XIX0023 – Balaclava

Balaclava, 25 October 1854: The Charge of the Light Brigade

Of all the actions of the Crimean War, one is remembered above every other, and it was a mistake. At Balaclava the British Light Brigade — some six hundred and seventy cavalrymen — charged more than a mile down a valley flanked by Russian guns on both sides, straight into an artillery battery at the far end. The Charge of the Light Brigade lasted about twenty minutes and cost roughly a third of the brigade.

The Order That Was Misunderstood

Lord Raglan, watching from the heights, could see what his commanders in the valley could not: Russian troops removing captured guns from the Causeway Heights. His order was to prevent that. Carried down by Captain Nolan and delivered to Lord Lucan, it lost its reference point. Lucan asked which guns; Nolan gestured — the accounts disagree on how — toward the wrong end of the valley. Lucan passed the order to Lord Cardigan, who led the brigade against the Don Cossack battery at the head of the North Valley. Nolan was killed in the first minutes, so the misunderstanding was never resolved by the one man who could have explained it.

The Rest of the Battle

Balaclava was not only the Light Brigade. The same day saw the 93rd Highlanders hold their line against Russian cavalry in a formation the correspondent William Russell described in a phrase that entered the language as the thin red line, and the Heavy Brigade break a Russian force several times its size in a short uphill charge that was tactically the day’s real success. Both are largely forgotten because neither was a disaster.

Why It Became the Story

Tennyson published his poem six weeks later, and Russell’s despatches for The Times had already reached the British public — the Crimean War was the first conflict reported by telegraph and photographed while it was still being fought. The charge became the founding modern example of courage wasted by incompetent command, and that reading was available to the public within weeks rather than decades.

Giuseppe Rava’s Original Work

Giuseppe Rava reconstructs the British light cavalry as it actually appeared in October 1854: the 11th Hussars in their crimson overalls, the 17th Lancers with the skull-and-crossbones badge, the shako and the pelisse, the sabre carried at the slope. Uniform details follow surviving regimental dress and contemporary photographs rather than later illustration.

This is a limited edition fine art print, hand-signed by the artist, produced in SRA3 format on fine art paper. Ships worldwide.