James Baquet “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” an 1854 narrative poem by U.K. Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, starts with a bang: “Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.” The poem commemorates a battle that took place just six weeks earlier which, while symbolically heroic, simply should not have happened. The Battle of Balaclava took place Oct. 25, 1854, during the Crimean War. This war — named after its field of battle, Russia’s Crimean Peninsula — was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire with France, Britain and Sardinia (now part of Italy, France, and Morocco). The latter countries were attempting to limit Russia’s takeover of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Light Brigade was made up of five cavalry regiments, variously referred to as “Light Dragoons,” “Lancers,” and “Hussars.” “Light” here means the troops were lightly armed and armored; the “Heavy Brigade,” more heavily armed, was capable of taking on more daunting tasks. Lord Raglan, the British commander, had meant for the Light Brigade simply to prevent the Russians from taking action against the overrun Turkish positions. Such a brigade was optimized for maximum speed and mobility, and were best used for reconnaissance and brief skirmishes, but not frontal assaults. Instead, through a miscommunication, Lord Cardigan, in charge of the Light Brigade, led them directly against an artillery battery that was well-prepared to take them down. As Tennyson wrote later, “Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered...” Under withering fire, the brigade sustained high casualties — some 40 percent of the approximately 670 men were killed or wounded — and achieved virtually nothing. A British war correspondent who witnessed the scene wrote later, “Our Light Brigade was annihilated by their own rashness, and by the brutality of a ferocious enemy.” Tennyson, however, pictured them as bravely following orders, even though foreseeing the inevitable result. Vocabulary: Which words above mean: 1. devastating, very destructive 2. discharged, fired 3. wiped out 4. ability to move quickly 5. gathering information in the field 6. knowing in advance 7. falling apart 8. made as perfect as possible 9. foolishness 10. unable to be avoided | 