The reason why woodham

Related titles. Exercise of Power. Pilgrimage To Iona. White King. Oliver Cromwell Penguin Monarchs. John Aubrey. The Best of Men. Letemendia , Claire Letemendia. Grant and Sherman. Yet the British cavalry has seldom been successful. The Duke of Wellington remarked that the cavalry of other European armies had won victories for their generals, but his cavalry had invariably got him into scrapes. Gronow reports the celebrated French cavalry commander, Excelmann, as saying: Your horses are the finest in the world and your men ride better than any Continental soldier; With such material the English cavalry ought to have done more than has ever been accomplished by them on the field of battle.

The great deficiency is in your officers. The dash of British cavalry officers was never greater than at the opening of the Crimean campaign in the spring of Magnificently mounted, horses were their passion; they rode like the devil himself, and their confidence in their ability to defeat any enemy single-handed was complete.

Cavalry officers were saying in London drawing-rooms that to take infantry on the campaign was superfluous; the infantry would merely be a drag on them, and had better be left at home. But cholera embarked with them, and cholera had raged in the fleet as it waited in Balchik Bay. The disgusting sights of the bay at Vama were repeated at Balchik.

Men who died of cholera were flung into the sea with weights at their feet, but the weights were too light; as the bodies decomposed they rose to the surface, the weights kept them upright, and they floated head and shoulders out of the water, hideous in the sun.

At Vama the dreadful spectres had bobbed about the transports as if watching their comrades embark; at Balchik they seemed to be waiting for the army to arrive. Cholera was soon rife in the crowded transports, and at night splash after splash told of fresh bodies adding to the horrors of the bay.

Shortly before the Charge of the Light Brigade, other British Cavalry attempt to take back some redoubts on the right side of the Valley: view spoiler [ However, Scarlett, with his staff and his trumpeter immediately behind him, placed himself in front of his first line, drew his sword, and ordered his trumpeter to sound the charge. Between the Scots Greys and the Inniskillings, who formed the first line, a traditional friendship existed, and it happened that the last time each regiment had been in action was together at Waterloo.

For a few minutes the pace seemed intolerably slow, as the Greys picked their way over the camping ground and the Inniskillings held back to wait for them; then they were clear and riding headlong, stirrup to stirrup, up the slope to the Russians.

Hard as they had ridden, Scarlett was first. Fifty yards ahead of his first line, he had galloped straight into the Russian mass and disappeared. And now the watchers on the heights saw an astonishing sight. First Scarlett and his staff, then the three squadrons of the first line, were swallowed up, lost, and engulfed in the great grey Russian mass, and then suddenly they had not disappeared. Red coats were visible, bright specks of colour against the Russian grey: the men of the Heavy Brigade were alive, lighting, their sword arms moving like toys, and through field-glasses individual officers could be distinguished; Scarlett in particular with his red face and big white moustache, fighting like a madman.

Now the great Russian square began to heave, to sway, to surge this way and that, but it did not break, and the two great wings began to wheel inward to cut off the three squadrons, close over them, and crush them. They are surrounded and must be annihilated! One can hardly breathe. Wild with the rage of battle, yelling madly, the second squadron of Inniskillings and the 5th Dragoon Guards crashed into the Russian mass on the left; a few seconds later the Royals, who had come forward without orders, flung themselves in on the right.

Once more the great grey square heaved, and up on the heights a roar like the roar of the sea could be heard, made up, said those who were near the battle, of the violent and ceaseless cursing of the British troopers hacking at the thick Russian uniforms-the Russian coats were so thick that they turned the points of the swords, the shakos so stout that they could not be halved with a hatchet.

It was an engagement of a thousand hand-to-hand fights; pistols and carbines were not used-men hacked and chopped at each other, cursing at each other.

When their swords broke, they tore at each other, streaming with blood. The roar of battle was accompanied by the sharp clatter of sword on sword and sword on helmet, and punctuated by sudden wild yells as the Russian mass, heaving, surging, swayed this way and that, but still did not break. View all 5 comments.

Aug 22, Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it Shelves: illustrated-review , history , wars-other , non-fiction. Pursuing a friend's question about the lack of fiction set during the Crimean War —56 I have read Tolstoy's semi-autobiographical Sevastopol Sketches and Beryl Bainbridge's idiosyncratic Master Georgie.

Lacking any other fiction except for the satirical Flashman at the Charge , I thought it was time to turn to some real history. Cecil Woodham-Smith's study is a classic. It was also the inspiration for the Richardson film, although contractual obligations forced the makers to claim otherwise. Left to right: Lord Raglan, Lord Lucan, and Lord Cardigan I seldom read non-fiction books, preferring the creative perspective of a good novelist. Woodham-Smith, though, hooked me immediately with her portrait of the two cavalry commanders in the Battle of Balaclava—Lord Cardigan and his brother-in-law Lord Lucan—whose implacable enmity, badly managed by the commander-in-chief Lord Raglan, would lead to the near destruction of Cardigan's Light Brigade in their heroic but suicidal charge.

Both men were aristocrats, both rich, both military commanders totally devoid of field experience, both demanding perfectionists. Cardigan is presented as a martinet, given to publicly demeaning his social inferiors, and totally ignoring the reprimands of his superior officers, even at the expense of public scandals that thrice brought him into court.

Militarily, at least, the younger Lord Lucan seems to have done things by the book, but he also presided over the forced eviction of thousands of his tenants on his Irish estates during the potato famine.

Woodham-Smith is fascinating in telling the life stories of these two, especially Cardigan. Wellington famously said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Woodham-Smith implies that the Crimea was almost lost there. The war was led by middle-aged aristocrats who had purchased their commissions and promotions, had next to no battle experience, and who looked down on the professional officers who had actually fought in India and elsewhere as social inferiors who let down the tone.

Lord Raglan was a slightly different case. As right-hand man to the Duke of Wellington upon his retirement from active command, he had developed fine skills in diplomacy, but had never commanded troops in battle. His personality was that of the ecclesiastic rather than a soldier; benevolent and urbane on the outside, fossilized in his views within, he would do anything to avoid personal conflict, and failed to address the simmering feud between the two brothers-in-law.

I suppose it is incumbent on the historian to give as many details as possible, together with the various letters and memoranda that constitute the factual record. But I soon reached the point of "a plague on both your houses" when I ceased to care about either of the squabbling generals. And while I can applaud the author's account of the logistic mishaps, military difficulties, and occasional successes as the British forces land in the North Crimea and make their way down to its South coast, the last half did not really grip me as the earlier parts had.

I yearned for the immediacy of a Tolstoy to take me into the flash, fear, and feel of it. But just occasionally, Woodham-Smith produces some fine writing of her own, as in these two paragraphs showing, respectively, the aftermath of the successful charge by the Heavy Brigade and the debacle of the Light Brigade a few hours later: The great Russian mass swayed, rocked, gave a gigantic heave, broke, and, disintegrating it seemed in a moment, fled.

A great shout went up: from the troops fighting the battle, from the Light Brigade looking on, from the heights, where the watchers hurrah-ed, flung their hats into the air, and clapped their hands; and Lord Raglan sent an aide-de-camp galloping down with the message "Well done, Scarlett.

An order had been issued that no fires were to be lit and no noise made, since a further attack by the Russians was feared. The survivors of the Light Brigade stood about in groups talking about their dead comrades and the disasters of the day.

The men were exhausted and over-wrought, the night was bitterly cold. Without fires nothing could be cooked, and most of them had still had nothing to eat beyond the dry biscuit in their haversacks and the afternoon dram of rum. They especially mourned their horses. Sergeant-Major Loy Smith of the 11th Hussars was "moved to tears by the thought of my beautiful horse; she was a light bay, nearly thoroughbred; I became her master nearly three years before. View all 4 comments.

Oct 10, Christopher Saunders rated it it was amazing Shelves: crimean-war , reads , favorites , topnonfiction , someone-had-blundered-bibliography. Not a truly objective history, Woodham-Smith's book is an eloquent, sweeping condemnation of the Victorian class system. Using two officers - Lords Cardigan and Lucan - as a prism on British society, she shows the combination of arrogance, bad judgment and miscommunication that led to the sacrifice of the "Noble The only son in a family of daughters, he grew spoiled by parental dotage, generating an egotism mixed with dreams of military glory.

By adulthood Cardigan was an almost caricature nobleman: handsome and gallant, but arrogant, snobbish and short-tempered. Woodham-Smith's claim that Cardigan's "glorious golden head had nothing in it" 15 is unfair; biographer Saul David shows that Cardigan was fairly intelligent.

However, Cardigan certainly lacked in other areas: common sense, tact and especially temperance. Commanding first the 15th, and later the 11th Hussars, Cardigan proved harshly exacting. His stringent standards made the 11th Hussars England's premiere cavalry regiment, but they also engendered the loathing of his officers and men.

He certainly kept England's press abuzz with sundry scandals. Minor breaches of etiquette sent him into apoplexy: he scandalized the Army by blackballing John Reynolds, a young captain who dared serve Moselle at a champagne dinner the famous "black bottle" affair , and flogging a soldier on Easter Sunday. Cardigan himself violated societal mores through repeated duels and scandalous love affairs.

He was publicly booed at theaters and public gatherings, becoming a perennial headache for his superiors. An exasperated Duke of Wellington proclaimed "he had never known the time of the staff Profiled in parallel is George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan.

Lucan easily bested Cardigan in sheer bloody-minded nastiness. He gained infamy for cruelly managing his Mayo estates during the Irish potato famine.

Consolidating land holdings and evicting tenants en mass, he caused untold suffering among his subjects and intense hatred: "it is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all" Like Cardigan, he was also a martinet of the worst sort, a brutal taskmaster "perpetually entangled in trifles" 33 in commanding his troops and often contemptuous of superiors.

Lucan found increasingly petty and bizarre ways of exerting authority: at one point, he ordered his cavalry drilled in antiquated Napoleonic tactics against Raglan's express orders. Not surprisingly, these men loathed each other.

Lucan married Cardigan's sister and by all accounts mistreated her, igniting a personal feud. Naturally, when the Crimean War broke out Cardigan heading the Light Brigade found himself serving under division commander Lucan. Commanding general Lord Raglan exacerbated things by separating Cardigan from Lucan's main body, thus undermining Lucan's authority.

Even in the field, the two men never missed an opportunity to spite or undermine each other, with disastrous results. Woodham-Smith forcefully attacks the British military that spawned them. The purchase system, by which officers could literally buy a higher rank, had its benefits. It forestalled the establishment of a powerful, Prussian-style military class, and forced officers to take personal responsibility for their regiment's upkeep.

In practice however, it populated the Army with dilettantes and adventurers, seeing military service as a stepping stone to easy prestige. Nominally officers could advance by merit; in practice men without experience or qualification leapfrogged over seasoned career soldiers. Lord Palmerston proclaimed that "it was very desirable to connect the higher classes of Society with the Army" 30 , whether or not they were fit to lead. The lack of a major war since ensured an antiquated senior staff.

Wellington's longtime secretary, Raglan's bravery he had lost an arm at Waterloo , amiability and organizational skills were unquestioned. His greatest achievement was ensuring smooth relations with his French and Turkish allies. Yet Raglan had never led troops in the field, and proved a spectacularly inept tactician. He proved frustratingly absent-minded, constantly confusing his French allies with the Russian enemy.

An exasperated junior officer complained that "everything [is] old at the top. This makes everything sluggish. Horses crowded into transport ships died en route to the Crimea. Raglan botched the Allied attack at the Alma, forcing British troops to take and retake the same ground repeatedly. Over-caution and mis-communicaton prevented a complete victory when Raglan refuses Lucan's request to launch a follow-up attack. Raglan ill-advisedly shifted the Allied supply base to Balaclava, a tiny village ill-suited for supplying two massive armies.

Finally, administrative muddle ensures inadequate supplies and medical treatment, causing thousands of troops to die of disease and exposure. In fairness, most officers shared many misfortunes with their men. Both Raglan and his French counterpart Marshall St. Arnaud ultimately succumbed to dysentery.

Lucan was wounded at Balaclava and even his detractors granted him personal bravery. Cardigan however spent evenings on his yacht in Calamita Bay, entertaining civilian friends and distancing himself from his brigade's hardships.

Lest this seem unduly extravagant, military buffs may remember American General George McClellan lunching while the Battle of Malvern Hill raged, Boer War commander Charles Warren stopping his division's advance for a bath, or Charles Townshend dining on plum duff at Kut while his troops starved. This mixture of sang froid and self-indulgence seems unfortunately prevalent. Woodham-Smith hits her rhetorical stride with Balaclava. She recounts the stirring stand of Colin Campbell's "Thin Red Line," and the gallant Charge of the Heavy Brigade, where cavalrymen under James Scarlett defeated 2, Cossacks in a wild uphill charge.

Woodham-Smith captures the excitement and fleeting glory of these skirmishes. Against all odds, the British seemed poised to win a spectacular victory. Yet Cardigan stood by, using a discretionary order from Lucan as an excuse not to attack the routed Cossacks. Had Cardigan followed up on Scarlett's success, the third phase of the battle might never have occurred.

Instead, a classic example of mismanagement follows. Raglan dictates an unclear order to quartermaster Richard Airey, instructing Lucan to attack Russian troops taking capture guns away from the Causeway Heights.

Captain Louis Nolan, Raglan's impulsive aide, delivers the message to an agitated Lucan, emphatically pointing at the nearest guns. Neither man recognizes Nolan's fatal mistake: that Lucan cannot see the Heights from his position. Nolan instead gestures towards a mass of Russians supported by artillery in the valley ahead. Stung by accusations of "looking on" in earlier engagements, Lucan does not ask Nolan to clarify his order, and Cardigan protests halfheartedly.

Before anyone realizes it, the Light Brigade initiates its fateful charge. Historians still dissect the Charge in hope of assigning blame, following the footsteps of Cardigan and Lucan's vicious postwar press feud. Woodham-Smith dodges the issue of individual guilt, viewing Balaclava instead as the logical conclusion of an entire system. For all their gallantry, the British cavalry could not achieve the impossible, and find themselves decimated by well-placed cannon and overwhelming numbers.

With so many egotists and incompetents staffing the Army, the Light Brigade's fate seems inevitable. If the British Army was gradually reformed after Crimea, it came at great cost and only grudgingly. The purchase system was not abolished until the Cardwell reforms of , largely at the impetus of Crimean veteran Garnet Wolseley. If The Reason Why isn't definitive, it's because of its limited portrayal of the Crimea the book mostly ends at Balaclava and its editorial tone. Still, Woodham-Smith's passionate anger and vivid prose make it the most readable account of the Light Brigade's sorry fate, and a classic account of military incompetence.

Sep 01, Adrian Buck rated it really liked it Shelves: history. As if the Charge of the Light Brigade were not enough as a depiction of senseless suffering of man and beast, Woodham-Smith warms the reader up on the Great Famine in Ireland.

I have never had to confront that disaster as closely as this book insists. It would have been enough for me, but that is before she gets to the main event. This is a powerful, dramatic narrative, and ultimately a harrowing read. It is magnificent, but is it history? It has been described as 'popular history', in contrast I As if the Charge of the Light Brigade were not enough as a depiction of senseless suffering of man and beast, Woodham-Smith warms the reader up on the Great Famine in Ireland.

It has been described as 'popular history', in contrast I think to 'academic history'. Yet there is no lack of original research in this book. In fact, it is the relentless use of primary sources which make this book so harrowing: first person accounts of the horror of human affairs, and the entrenched ignorance that gave rise to it.

If there something unacademic in the book, it is not a lack of research, but rather a lack of detachment from the evidence. So ultimately I am not persuaded that the reason why this folly occurred was the purchase system of military commissions, or the personal animosity between two particularly pig-headed commanders.

There is a lack of judgement here about the nature of military disaster. That battle, which doesn't warrant a wikipedia page of it's own, had a cavalry misunderstanding that led to far worse consequences than those at Balaclava. Airey's reference to that Battle in an Indian campaign is revealing because it undermines Woodham-Smith's own insistence that institutional prejudice against professional officers who had served in India had led to the appointment of a lot of inexperienced aristocrats in the Crimea.

Perhaps, on the basis of Chilianwallah and other matters, that prejudice seemed eminently more reasonable to Airey and other officers in the British Army. Woodham-Smith also wants to blame the influence of the then defunct Duke of Wellington for the debacle at Balaclava.

She argues somewhat perversely that because he was the possibly the greatest military genius in history, the British Army was only able to work while he was alive. Wellington was also a Indian Officer, and Woodham-Smith can't have it both ways. Either Wellington was also prejudiced against Indian officers, and having served there, he might have good reason for this.

Or the prejudice against Indian Officers has been overstated. Cardigan, and to a lesser extent, Lucan come across as unpleasant people, but rooting this history in their biographies doesn't convince me that their personal animosity was to blame for the Charge of the Light Brigade. In the final analysis the disaster was caused by a failure in communication made in the fog of war. Since Lucan and Cardigan were in rare agreement about the interpretation of the order, you have to look at Raglan's and Nolan's role in the formation and transmission of the order.

Their characters, though fascinatingly sketched, are not central to Woodham-Smith's story. Perhaps that analysis makes for a much less dramatic narrative, if there is a narrative there at all. This raises a valid question about History: like Lucan, do we need it to explain to ourselves why such senseless suffering occurs, to attribute blame?

Whereas in truth, we should simply accept that shit happens. Apr 05, Steelwhisper rated it it was amazing Shelves: british-authors , real-people , psychology , victorian-era , 5-brilliant , science , victorian-wars. Woodham-Smith does the complex topic full justice, without becoming overbearing. This is THE book to read to comprehend what led to this disastrous action. Published by Penguin, Harmondsworth, Soft cover. No Jacket. Octavo paperback. Initials on front cover and 4 names on title page.

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