We could scarcely believe the evidence of our senses! Surely that handful of men were not going to charge an army in position? 'They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. 'The valley of the shadow of death' by Roger Fenton Confusion over cavalry orders in battle was not unique - but at Balaclava, for the first time, a journalist was there as an eye-witness to record soldiers 'rushing to the arms of sudden death'.

This process of myth-making continued as painters began producing epic canvases depicting the headlong race towards the Russian guns.īut it was the news reporting of William Howard Russell which had set the story in motion. The poem by Lord Tennyson is often cited as sustaining the legendary status of the battle, but Mr Massie says the newspaper report came first - and it was this prose that inspired Tennyson's poetry. This brought the story of the light brigade's charge during the battle of Balaclava to the breakfast tables of Britain, only three weeks after it had happened.Īnd the breathless account of how a few hundred cavalrymen mounted a doomed charge against the Russian artillery was an emotional showstopper. There were reporters and photographers capturing events in a way that had never happened before. 'It was the most lethal costume party in history,' he says.īut Dr Massie says that much of the durability of the story is a legacy of its huge initial impact.Ĭrimea, 1855: Roger Fenton's photographs brought the war homeĬrimea was the first media war. It was also an event that caught a world about to change - showing that chivalric cavalry charges and officers in full-dress uniforms were no match for modern fire-power. And the ill-fated cavalry charge appeals to our appetite for 'glorious failure'. 'The British have always loved their defeats as much as their victories,' says the exhibition's curator Alastair Massie. This week the National Army Museum is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the charge, as part of a wider exhibition about the Crimean War.

It is a symbol of heroic failure, a high-Victorian icon of self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. Cannon to the right of them/ Cannon to the left of them' - the Charge of the Light Brigade has long held its place in the public imagination. Thanks in no small part to the lines of Tennyson's poem - 'Into the Valley of Death/Rode the six hundred.

Battle of the light brigade poem