Lord Cardigan has described the dull wonder with which he found himself unhit by the discharge of a twelve-pounder almost in his face, and the next instant cutting and slashing at the men who fired it. Eye-witnesses have described the awful sights seen after the charge; of the charge itself few can speak with accuracy.
Says a private soldier of the Black Watch, who by this time had arrived upon the scene:—“A Russian gunner was holding his head together. It had been struck with a cavalry sword. He was alive, and was walking to the front, when my comrade called out, ‘Don’t take him to the front, take him to the rear; our doctors may make something of him.’ He was sent to the rear holding his head together. It was often spoken of years afterwards in our regiment.”
“I saw one of the Greys,” says the same man, Alexander Robb of Dundee, “holding his arm that was nearly cut through. He also was able to walk. As he was passing us he said, ‘They say the Russians are not good at the sword, but I never gave a point but I got a parry,’ and he made his way, laughing, to the surgeons.”
Thus were the guns taken at Balaclava. “It was magnificent, but it was not war,” said General Bosquet. The position was untenable, and after a few brief instants the order came “Threes about, retire!” and back rode the shattered force—195 mounted men in all. Once more the Russian fire broke out, and that the carnage on the return journey down the north valley was not heavier was due entirely to the French cavalry, the gallant Chasseurs d’Afrique. Realising the urgent danger of the Light Brigade, they diverted the attention of the right-hand Russian battery upon themselves, and thus doubtless preserved many lives in the ranks of the sadly thinned six hundred.
That the whole charge of the Light Brigade was a grievous error none could deny, least of all Lord Raglan, who angrily demanded of Lord Cardigan, as the scattered remnant of the cavalry reformed—“What did you mean, sir, by attacking a battery in front, contrary to all the usages of war?” It is, however, not unpleasing to learn that, writing privately of the charge, Lord Raglan has described it as “perhaps the finest thing ever attempted!”
With the charge of the Light Brigade, which lasted some twenty minutes, the battle practically ended, and about four o’clock the firing ceased. The Russians still held the captured redoubts, and had indeed succeeded in severing Balaclava from the main allied camps before Sebastopol, but no strategical advantage could dim the lustre and the glorious prestige of the hare-brained charge of Lord Cardigan and the Light Cavalry.
Lord Lucan was removed from the command of the cavalry of the “army of the East,” and his request to be tried by court-martial was refused.
The allied and Russian losses at Balaclava were nearly equal in number—between 600 and 700 on either side.