The Light Brigade were victims of their own pride rather than squabbling generals, according to a fresh analysis of Britain's most famous military blunder.
The gallant dash toward a line of guns, might have been "impossible to prevent" once the ill-fated order had been read out in front of men branded cowards and raring to go.
The suicidal charge, 150 years ago Monday, and marked by a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh to the "Valley of Death" in the Crimea (now part of Ukraine), has been blamed on muddle and clashes between Lord Raglan, commander-in-chief, and his subordinates, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan.
Research into letters by some of the 673 cavalrymen before Balaclava highlights anger at taunts that the Light Brigade tried to avoid its Russian counterpart, the Cossacks.
"There has been some stupid chaff about the cavalry being afraid of the Cossacks," wrote one officer, after the brigade retreated in the face of a larger Russian force a month earlier.
Jeers from the Russians, and even from British infantry, were reported in the London newspapers.
Frustration reached a pitch on the day of the charge, says Hugh Small in a re-examination of the papers, when the brigade was ordered to hold back while Cossacks killed Turkish allies.
"The Cossacks then rode into the Light Brigade camp and mutilated picketed horses," says Small in next month's History Today magazine.
"While their commanders hesitated, the men could see those same Cossacks sheltering behind the battery of guns which were to be the target of the charge," he says.
Energy
The pent-up energy foreshadows movements in Iraq and the mood of soldiers on the ground there, while the Light Brigade has become common as a metaphor in debates on Iraq.
Democrat Robert Byrd, for example, telling the US Senate: "As I watch events unfold, I cannot help but be reminded of another battle at another place and another time that hurtled more than 600 soldiers into the jaws of death because of a foolish decision on the part of their commander."
The energy boiled over when Raglan's order became known. Both Cardigan, who led the charge, and Lucan, commander of light and heavy cavalry, suggested afterwards that the sneers of cowardice influenced their compliance. Both were entitled to refuse, says Small, with their better knowledge of the battlefield. But their troops were so eager that one cavalryman was flogged afterwards for joining the charge against orders.
Arrested for smoking
"Most striking was another man arrested for smoking in the ranks after the order," says Small, who has written on Florence Nightingale and her role in the Crimea.
"He was stripped of his weapons and ordered to fall out but refused, rode in the charge unarmed, and was killed," he said.
After the charge, which saw 2,000 Russian cavalry flee in disorder from the hurtling unit, Small says: "Never again would anyone say that the Light Brigade was afraid of the Cossacks."
A campaign to restore a "disgracefully neglected" memorial to some of the 118 who died was meanwhile launched yesterday, amid brambles and ivy throttling "Light Brigade Row" at a Victorian cemetery in Leeds that includes headstones with crossed sabres and the shako headgear of the brigade, above inscriptions with phrases such as "one of the 600."
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