11/30/2022 0 Comments The charge of the light brigade“It is Lord Raglan’s positive order that the Light Brigade is to attack the enemy.” Into the Valley of DeathĪt 11.10am, stationed with his two staff officers at the head of the Light Brigade, Lord Cardigan turned to his trumpeter: “Sound the advance!”Īs one, the men and horses of the Light Brigade of Cavalry – which numbered around 676 – moved forward at the walk. “Certainly, my lord,” replied Cardigan, “but allow me to point out to you that there is a battery in front, a battery on each flank, and the ground is covered with Russian riflemen.” In other words, the north valley was a death trap from which they were unlikely to escape. “Lord Cardigan,” he said, “you will attack the Russians in the valley.” Instead of returning to Raglan, Nolan rode over to his old friend Captain William Morris, commanding one of the Light Brigade’s lead regiments, and got his permission to accompany the attack.Ĭardigan, meanwhile, had sent one of his aide-de-camps to query Lucan’s order. “If I come through this alive, I’ll have you court-martialled for speaking to me in that manner.” The message was taken to Cardigan by Nolan who, when the Light Brigade commander voiced his objections, asked if he and his men were afraid. Stung into action, Lucan made his final plans: Cardigan’s Light Brigade of Cavalry would lead the attack down the north valley, with the Heavy Brigade in support. What was the Charge of the Light Brigade? The top 10 military blunders in history.But so irritated was he by the taunting tone in Nolan’s voice that he chose not to continue the conversation. If Lucan had only questioned Nolan further, he must surely have discovered that his objective was to recover the captured naval guns on the Causeway Heights, rather than seize the battery of Russian guns in the north valley. He “looked at him sternly but made no answer, and after some hesitation proceeded to give orders to Lord Cardigan to charge the enemy with the Light Brigade”. There, clearly visible, was a Russian battery of eight cannon, the sun glinting off their polished barrels.Īt this critical moment, according to one eyewitness, Lucan “appeared to be surprised and irritated at the impetuous and disrespectful attitude and tone of Captain Nolan”. Lucan claimed later that from his position he could see “neither enemy nor guns”, and that Nolan’s gesture was towards “the further end of the valley”. Waving his hand vaguely eastwards in the direction of the redoubts, Nolan said contemptuously: “There, my lord, is your enemy! There are your guns!” Indeed, patriotism – through the synecdochal stand-in of the King – is revealed in the heat of battle to be a mere triviality that can be dispensed of: ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera / Dropped like luxuries.’ | Presentation of patriotism. Hughes’s poem, however, is a far more withering take on patriotism: the ‘patriotic tear’ that had ‘brimmed’ in his soldier’s eye – that is, the patriotism that had seduced him into fighting – has transmuted into something toxic: it is now ‘sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest.’ The patriotism is surreally rendered as a corrosive ‘molten iron,’ destroying him from within and the trochaic words (‘sweating,’ ‘molten’) emphasise its unnaturalness. The fact the soldiers obediently died for their country renders them in the eyes of the poet ‘hero’ whose glory is everlasting: ‘When can their glory fade?’ By situating this rhetorical question at the start of the sixth and final stanza, in an ode explicitly glorifying the ‘the six hundred’ who made the charge, the poet places structural emphasis on the glory he deems the soldiers to have earned through their patriotism. ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’ by lionising obedient British soldiers who were slaughtered en masse as a result of a miscommunication, functions as propaganda in favour of fidelity to the national cause. TikTok video from Accolade Press "'Charge of the Light Brigade' & 'Bayonet Charge' #gcseenglish #gcseenglishliterature #gcseenglishlanguage #powerandconflict #gcses2022 #gcse #gcses". 'Charge of the Light Brigade' & 'Bayonet Charge' #gcseenglish #gcseenglishliterature #gcseenglishlanguage #powerandconflict #gcses2022 #gcse #gcses
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