Charge of the Light Brigade
October 25, 1854
At Balaclava, through a muddled order, six hundred and seventy British cavalry charged straight up a valley lined with Russian guns. They took the battery and rode back; fewer than two hundred returned unwounded. Tennyson wrote a poem within weeks. The officer corps had just given a demonstration of aristocratic incompetence.
In context
Also in 1854 (4 other events on record)
- Kanagawa Treaty · East Asia · Politics
- Kansas-Nebraska Act · North America · Politics
- John Snow Removes the Broad Street Pump Handle · Europe · Science
- Nightingale Sails for Scutari · Europe · Science
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in War
Era
Industrial Age (1801–1900), one of 513 events from that era on Saeculum.