included Generals Raglan and Cardigan, both blamed for the Light Brigade debacle. Then there was Louis Nolan, who may have tried to stop the charge but then died in it. Finally, there was Lord Lucan (an ancestor of the famously disappeared one), who owned vast estates in Mayo while despising the natives.
Historian Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote of him: “It is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all. During the famine, when he was called the Exterminator, he regarded his tenants as vermin to be cleared off the land.”
This seems only to have recommended him for military service. Another historian has claimed: “It was Lucan’s conduct in Ireland, his ruthlessness, which decided the government to select him for a command in the Crimea.”
The Tallaght-born Russell is widely considered the first modern war correspondent. It was his account of the Light Brigade’s 25 minutes of infamy that set the tone for history: “At 11.10[am] our Light Brigade rushed to the front. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun ... At the 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 plain … At 11.35 not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns.”
That was not published until three weeks later, in mid-November. But its effect on Tennyson was electrifying. There are those who think his poem about the Light Brigade is also a terrible piece of work. And he himself may have had doubts because manuscripts suggest he crossed out half the lines at one point or other.
Whatever its artistic merits, however, the finished work seems to have achieved what a Flann O’Brien character, commenting on a different poem, called “permanence”. A hundred and seventy years on, it is still most quoted. Most of us can remember at least these lines: “Theirs not to reason why,/Theirs but to do and die./Into the valley of Death/Rode the six hundred.