The Charge of the Light Brigade

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, memorializes the courage of a British cavalry brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. On October 25, 1854, through incompetent military leadership and communications, approximately 600 soldiers in the British Light Brigade were mistakenly ordered to attack a Russian artillery battery at the end of a long, exposed valley below the Causeway Heights, which had been fortified by the Russians. Fired on from the front and shelled from the Heights, the Light Brigade rode through the valley and captured the battery, while sustaining terrible losses. Tennyson wrote the patriotic poem December 2, 1854, shortly after news of the Light Brigade’s heroism reached London, and published it in The Examiner one week later.