'Their's but to do and die'

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder'd.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

TO Alfred, Lord Tennyson, writing ten years after the event, it was a glorious and fearless act of obedience which demonstrated the finest qualities of the British soldier. But ten years earlier, William Russell, one of the first war correspondents, wrote in The Times that it was a "hideous blunder".

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the most renowned episodes in British military history. In the space of just 25 minutes, almost half of the brigade's total strength were killed or wounded, and all because an order had been misunderstood.

But while the military repercussions of the engagement were marginal, it was to have a much wider impact on the structure and organisation of the British Army. By exposing the system where commissions were purchased and promotion was dependent on wealth and influence, it helped pave the way for a new professionalism.

The Charge of the Light Brigade took place during the battle for Balaclava, one of the key conflicts of the Crimean War.

The war's immediate cause was a dispute between Orthodox and Roman Catholic monks in Jerusalem, but its roots were in the struggle for supremacy between the great European powers, which was not to reach its culmination for another 60 years, in the Great War.

Russian ambitions to seize chunks of the collapsing Ottoman Empire; French alarm at Russia's expansionism; Britain's determination to preserve Turkish authority, combined to see Britain and France declare war on Russia in March 1854.

British forces were led by Field Marshal Lord Raglan, whose qualifications chiefly rested on being the 11th son of the 5th Duke of Beaufort, and of having been a confidant of the late Duke of Wellington. An assumption that he must have learned something from the Iron Duke, and an arm lost at Waterloo, overrode the fact he had never commanded anything bigger than a battalion, and that the majority of his service had been spent in staff work.

Among his lieutenants was Lord Lucan, who commanded the cavalry division, divided into the Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan and the Heavy Brigade under Sir James Scarlett.

After skirmishes near Constantinople, the Russian naval base of Sevastapol became the Allies next target, and they landed in the Crimea on September 14, 1854.

Raglan moved south towards the Alma, pushing the Russians across the river in a battle, but then marched around Sevastapol, establishing themselves south of the port.

THE Allies then laid siege to Sevastapol, and the bombardment began on October 17. The British forces, ten miles south-east of the port, were supplied through the harbour of Balaclava, and to protect the supply routes, Raglan posted the Cavalry Division in the plain to the north, supported by a chain of redoubts, or small forts, along the Causeway Heights, a series of hills which overlooked the plain.

A week after the bombardment started, Raglan received word that the Russians were preparing to attack Balaclava with a force of 28,000 men. But perhaps because he distrusted his spies, or perhaps because he thought it was just another false alarm, he decided not to bolster his defences.

Before dawn on the following day, October 25, the Russians attacked the Causeway Heights, seizing the redoubts. Raglan ordered two infantry regiments to march into the plain, but neither would arrive in time.

Now it was just the Cavalry Division, of 1,500 men, and an infantry battalion of 550 men, standing against a huge Russian force, whose objective was Balaclava.

Respite came from the infantry, the 93rd Highlanders, whose Thin Red Line repulsed a charge of Russian hussars, and Scarlett's Heavy Brigade successfully charged the Russian cavalry.

But the Russians still held the Causeway Heights, and, with their cavalry sheltered behind Cossack artillery at the eastern end of the plain, the enemy occupying three sides of the north valley.

Raglan ordered Lord Lucan, commanding the cavalry, to retake the Heights with the support of the additional infantry, but as this infantry had not yet arrived, Lucan believed he should wait, and ordered the Light Brigade to the north valley and the Heavy Brigade to the south valley, so they could attack the Heights on both fronts.

Raglan was becoming increasingly fretful, and, eager to follow up the initial success, his anxiety only increased when Lucan, in the valley below, refused to move. An aide then pointed out that the Russians were starting to remove the heavy guns from the captured redoubts.

AWARE that Wellington had never lost a gun, he dictated what became known to historians as the Fourth Order: "Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate."

The order was given to Captain Louis Nolan to deliver, who quickly found Lucan and handed it over. Lucan, without the benefit of Raglan's elevated position, could not see the guns being hauled away, and demanded of Nolan: "Attack, sir! Attack what? What guns, sir?"

With an insolent shrug, Nolan gestured towards the redoubts and replied: "There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!".

Lucan took the gesture to be towards the far end of the valley, where the Cossack guns were positioned. Knowing that Lord Cardigan, commander of the Light Brigade and his detested brother-in-law, would object to such a charge, Lucan rode to give it in person.

When Cardigan pointed out that there was a battery in front and one on each flank, Lucan replied that it was Raglan's order they were to attack. Cardigan ordered his trumpeter to sound the advance to the 676 men of the Light Brigade.

As they started to move, Captain Nolan broke out from the line, frantically waving his sword. It has been suggested that he was gesturing towards the Heights, realising the brigade was attacking the wrong target, but before he could reach Cardigan he was hit by shrapnel from a Russian shell, killing him instantly.

THE brigade charged on, their ranks cut down under a hail of Russian fire from three sides, but remarkably still reached the battery, sweeping around the guns, killing the gunners with spear and sabre, and then charging against the Russian cavalry positioned behind.

At first the enemy fled towards a viaduct at the end of the valley, but forced to turn by this bottleneck, they realised the vastly inferior numbers of the force confronting them and charged against the remnants of the Light Brigade, which in the meantime had seen their retreat cut off by Russian lancers.

Again, remarkably, the Light Brigade managed to hack its way back, through the lancers to return to its original position.

When they reformed, just 195 men were still mounted. In the space of 25 minutes, 113 men had been killed and 134 wounded, with more captured, and 475 horses had been killed or later died of their wounds.

Observing the charge, the French General Bosquet observed: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!" (It is magnificent, but it is not war), and it is justifiably said to be the greatest military mistake in history.

Cardigan told a parade of survivors: "This is a great blunder, but no fault of mine," but while much of the blame rests with Raglan for the ambiguity of his order, suicidal even if it had been followed accurately, it was Lucan and the dead Nolan who were made scapegoats, with the former relieved of his command. Raglan was to die from dysentery in the Crimea the following year.