December 9, 1854—“The Charge of the Light Brigade” appeared in the London Examiner, less than a week after Alfred, Lord Tennyson read about the suicidal attack that The Times of London called “an atrocity without parallel.”
I find that last phrase fascinating. Nowadays, when most people hear the word “atrocity,” they’re speaking of what one combatant does to another (or what a combatant does to a noncombatant.) But what the Times referred to was what Her Majesty’s forces did to themselves—or, rather, what their incompetent commanders did to the valorous but unlucky “Six Hundred” at the Battle of Balaclava.
Additionally, it really wasn’t “without parallel.” British generals had been getting their soldiers killed for centuries. What had changed now was that the Crimean War had become the first media conflict, with correspondent William Howard Russell sending back dispatches to the home front, where they were read within weeks of the events—and could affect the course of future campaigns. (Within a decade, Russell would be doing the same thing in the American Civil War.)
Tennyson’s tribute to the brave soldiers came five years after his appointment as poet laureate. The circumstances of the Balaclava catastrophe—a third of the brigade dead in less than 20 minutes, the result of an ambiguous order and the refusal of the two brigade commanders to request clarification from their chief—forced him to make this poem a striking departure, in both tone and structure, from much of his other work.
The key line in it is “Someone had blunder’d.” John Ruskin rightly upbraided Tennyson for taking it out after its initial appearance, and the poet, luckily, thought better of his decision and put it back in.
Yet, for all their surface bluntness, those words express ambivalence. “Someone” is never identified, even though many people at the time knew precisely who had issued (or allowed to proceed) the insane order. Similarly, in the lines that spur the action of this narrative poem—
I find that last phrase fascinating. Nowadays, when most people hear the word “atrocity,” they’re speaking of what one combatant does to another (or what a combatant does to a noncombatant.) But what the Times referred to was what Her Majesty’s forces did to themselves—or, rather, what their incompetent commanders did to the valorous but unlucky “Six Hundred” at the Battle of Balaclava.
Additionally, it really wasn’t “without parallel.” British generals had been getting their soldiers killed for centuries. What had changed now was that the Crimean War had become the first media conflict, with correspondent William Howard Russell sending back dispatches to the home front, where they were read within weeks of the events—and could affect the course of future campaigns. (Within a decade, Russell would be doing the same thing in the American Civil War.)
Tennyson’s tribute to the brave soldiers came five years after his appointment as poet laureate. The circumstances of the Balaclava catastrophe—a third of the brigade dead in less than 20 minutes, the result of an ambiguous order and the refusal of the two brigade commanders to request clarification from their chief—forced him to make this poem a striking departure, in both tone and structure, from much of his other work.
The key line in it is “Someone had blunder’d.” John Ruskin rightly upbraided Tennyson for taking it out after its initial appearance, and the poet, luckily, thought better of his decision and put it back in.
Yet, for all their surface bluntness, those words express ambivalence. “Someone” is never identified, even though many people at the time knew precisely who had issued (or allowed to proceed) the insane order. Similarly, in the lines that spur the action of this narrative poem—
“ ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said”—the “he” is left unnamed.
But Tennyson was not interested in indicting any particular person for mismanaging a single point in the Crimean War, let alone the entire rationale for this misbegotten war. He intended—and resoundingly succeeded—in celebrating the common soldier who was extending the Union Jack all across the globe.
Doubt characterizes much of Tennyson’s “non-official” work, such as “In Memoriam,” while other poems written specifically in his capacity as laureate (e.g., “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”) are unabashedly celebratory.
“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” in contrast, achieved much the same goal that Winston Churchill did in his June 4, 1940 speech to the House of Commons on what the Prime Minister admitted was “a colossal military disaster”: the defeat of French forces that necessitated the hasty withdrawal of British forces from Dunkirk. With short, choppy phrases (“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds…”), Churchill nevertheless turned a near-annihilation into one of the grandest rallying cries in the history of political oratory.
Tennyson, the preeminent national poet of the early days of the British Empire, used somewhat similar means in his poem extolling sacrifice. Rather than being long and ruminative, as his more personal poems such as “In Memoriam” are, his verses here are short and propulsive (“Cannon to right of them,/Cannon to left of them”). The lines move swiftly, with the last stanza only half the length of the previous five, in much the same way that the fallen at Balaclava had their lives truncated.
Students of Irish history—in fact, anyone familiar with clothing—will recognize at least one person who could reasonably be called the “someone who blunder’d” in the poem. James Thomas Brudenell, the seventh Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), had already shown his carelessness about human life when told that the Great Hunger might have killed a million Irishmen in the 1840s: “Not enough to do any good,” he responded.
What nobody—at least, nobody in the British high command, which promoted on the basis of social rank rather than skill--realized is that Cardigan, along with his co-commander of the Light Brigade, the brother-in-law with whom he was quarreling, Lord Lucan, was a fool with his men’s lives, too.
British commander Lord Raglan issued a vaguely worded order that cavalry commanders Cardigan and Lucan misinterpreted. Rather than clarifying why Raglan was ordering them to charge down a valley between two lines of guns--the action they mistakenly thought was intended--they chose to accept his message unquestioningly, with predictable results.
In “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Tennyson told his public something they wanted to hear—that their soldiers were “noble”—but not what they needed to hear—that the lives of these rank-and-file were sacrificed because of their generals’ idiocy.
Though known as the poet of Britain’s imperial age, Tennyson did manage, later on, to depict the consequences of imperial disaster resulting from social collapse.
But Tennyson was not interested in indicting any particular person for mismanaging a single point in the Crimean War, let alone the entire rationale for this misbegotten war. He intended—and resoundingly succeeded—in celebrating the common soldier who was extending the Union Jack all across the globe.
Doubt characterizes much of Tennyson’s “non-official” work, such as “In Memoriam,” while other poems written specifically in his capacity as laureate (e.g., “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”) are unabashedly celebratory.
“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” in contrast, achieved much the same goal that Winston Churchill did in his June 4, 1940 speech to the House of Commons on what the Prime Minister admitted was “a colossal military disaster”: the defeat of French forces that necessitated the hasty withdrawal of British forces from Dunkirk. With short, choppy phrases (“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds…”), Churchill nevertheless turned a near-annihilation into one of the grandest rallying cries in the history of political oratory.
Tennyson, the preeminent national poet of the early days of the British Empire, used somewhat similar means in his poem extolling sacrifice. Rather than being long and ruminative, as his more personal poems such as “In Memoriam” are, his verses here are short and propulsive (“Cannon to right of them,/Cannon to left of them”). The lines move swiftly, with the last stanza only half the length of the previous five, in much the same way that the fallen at Balaclava had their lives truncated.
Students of Irish history—in fact, anyone familiar with clothing—will recognize at least one person who could reasonably be called the “someone who blunder’d” in the poem. James Thomas Brudenell, the seventh Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), had already shown his carelessness about human life when told that the Great Hunger might have killed a million Irishmen in the 1840s: “Not enough to do any good,” he responded.
What nobody—at least, nobody in the British high command, which promoted on the basis of social rank rather than skill--realized is that Cardigan, along with his co-commander of the Light Brigade, the brother-in-law with whom he was quarreling, Lord Lucan, was a fool with his men’s lives, too.
British commander Lord Raglan issued a vaguely worded order that cavalry commanders Cardigan and Lucan misinterpreted. Rather than clarifying why Raglan was ordering them to charge down a valley between two lines of guns--the action they mistakenly thought was intended--they chose to accept his message unquestioningly, with predictable results.
In “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Tennyson told his public something they wanted to hear—that their soldiers were “noble”—but not what they needed to hear—that the lives of these rank-and-file were sacrificed because of their generals’ idiocy.
Though known as the poet of Britain’s imperial age, Tennyson did manage, later on, to depict the consequences of imperial disaster resulting from social collapse.
King Arthur’s last battle in Idylls of the King occurs in such a mist that “cryings for the light” fill the air. The imagery of a battle enshrouded in darkness represents an echo and a warning—an echo of Thucydides’ account of the chaotic night battle of Syracuse in the Peloponnesian War, and a warning that the ideals of brotherhood and fidelity that animate Arthur as well as “the noble Six Hundred” at Balaclava can end in complacency that wreaks havoc, on the battlefield and throughout the realm.
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