In the twentieth century, the charge's hold on the popular imagination was consolidated by the extraordinary success of The Reason Why (1953) by Mrs Cecil Woodham-Smith. And without Tennyson's poem, would Richard Caton Woodville, the pre-eminent Victorian painter of battle scenes, have been moved to produce not one but two iconic images of the charge: the first depicting the 17th lancers raked by gunfire and the second showing the 11th hussars, having reached the enemy cannon, cutting down the Russian gunners? Without the extraordinary vividness of Russell's journalistic prose,Īlfred, Lord Tennyson, would not have been inspired to write his poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', its perfectly pitched rhythms destined to be recited by generations of schoolchildren to come. But Chilianwala had not had its William Howard Russell to report what happened for the benefit of The Times newspaper's mass readership. And there had been military disasters before: Chilianwala, a battle fought in India five years earlier during the Anglo-Sikh wars, had seen an even worse cavalry débâcle. Why should this be? Although a setback, the charge involved only 673 horsemen, in continental terms little more than the strength of a cavalry regiment. But for the public of today, one event above all has come to represent the incompetence and folly of the Crimean War: the charge of the light brigade. Indeed, revelation of the war's mismanagement was sufficient to bring down the government and set in train a hurried process of reform. Its participation in what became known as the Crimean War, fought against the only European opponent that Britain faced in the hundred years between Waterloo and the outbreak of the First World War, proved a traumatic experience. Tennyson pays Nolan and soldiers like him a nameless, deathless tribute with his monumental poem.One hundred and fifty years ago, on 28 March 1854, Great Britain declared war on Russia. Newsman William Russell, Nolan's good friend, honored the brigade's bravery in the "London Times," a tribute that inspired Tennyson. Tennyson also indirectly honors the one soldier who could be called Balaclava's hero, Captain Nolan, who brought Lord Raglan's charging orders to Lord Lucan. The line, "Theirs not to reason why," includes the poem's readers. The meaning of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is to honor the cavalrymen who fell, rather than explore the reasons for the event. Back from the mouth of hell." Tennyson ends with a command to the reader to feel triumphant pride: "Honour the charge they made! / Honour the Light Brigade, / Noble six hundred!" His tone is exultant there is no hint of irony. Charging an army, while / all the world wonder'd." Tennyson rewrites history as "Cossack and Russian reel'd from the sabre-stroke" and the Light Brigade seems to return victorious: "They that had fought so well. Tennyson immediately shifts from blaming the commanders to commending the fixed and unalterable obedience of the brigade: "Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die." This commendation sets the tone of the entire work.įrom the second stanza on, the poem is an exaltation of bravery, depicting the men with "sabres bare. Tennyson, writing six weeks after the fact, names no names to blame in his paean to bravery, saying only "Someone had blunder'd." He disregards the negligence of such commanding figures as Lord Raglan and Lord Lucan, who mutually confirmed the order to attack without knowledge of the extent of the Russian forces. into the mouth of hell." William Russell of the "London Times" caught Tennyson's fervor, speaking of the spectacle's "pride and splendor." No Blame Game Tennyson confirms this with the line "boldly they rode as well. They are thus aligned with King David, going into spiritual darkness by faith. Certainly Tennyson is unsparing in his praise: the Light Brigade rides into the "Valley of Death," an allusion to the biblical "valley of the Shadow" in Psalm 23. Tennyson's work baffles historian Corelli Barnett, who wonders why he sentimentalizes such a monumental military blunder.
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