V.

personal interest in the recapture of the heights and CHA P. the guns, because he had maintained, and maintained for a time, against the judgment of some of our Engineers, that the construction of redoubts on the line of the Causeway Heights was an expedient measure. With the overstrained notions he had of what squadrons of horse might achieve, he cannot have failed to ascribe the loss of a position thus specially valued by him to the general officer whom he long had regarded as the obstructor of all cavalry enterprise, and it may well be imagined that he came down exulting in the terms of an order which was framed for compelling Lord Lucan to try to recover the guns. The notion of his having intended to divert our cavalry from the Causeway Heights and send it down the North Valley seems altogether untenable.

If Nolan had been the bearer of a mere verbal order, then, indeed, this outbreak of his might have been in a high degree embarrassing. It might have forced Lord Lucan to consider whether he should send for further instructions, or whether he should instantly gallop up to a ground from which he could have such a survey of the enemy as to know where to attempt an attack; or, finally, it might have put him to the task of endeavouring to winnow the communication addressed to him, by calming the over-excited aidede-camp, and bringing him to say, if he could, how much of the words he had uttered were words really entrusted to him as a message by the Commander-inChief. But Lord Raglan, as we saw, had provided that his directions should be set down on paper; and

CHAP. after Nolan's outbreak, it became more than ever the

V.

duty of Lord Lucan to bend his mind faithfully to the written words of the order, examining as well as he could the condition of things to which it applied, and not forgetting that he had, all the while, in his hands another order, hitherto unexecuted, which enjoined him to advance and try to recover those same heights on which the guns spoken of in the fourth 'order' had been placed and lost by the Turks.

Lord Lucan has since spoken and written as if his choice lay between the plan of sending the Light Cavalry down the North Valley, and the plan of not advancing at all; but the truth is, that neither in the 'third order,' nor in the fourth order,' nor, lastly, in the taunting injunctions of the aide-de-camp, was there left any room to set up a doubt upon the question whether our squadrons should or should not advance; for by all these three channels alike there had come down strong mandates enjoining our cavalry to move forward and endeavour something against the enemy. I repeat that the fullest, the most generous, allowance ought to be made for the anger and consequent disturbance of mental faculty which Nolan's outbreak was but too well fitted to occasion; but it is not for that, the less true that a steady perusal at this time of Lord Raglan's written instructions by a cavalry commander of sound judgment, who was also unruffled in temper, and acquainted with the state of the field, must have led to an immediate advance of our squad-rons to an immediate advance of our squadrons, not, of course, down the fatal North Valley, but against the

line of the Causeway Heights, where the English guns CHAP. had been lost.

How Lord Lucan should have dealt with an aidede-camp who had made bold to apostrophise him in the way we have seen, that is a question which soldiers, with their traditional canons, will best determine. Since the messenger came fresh from a spot where he had been hearing the directions of the Commander-in-Chief, and looking down with full command of view upon the position of an enemy invisible from the low ground, he could not but be fraught with knowledge of almost immeasurable worth; and apparently the immediate interests of the public service required that an effort should be made to undo the mischief which had been caused by provoking his indignation, and endeavouring to bring him back to such a degree of composure as to allow of his imparting what, only a few minutes before, he had been hearing and seeing. On the other hand, the due maintenance of military subordination is, of course, transcendently important; and it has been judged, as I learn, by men held to be of authority in such matters, that after the utterance by Nolan of his last taunting words, Lieutenant-General Lord Lucan should have put the captain under arrest. The course least susceptible of a rational defence was that of treating Captain Nolan's indignant apostrophe as a word of command from Headquarters, and regarding the scornful gesture which accompanied his words as a really topographical indication.

This last course, however, as I understand him, is

V.

CHAP. the one which Lord Lucan took; for, as soon as he V. had heard the taunting words, and marked the insultcan's de- ing gesture, he determined to govern his action, not

Lord Lu

termina

tion.

exclusively by the written instructions which he held in his hand, but in part by the angry and apparently rhetorical apostrophe of the excited Captain. Nay, in spite of the two written orders, one pointing to the 'heights,' and the other to the 'guns' on those heights, as the object of the enterprise, he determined to follow what he judged to be the direction of Nolan's outpointed arm as a guiding indication of the quarter in which the attack should be made.

Dividing the Causeway Heights (where Lord Raglan desired to attack) from the line of the Fedioukine Hills (where D'Allonville was destined to charge), there opened, as we saw, that North Valley where riders seeking their death—without themselves being able to strike in attack or defence for the first full mile of their road-might nevertheless run the gauntlet between two prepared lines of fire, having always before them for a goal-which some of the survivors might touch-the front of a Russian battery, and the whole strength of Ryjoff's squadrons.* Towards this valley, as we saw, Lord Lucan thought Nolan was pointing when he uttered his taunting apostrophe.

So Lord Lucan now proceeded to obey what he judged to be the meaning of the fourth order,' as illustrated by the aide-de-camp's words and gesture.

*This statement is not too extensive; for Jeropkine's Lancers were not under General Ryjoff, the officer commanding the bulk of the Russian cavalry.

V.

Believing that it had really become his duty to send CHAP. a force down the North Valley, he selected Lord Cardigan and the Light Brigade as the man and the men who must first be offered up in obedience to the supposed commands of Lord Raglan. At a trot and alone, he rode off to the ground in front of the 13th Light Dragoons, where Lord Cardigan sat in his saddle.

IX.

can's order

Lord Lucan now personally imparted his resolve Lord Luto Lord Cardigan. There is some difference between to Lord the impressions that were formed of this interview Cardigan. by Lord Lucan on the one hand and Lord Cardigan on the other; Lord Lucan believing that with the 'fourth order' in his hand he imparted its contents, or at all events the main tenor of it, to Lord Cardigan, and directed him to advance,' without in terms enjoining an attack;' whilst Lord Cardigan's statement is that he was ordered to attack 'the Russians in the valley about three-quarters of 'a mile distant with the 13th Light Dragoons and the 17th Lancers.'*

Lord Lucan's idea as to the way in which this

* Private memorandum in Lord Cardigan's handwriting, and by him forwarded to Lord Raglan 27th October 1854. I prefer this to Lord Cardigan's subsequent account, as being earlier-within two days of the battle-and being also a statement deliberately prepared for the Commander of the Forces. The three-fourths of a mile' was, of course, estimate only, and it applied to an extent of ground which was really more than a mile and a quarter. The two regiments which he mentions as those with which he had attacked were the troops constituting his first line.