When we received the order, not a man could seem to believe it. However, on we went, and during that ride what each man felt no one can tell. I cannot tell you my own thoughts. Not a word or a whisper. On—on we went! Oh! Every man’s features fixed, his teeth clenched, and as rigid as death, still it was on—on! At about 300 yards I got my hit, but it did not floor me. Clash! And oh God! What a scene! I will not attempt to tell you, as I know it is not to your taste, what we did; but we were Englishmen, and that is enough.
Thus wrote Private Thomas Dudley of the 17th Lancers to his parents after the famous charge of the Light Brigade. Dudley was a lucky survivor of the Battle of Balaklava, one of the major engagements of the Crimean War (1853-56). Executing, or allegedly misconstruing, a direct order to engage the enemy, the Light Brigade mounted an assault into a valley defended on three sides by Russian infantry, cavalry, and artillery.
Theirs, Tennyson wrote in his famous poem, not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die / Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.
Much of the literature on the Light Brigade presents the top-brass view. Lord Raglan, commander of the British forces; the earl of Lucan, commander of the cavalry; and the earl of Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade, are variously held responsible for the disastrous charge. Raglan, frustrated by the apparent inaction of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, sent a series of orders expressing his desire for action. Part of the problem, however, was the ambiguity with which Raglan expressed himself: He gave geographical directions from his point of view, for example, which did not make much sense in the field.
No one seems to have asked any probing questions, however—perhaps because communication was slow and prone to failure. At any rate, the brigade quickly took action: up the wrong valley and after the wrong Russians, from Raglan’s point of view. Within minutes, hundreds were either killed or injured.
Anthony Dawson is less interested in this long-running blame game than in giving us an insight into the experience of the relatively lower ranks. We are presented with hundreds of letters from privates, trumpeters, corporals, and sergeants. Dawson has admirably traced many previously unpublished or obscure accounts from a series of archives and 160-year-old newspapers. As the president of the British Commission for Military History, Major General Mungo Melvin (Ret.), notes in his foreword, the presentation of so many new perspectives is a valuable addition to Crimean War literature.
One of the delights of Dawson’s volume is the directness with which many of the correspondents write. For example, Private Robert Chambers from the 11th Hussars takes us right into the horror of the valley, incidentally highlighting how wrong the charge felt from the outset:
And on he goes, telling his mother that he remains miraculously unhurt and winding up his letter by estimating friendly and enemy casualties. He ends with a typical Victorian flourish: “May the Almighty, in His omnipotent understanding, terminate the cause in favour of the righteous.”
Although the Crimean War is often discussed in terms of human suffering—the thousands who died in action or from near-criminal medical neglect or from the Russian winter—many of the cavalrymen included here are proud and patriotic. The war was the first experience of action and foreign travel for many; a sense of excitement is palpable. It can be easy nowadays to think of wars as contentious, difficult, and protracted; then as now, however, many of those on the front line see things differently. Here, most correspondents write with an unfussy, self-reliant tone. They want to be involved, and to win.
Although the charge of the Light Brigade is at the heart of Dawson’s book, he includes letters from the Heavy Brigade as well as ones that range over a number of years. We thus witness the cavalry as they sail past Gibraltar, as they invade the Crimea, engage the enemy, go through the awful winter, re-group, and ultimately win the siege of Sebastopol and the war.
This is not a book for those interested in Lord Palmerston, Napoleon III, or Czar Nicholas I. But the fascinating views from the lower ranks could have been enriched by being juxtaposed with French and Russian voices. A book mixing letters from different combatants would not only be intrinsically interesting but would provide a more rounded view. Imagine seeing the charge of the Light Brigade from the hillsides, for example. To the British, it was a “glorious failure.” Did the Russians think of it like that? Or were they impressed, frightened, perhaps astonished?
Although Dawson selects a range of interesting British letters, he is less accomplished at editing and at writing short introductory sections. Reading this book can be like going through a box of dusty letters and short notes someone has written on the side. Some effort has been made to correct spelling mistakes—several correspondents erroneously refer to the “Scotch Grays,” for example—but it is by no means consistent or methodical. Perhaps Dawson could have simply left the letters as they were; their meaning is always plain.
As for his writing, Anthony Dawson is clearly well-informed but tends to lack concision. He seems a highly knowledgeable enthusiast, someone who could talk intelligently for hours about the Crimean War, yet one wishes that he would make his points a bit more sharply. But most of Letters from the Light Brigade lets a series of mid-Victorian British cavalrymen speak for themselves. These men knew exactly what they were doing—and carried on even when the dangers were blindingly obvious.
Andre van Loon is a writer in London.
