On 25 October 1854, the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan, mounted a frontal assault against a Russian artillery battery which was well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire.

The Light Brigade made its charge under withering direct fire and reached its target, scattering some of the gunners, but was forced to retreat immediately.

This was an optimal task for the Light Brigade, as their superior speed would ensure the Russians would be forced to either quickly abandon the cumbersome guns or be cut down en masse while they tried to flee with them.

(Russell's report in The Times recorded that just short of 200 men were sick or for other reasons left behind in camp on the day, leaving "607 sabres" to take part in the charge.

According to an estimate by Nicholas Woods, correspondent of The Morning Post, the forces at his disposal amounted to 25,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, supported by 30 or 40 cannon.

The Heavy Brigade was intended for frontal assaults on infantry positions, but neither force was anywhere near to being equipped for a frontal assault on a fully dug-in and alerted artillery, much less one with an excellent line of sight over a mile in length and supported on two sides by artillery batteries providing enfilading fire from elevated ground.

It may be that he realised that the charge was aimed at the wrong target and was attempting to stop or turn the brigade,[12] but he was killed by an artillery shell and the cavalry continued on its course.

I do not recollect hearing a word from anybody as we gradually broke from a trot to a canter, though the noise of the striking of men and horses by grape and round shot was deafening, while the dust and gravel struck up by the round shot that fell short was almost blinding, and irritated my horse so that I could scarcely hold him at all.

The surviving Russian artillerymen returned to their guns and opened fire with grapeshot and canister shot, indiscriminately at the mêlée of friend and foe before them.

[1] Captain Morgan continues: When clear again of the guns I saw two or three of my men making their way back, and as the fire from both flanks was still heavy it was a matter of running the gauntlet again.

Lucan's explanation was that he saw no point in having a second brigade mown down, and he was best positioned to render assistance to survivors returning from the charge.

[1][15] War correspondent William Howard Russell witnessed the battle and declared, "Our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy."

His account of the casualties (along with non-contemporary percentages calculated using Russell's data for ease of comparison), compiled at 2 p.m., was:[1] A formal muster of survivors was also taken: of the 673 cavalrymen who had gone into action, a "mounted strength" of 195 was recorded at this count.

He reached the Russian guns, took part in the fight, and then returned alone up the valley without bothering to rally or even find out what had happened to the survivors.

[18] He described the engagement in a speech delivered at Mansion House, London, which was quoted in the House of Commons: We advanced down a gradual descent of more than three-quarters of a mile [1.2 km], with the batteries vomiting forth upon us shells and shot, round and grape, with one battery on our right flank and another on the left, and all the intermediate ground covered with the Russian riflemen; so that when we came to within a distance of fifty yards from the mouths of the artillery which had been hurling destruction upon us, we were, in fact, surrounded and encircled by a blaze of fire, in addition to the fire of the riflemen upon our flanks.

Upon our returning up the hill which we had descended in the attack, we had to run the same gauntlet and to incur the same risk from the flank fire of the Tirailleur as we had encountered before.

I think that every man who was engaged in that disastrous affair at Balaklava, and who was fortunate enough to come out of it alive, must feel that it was only by a merciful decree of Almighty Providence that he escaped from the greatest apparent certainty of death which could possibly be conceived.

The futility of the action and its reckless bravery prompted the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet to state: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

"[25] In an exchange of public correspondence printed in the pages of The Times, Lucan blamed Raglan and his deceased aide-de-camp Captain Nolan, who had been the actual deliverer of the disputed order.

[25] Lucan evidently escaped blame for the charge, as he was made a member of the Order of the Bath in July of that same year.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was a keen military historian and a former cavalryman, took time out from the Yalta Conference in 1945 to visit the battlefield.

The analysis suggested that a charge toward the redoubt on the Causeway Heights, as Raglan had apparently intended, would have led to even higher British casualties.

[29] The fate of the surviving members of the charge was investigated by Edward James Boys, a military historian, who documented their lives from leaving the army to their deaths.

[36] A survivor, John Penn, who died in Dunbar in 1886, left a personal account of his military career, including the Charge, written for a friend.

[37] Private William Ellis of the 11th Hussars was erroneously described as the last survivor of the Charge at the time of his funeral at Upper Hale Cemetery in Farnham, Surrey in 1913 after his death aged 82.

These include Sergeant James A. Mustard of the 17th Lancers, aged 85, who had his funeral with military honours at Twickenham in early February 1916.

He was in the battles of Alma and Mackenzie's Farm, and the storming and taking of Sebastopol, and before leaving for Varna marched with his regiment from Hampton Court to Portsmouth.

[42] William Henry Pennington of the 11th Hussars, who embarked a relatively successful career as a Shakespearean actor on leaving the Army, died in 1923.

[44][45] Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote evocatively about the battle in his poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

[46] Nearly 36 years later, Kipling wrote "The Last of the Light Brigade" (1890), commemorating a visit by the last 20 survivors to Tennyson (then aged 80) to reproach him gently for not writing a sequel about the way in which England was treating its old soldiers.