“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
So begins Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The poem endures as a tribute to courage. It also endures, I suspect, because we all identify with that feeling of being sent off on a doomed mission.
Thinking about doomed missions comes from learning that there was a book about the events of the battle called “The Reason Why: The story of the fatal charge of the Light Brigade” (Penguin Group), and instantly I had to know.
The book, published in 1953, written by a woman named Cecil Woodham-Smith, is principally the story of a pair of aristocrats turned military bureaucrats, bumbling about in the Crimean War.
That war began in 1853, Russia versus Turkey, with the Brits jumping in on the side of the Turks, and with the Brits came two jerks who were to implement The Charge. Jerk A was the Earl of Lucan, who, in the same year as the war began, wrote a letter to the Lord Chamberlain about 70 royal swans trespassing on his meadow:
“I will submit no longer to so intolerable a nuisance. I therefore and hereby give you notice that unless the swans are removed on or before Friday 16th instant, I shall myself shoot 6, leaving them on the ground, and shall cause 6 to be shot every following Friday, until they are reduced to the number of 6.”
Dressing Down
Jerk B was Lord Cardigan, who ended up commanding the Light Brigade, and whose chief preoccupation was the image of his troops. To that end, he issued endless orders, including one that “forbade patrols to carry their cloaks to wrap round them at night.” Why not use cloaks against the cold? Because Cardigan thought them “effeminate.”
Perhaps he wasn’t aware of the night chill because he slept in his yacht, moored in a nearby bay, instead of in a tent with the soldiers. Woodham-Smith writes: “Was he to be allowed to command the Light Brigade from a luxurious yacht with a French cook, and sleep every night in a feather bed? His friends remonstrated with him, but Cardigan brushed them aside. (Commanding Officer) Lord Raglan had given him permission. That was enough.”
Which takes us to the day of The Charge. The Russians held superior positions in part because Cardigan (Jerk B) refused to use his cavalry when the Russians were in disarray, insisting that he wait for orders to attack. The Russians regrouped and were waiting, cannons set. When an order came down for the Light Brigade to proceed, the mounted messenger had come to despise Lucan (Jerk A).
So when Lucan responded to his orders with a perplexed: “Attack what? What guns?” the impatient and resentful messenger merely waved toward the enemy and declared, “There, my lord, is your enemy; there are your guns.”
Being a bureaucrat, Lucan took the arm wave literally and judged the direction of attack from it — that direction was into a valley with Russians entrenched on both sides and the far end. So Jerk A passed that order to Jerk B, who led 700 (not 600, as in the poem) into the valley of Death.
The men rode the length of the valley, taking heavy fire. When Cardigan reached the guns at the far end, he was perplexed as to what to do next, so turned about and headed back through the valley, inviting more death.
“Their’s not to make reply.
Their’s not to reason why.
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
Fewer than 200 survived. Observers say that Cardigan was serene after the attack, for he had carried out his orders and thus judged himself a success.
The British people apparently agreed, for he was treated as a hero, and the type of woolen jacket he favored became popular — it’s still known as a “cardigan.”
Woodham-Smith’s book tells a different story, that of a pair of contemptible men whose fame rests on being so wanting in initiative, so detested, as to have others unwilling and/or unable to converse with them.
It’s the story of aristocratic, autocratic bureaucrats — the trifecta of ‘crat.
And that’s the reason why.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
