Dramatic Cavalry Charges.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6267, 1 October 1891, Page 4

Dramatic Cavalry Charges.

[BY CAPI'AIN OHAT.LK3 KING.]

No. 2.—THE LIGHT BRIGADE

And now we come to the superb tragedy of tbe day—the episode that drew from the lip 3of the French General the tewe comment, "Magnificent, but it isn't war," and formed the theme for tongues and psna by tbo thousand, from that thrilling October morning to the presont time, wherever the English language is spoken, and it has been told in many another. The story of the Six Hundred seems of tireless interest.

The Light Brigade was in anything but a happy frame of mind for the month that succeeded the invasion of the Crimea. They had been led by Cardigan in the pursuit of the Russians from the battle field of the Alma. The guards, the gunners, and even the linesmen, as they called the infantry, had been poking fun at them, and these young gallants of tho "crack" regiments were ehadng with eagerness to show the whole army that, no matter how they might dawdle about the clubs at home, they could fight like heroes if a chance were given them. But ie seemed aa though luck were dead against them. For division commander thoy had that stiff, supercilious old peer, Lucan, whom they rebelled against iv their hearts as being no cavalryman at all, and whom they knew to be perpetually carping and criticising everything going on at Ljrd Raglan', headquarters, because he •ould not bear Raglan', chief of staff, General Airey. If J_ucau had not been the influential peer that he was, Raglan would undoubtedly have sent him home before this. They knew it well, for was not their comrade, Louis Nolan, captain of the Hussars, General Airey'oown aide-de-camp, and the most enthusiastic light cavalryman in tho army ? Nolan had heard all the covert sneers at the failure of the swell troopers to cut off the Russian guns after tha battle on the Bulganak and he blamed all the failure on Lucan, and did not hesitate to say so. No doubt Lucan heard more or less of his talk, and hated Nolan as he did his chief, General Airey. At all events, he was perpetually cavilling and criticising all orders that came from headquarters, and when a commander gets to doing that, the sooner he is shot the better it ia for discipline. And so, with their division commander at loggerheads with the staff of "The Commander of the Forces," as well as with their own hrigade-commander, Cardigan, the swells of the Light Brigade, were getting to be very restless and unhappy. Cardigan they liked as little as they did Lucan. He was an old man, who for years had commanded their most gorgeous regiment, the Eleventh Husaars, and had never won the respect or regard of his officers and men because he was cold, selfish and utterly unsympathetic. Even here, when he had a chance to win their esteem by "roughing it" with them in camp aa Scarlett did with his " Heavies," he threw the chance away, and lived in ease and luxury on his yacht m BalaklaVa harbor, only trotting out occasionally to camp to rasp and worry his own officers and exasperate his brother-in-law, the division commander. Why or how such uttOrly unsoldierly methods were allowed in the British servioe passes our Yankee comprehension, but they eeemed to do some mighty queer things in the Crimean campaign, and the handling of this cavalry was the queerest. _ And so, on this misty morning of the 25th of October, '54, when Liprandi's great force swept the Turks from the Causeway Heights, south of the valley, and Jabrokritsky, with his 8,000, occupied the Pedioukine to the north of it, and Fra.ce and England in tha persons of hundreds of eenoral and staff officers sat in saddle on the crest of the Chersonese at the westward end of it and looked down upon the brilliant panorama below, when the sun struggling through the miats of vapor, lighted up the broad? open, mile-long, -ha f-mi e ; .wide rift in among those bare, bleak hillsides, with the slopes of Mount Basport closing the e a 3 tern end. Here sat the Light Brigade"thegallanta of England"-drawn up in Bhowy array, facing down the valley, and chafin" and swearing m low muttered oaths at the woeful inaction to which they were condemned. Up and down their front rode Cardigan. Ha had galloped out from Balaklava at the sound of the gunsresplendent in the blue and gold, furtrimmed pelisse and crimson overalls of his old regiment—Bwearing as did they— « Damn those Heavies ! They have the of us this day," and yet never dr.aming° probably, that he was the man who moat deserved damning. Aa Lucan rode away to direct Scarlett s brigade he had moved Cardigan and his men a few hundred yards to ilieir front to a. point where they were halted facing east, and this position he directed Cardigan to " hold ' or "defend " The order waa verbal and no man oould -afterwards tell the exact words in whioh it was given. Cardigan always ready to quarrel with his chief, protested that he understood that he must not budge from there no matter what happened, but even Lucan could not have given an order so imbecile At all events, as the Russian General, Rvioff with his solid phalanxes of dusky cavalry and four eight-gun field batteries, marched deliberately over the low ridge to the front of the Light Brigade, and every fellow grasped his sword and drew a deep breath andlookedeagearlyatCardiganforthe longed-for signal, that but headed brigadier only sat and swore. The shells from the heights behind them came whistling over their heads and bursting above the Russian mass, and then the great array, as one man, swung away toward? the Causeway Heights, presenting their right flank to Cardigan and his fuming troopers. It was a superb chance. Cavalry can never defend or hold a position Btandiug still. Cavalry can only » defend when it attacks and Cardigan ought to have had Bense enough to know it, but there he sat, even when that capital soldier, Captain Morris, returned to beg him to let him charge with his own regiment—the Seventeenth Lancers, and tho captain was only rudely snubbed for his pains. It was a beautiful chance thrown to the wind. Tha brigade could have swooped upon that ponderous flank in headlong charge and hacked it— perhaps overthrown the column and captured the guns-before Ryjoff could have recovered from the shock, but to the incredulous dismay of the Englishmen on the heights and the mirthful denaion of the French, to the utter disgust of his own people, Cardigan stuck there as though on parade. The chance was lost. The Russians swept on over tbe Causeway, «nd there at last they found a cavalry leader who knew how to fight. Ten minutes more and England and FraDce were madly cheering Scarlett and the Heavy Brigade for their matchless assault and overthrow of the Muscovites, and that great mass of defeated horsemen came drifting back across the front of the Light Brigade. Officers and men fairly groaned with rage and exasperation. Here, beyond all question, was the time to dash in and complete the work of thoir comrades of the Heavies, who were hacking at the rear of the retreating mass, but to the unspeakable misery and wrath of every soldier in the saddle their titled blunderer of ft brigadier held tb em , rooted to the spot. There were hearts', broken in the Light Brigado that day before ever they came under the fire of the Russian guns. They knew such leaders | would only ruin them. ITO BE CONTINUED.)