Balaklava is one of the most famous battles in British history. Yet it cannot really be compared with, say, Hastings, Waterloo, or the Somme, all of which were large-scale struggles with great issues at stake. Balaklava is an altogether different matter.
The Battle of Balaklava, 1854. Detail from a painting by Michael Angelo Hayes. Credit: Alamy.
The Charge of the Light Brigade is a military myth. It happened, of course, but it has become embedded in an essentially false narrative framework.
The Battle of Balaklava as a whole – little more, in reality, than three somewhat disjointed skirmishes, at least from the British perspective – has been inflated in popular culture out of all proportion to its real historical significance.
It began with contemporary newspaper reports and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous narrative poem, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, published before the end of 1854.
It has
continued ever since. Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why: the story of the
fatal charge of the Light Brigade, published in 1953 in anticipation of the
centenary, turned into a bestseller.
More
significant still have been two films, a Michael Curtiz film released in 1936,
starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, and a Tony Richardson film
released in 1968, with an all-star cast that included Trevor Howard, Vanessa
Redgrave, John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Jill Bennett, and David Hemmings.
The Charge of the Light Brigade on 25 October 1854. Ever since, the event has become synonymous with deadly military incompetence.
The
Richardson film relied heavily for its inspiration on The Reason Why,
and it was very much an anti-establishment and anti-war film. In the context of
the Vietnam War, the message was inescapable: incompetent elites preside over
military disasters.
We need
not be detained by the reasons Britain went to war with Russia in 1854. It is
probably enough to say that many questioned the fact that a country led by
Anglicans would conjoin with its habitual and Catholic enemy – France – to
fight its habitual and Orthodox ally – Russia – on behalf of Muslim Turkey.
Into
that imbroglio were sent some of the most fractious and ill-starred officers whom
Britain has ever chosen to put in positions of command. Between them, they
created the disaster of Balaklava.
Captain
Portal of the 4th Light Dragoons spoke for many:
We
are commanded by one of the greatest old women in the British Army, called the Earl
of Cardigan. He has as much brains as my boot.
He is only equalled in want of intellect by his relation the Earl of
Lucan. Two such fools could not be picked out of the British Army to take
command. But they are Earls!
James
Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, a man who believed implicitly in the
privileges of a noble birth, was as good-looking as he was dim, yet his wealth
and position allowed him not only to pull through a series of desperate
scrapes, but to prosper. Looked at with a modern eye, his survival is
astonishing, but even in Victorian times it must have seemed breathtaking.
His Lordship: a depiction of James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, in a contemporary cartoon.
Yet the
incompetence of figures such as Cardigan has had the effect of exaggerating the
Battle of Balaklava’s importance.
After all, only about 2,500 British soldiers were actively engaged, and about 600 became casualties. This is a very small engagement in a struggle between great European powers.
Compare
it with the Battle of Solferino, for example, where, in 1859, 120,000 French and
Italians confronted an equal number of Austrians, and French casualties alone were
12,000.
The 11th Hussars reach the Russian guns.
And while
the British were damaged by Balaklava, they were nothing compared with, say,
the two defeats in front of Sevastopol in June and September 1855. Yet the
smaller battle has come to dominate the whole campaign in the British
perspective.
Clearly, Tennyson’s wonderful poems (commemorating both Light and Heavy Cavalry Brigades) have much to do with this, as does the whole romance of the occasion – dashing, brilliantly dressed centaurs, brave Britons gallant in defeat, and, of course, a clash of lords and noblemen.
Throw in
a tangled love story and pique people’s interest with some politically charged
cinema, and you have the perfect military historian’s cocktail.
So why did Balaklava acquire such notoriety?
This is an extract from a 15-paged special feature on the Battle of Balaklava, published in the April 2020 issue of Military History Matters.
In our special, Patrick Mercer analyses Balaklava afresh, to place it in its wider context, and to review the events on the battlefield on the basis of his own intimate knowledge of the ground.
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Charles Cameron CARRUTHERS
March 13, 2020 @
11:59 am
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders fought it out with the Russian Cavalry (The thin red line) at Balaclava and the original painting is in the National Scottish War museum in Edinburgh Castle.A whisky conglomerate owns it now.
March 13, 2020 @ 11:59 am
The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders fought it out with the Russian Cavalry (The thin red line) at Balaclava and the original painting is in the National Scottish War museum in Edinburgh Castle.A whisky conglomerate owns it now.