Half A League Onward: The Truth Behind The Charge Of The Light Brigade | Our History

in October 1854 the Crimean War was 6 months old the British and their allies the French and the ottoman Turks were aiming to break Russian military power in the Black Sea by destroying the major Naval Base at castol the Allies had expected to capture it quickly but Russian resistance was strong and instead of Swift Victory they faced a bitter Siege now it was a moment of Crisis for the Allies Russian troops were threatening to relieve the pressure on sevastopol by striking at Allied supply lines their objective the vital British Harbor of balaclava behind me is the entrance to balaklava Harbor everything that the Army needed had to come into this Harbor just over here and be sent up from here to operations against sasto and the army with the bulk of Allied troops needed for Siege operations balaclava was vulnerable its defense was a line of six earthwork forts known as rats they were cited along a low Ridge called the cway which separated two shallow valleys South and North if this place fell or if it was hazarded in any way at all it would be the equivalent of cutting the throat of the British army here in the Crimea Manning the six vital routs were lightly armed Allied Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman Empire they were the first line of defense intended to give early warning of any Russian [Music] advance but miles from their nearest support an attack would leave them isolated and cut off they were to play a crucial role in the Battle of balaclava yet of all the events that day one is remembered Above All The Charge of the Light Brigade and its story has been woven into a legend it tells how the Russians launched their attack on balaclava at dawn the Turkish troops at the RADS fled in Terror abandoning their guns commander-in-chief Lord Raglin ordered the Light Brigade to stop the Russians seizing those abandoned guns but somehow a misunderstood order led to the 600 riding the wrong way to their Doom in A Storm of Russian Artillery fire but not everyone believes things happened quite the way of the legend popular history would suggest that the men of the Light Brigade were the Great Heroes of the battle of balaklava but militarily and honestly I think the true heroes of that battle were The Men Who defended number one redout on Comer's Hill at the Eastern end of the causeway can Roberts Hill sight of redout number one was the key to the line of redds if it was captured the other redds would be outflanked and would fall like dominoes realizing this the Russians began their attack on balaclava Harbor with an overwhelming assault on redout number one the task of holding this vital defensive position was left to just a few hundred ottoman Turks in the outcry following the Light Brigade disaster the British press hungry for scapegoats derided Turkish soldiers as hopeless incompetence in the se but Mike Hargrave morson would like to prove that the truth is very different Mike as a member of the Crimean War research Society they're determined to find out what really happened in the fight for redout number one first they need to find it working alongside the society is archaeologist Phil Freeman he'll search for evidence on the ground Mike and the others give him an idea of what he should look for one of the key things we would love to find out is not so much what finds you can pull out for us but the actual plan of of what has been Disturbed Earth yes I agree traces of where Earth has been Disturbed to build defenses should still exist on can Roberts's Hill even after 150 years to look for them Phil will use groundbreaking new technology high resolution satellite imagery from the new generation of commercial satellites like iconos is revealing the landscape of the battle of balaclava in astonishing detail for the very first time a single iconos image taken from an altitude of 400 m reveals the entire balaclava Battlefield the extraordinary resolution of the satellite photo clearly shows K Robert's Hill you can see the impressions in the ground of where the ground has been Disturbed where soil and stones have been heaped up by enhancing you can see but Phil also needs to know details of the Red's layout be interesting to to to have some idea of how the the redout would be laid out internally what kind of structures we could expect to see decided nothing nothing at all tent accommodation no no no it was a very crude defense thrown up very quickly if you read the accounts both from the Russian side and from the Allied side um it was perfectly easy for the assaulting troops simply to jump over it my impression is Research into the Crimean War is now being revolutionized by the opening up of the Ukraine and the possibility of exploring the battlefields this is the the great opportunity where they're welcoming Us in to get in there and and seize the day with the satellite imagery and the society's specialist advice Phil and his team will be the first archaeologists to search for Clues as to what actually happened in the opening minutes of the battle of balaclava 150 years ago [Music] once a forbidden zone controlled by the Soviet military the Crimea is an archaeological Treasure Chest fought over by armies again and again over the Millennia its landscape is littered with relics from ancient times to the Cold [Music] War armed with the satellite imagery Phil Freeman and his team arrive at can Robert's Hill to search for evidence of the Turk's role in events leading up to the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade their first task is to find red out number one the satellite photo gives Phil a clue as to where to look on the kilometer wide Hill they've enabled him to identify a small area of disturbed Earth on the the Southeastern side but it's not so easy to pick this area out at ground level having been guided in by Cutting Edge science the team then need to employ more traditional techniques an accurate terrain survey will help reveal the Disturbed areas in the landscape oh we're standing on top of can Robert's Hill and as you can see as we look around see that the site is a mish mash of Banks and ditches the problem for us is that there is considerable quantity of this sort of earthwork activity going [Music] on what we need to do is like are lay out grids first of all and then on each of the points where the grids intersect with one another we'll take a reading and from that we can then produce a 3D model [Music] whilst the survey continues Phil goes to look at another Crimean War rout nearby bezim y no-name Hill was in use at the same time as redar number one and its construction and size might offer Phil Clues as to what he should look for on can Robert's Hill well they've opened up quite a bit more of the bank and in doing so in extending the trench in this area they've taken out part of the Crimean War fortifications what that's left among other things is quite a good cross-section of those fortifications you can see the initial creation of the bank here and then a series of fills which run up against the wall whose face you can see on the other side quite well in the new Trench artifacts from the site show that the redout was occupied by Turkish troops together with Simon Richardson the team's metal detectorist Phil gets an idea of the kind of artifacts they might find at can Robert's Hill that must be one it's a bullet bullet right these are the buttons you know the regiment this the seventh anything else yeah a small Turkish pipe obviously we can't find those with with a detect survey but they should be lying around the surface findes if we're going to we're we have a plate there with a sh plate 4 first and there's also one other find we've heard which I know about and it's this oh wow it's a silver coin Believe It or Not despite the color and it's been pierced it's been reused either for for jewelry or for people keeping their cash on their neck it dates to about 1830 and it's minted in Istanbul yeah it's nice incription great if we could get similar sort of finds from Ken Roberts but I think we'll be very lucky if we find that sort of thing quite a pretty piece the fines are sparse but the bezim site shows that despite poor conditions Turkish soldiers were able to construct a considerable position Phil is encouraged maybe he can find something similar on can Robert's Hill back with the team the terrain service is now complete but it reveals another problem all around the target area is a confused tangle of Earthworks the Crimean War isn't the only conflict to have left scars in the balaclava landscape in World War II the entire region saw desperate fighting between the Red Army and Hitler's vermark you find scattered around all kinds of things for instance look like a couple of fox holes here from the second war bomb craters um again scrap scrapes and Scoops but after searching through the Maze of confusing Earthworks Phil thinks he's located the structure visible in the satellite photo he believes this could be redard number one but it's nothing like as substantial as the fort at bezim y somehow Phil needs to isolate what he thinks could be the Crimean War earthwork from the later World War II remains he asks the opinion of local archaeologist Dimitri St Dimitri is an expert on the World War II remains in the balaclava area one by one he's able to identify and eliminate the World War II trenches and mortar pits what remains could be the surviving Crimean War Earthworks and we come into this what looks to be very interesting feature the corner could you tell me what do you think it is I think uh this is arrest of uh maybe British maybe took battery uh gun gun battery of Crimean War uh a road two guns and uh wall uhhuh you can see a very good view to Village Kamar and very good road from Russian position to baklava is it's very important where it's strategical uh-huh uhhuh Phil is confident they've at last found redout number one less than 40 m long and 15 M wide it's little more than a gun platform cut into the slope defended by a shallow bank and ditch overlooking the vital narrow pass down to balaclava Harbor it would have left the Turkish soldiers desperately vulnerable with Little Shelter against attack Phil now needs to search for evidence of the Turkish soldiers and their struggle to defend the position but there's a problem World War II has left another Legacy we're getting things like Clips shells got webbing clothing lying around piece of a cannon shell there a human Tbone there Russian cartridges just must be a couple of thousand here L on the floor I it's a problem as far as a metal detecting survey goes because in this particular area it's so uh I mean it's just a blanket covering to get through this dense layer of material it's going to be very very difficult indeed though he fears it will be an uphill struggle Simon begins his painstaking search in the [Music] redout documentary records sest suggest life would have been tough for the Turkish [Music] soldiers it must have been like hell on Earth here they were dumped in the autum or winter of a a particularly miserable climate it was cold it was wet for the previous three or four weeks the total ration issue that they had been given to eat was two biscuits and they'd been living off what they could find lying around on the ground and bear in mind you've got a huge Army of Invaders picking the ground clean there wasn't much left for the poor Turks though traces of the Turks daily life may be difficult to locate Simon is at first sure there'll be plenty of evidence of the battle for the redout but he's wrong we're actually inside rout number one at the moment I've set the metal detector as I would set it in the average field looking for small artifacts such as buttons and musket balls and things like that but to show you what we're up against [Music] um as you can hear there's a complete covering of Ferris material the material is all second world war um and to try and penetrate this and pick out minute find such as pistol balls very very difficult indeed nearly impossible frustrated Phil and Simon decide to change their search area Phil has worked out from the recorded position of the Russian guns where any cannonballs or shells which overshot the redot would have landed luckily it's in an area the survey shows is less damaged by World War II Simon starts a new search a few few 200 M from the redot within hours the change of tactics pays [Music] off we're standing on the west side of can Roberts uh looking across to balaclava and sasta pole as we look down the slope you can see a series of red markers flag markers which represent hits that the metal detectorist has made each one represents one large caliber Le ball there's something about the spread of these finds that seem significant there is an interesting pattern effectively a fan as we look down the characteristic fan-shaped distribution pattern suggests their lead balls from an air bursting Russian shell we found quite a spread 13 and 1 12 pieces which we're fairly certain this is from a spherical care shop which is a hollow Cannonball set with a fuse so it bursts in the air over Cavalry or infantry um quite a devastating weapon when I found the first one I was very excited because I knew what more or less what it was um and then when the second one came up I just I knew it wasn't just an isolated find and that had a good chance of finding more and more this shell must have overshot redout number one and exploded on the other side the first solid evidence of the devastating kinds of weapons the turkey tur ish troops on can Robert's Hill faced the Russian attack on redout number one began at dawn when a massed battery of more than 30 heavy cannons opened fire historical documents show that the 600 Turkish soldiers were lightly armed with only three British cannons as the survey has revealed they not only faced devastating shellfire but their redout was little more than an earth and Bank a few feet high unprotected outnumbered and outgun the Turks could make little reply but bravely they hung on I doubt whether a similar number of British troops would have lasted as long it must have been like being in a bombardment during the first world war in a trench when you saw the enemy infantry advancing you had to stand you had to defend your redout and they did in the outcry following The Charge of the Light Brigade disaster British newspapers ridiculed the Turkish troops but the evidence shows they must have been disciplined and well-led Dr faru yasami is a specialist in Middle Eastern studies he's been looking into the composition and training of the Ottoman Army up until the Crimean War nobody was really sure what the Turkish Army was or was not capable of a European style officer kada or officer cor was a new phenomenon in the ottoman Army and it only existed since the 1830s when they had set up a war college at the time of the Crimean War the Istanbul War College was the Sandhurst of the Ottoman Empire far from being ramshackle and incompetent the Turkish Army of the 1850s actually had a higher proportion of trained officers than the British army one point that I think you can make is that within the ottoman Army Warfare was viewed as a religious Duty a man who was killed became a martyr a [ __ ] a man who survived was a gazi a warrior for the faith this helps explain why despite being only lightly armed and undersupplied the Turkish troops bravely stood their ground before finally being overrun yet this heroic Last Stand is glossed over in most histories of the battle it seems the myth of the Turks cowardice did not arise by chance Mike Hargrave morson believes the British commander Lord Raglin was caught completely off guard by the Russian attack opinions are divided but it would appear that Ragan and his Entourage um got up onto the sapoon heights about half 7 8:00 in the morning what isn't at issue is the fact that the Russian assault began at 5: that morning Raglan was slow to react to the Russian attack by the time he arrived at his command position the Turks at redard number one had been facing Russian bombardment for nearly 3 hours official accounts of the sequence of events deliberately covered up raglan's delayed response Raglin when he came to write his report didn't want to point out that they'd Taken 3 hours to get to the battle and so 3 hours got truncated down to a few minutes and it was the Russians attacked the Turks ran the fall of the redds marked the end of the opening phase of the battle but this set in motion an Unstoppable chain reaction that led to disaster this time lord Raglin would have a grandstand View it's 10:30 a.m. nearly 3 hours after the battle for can Robert's Hill after number one fell RADS 2 three and four followed like dominoes from his position on the sapoon ridge overlooking the battlefield the British commander suddenly noticed an alarming development done in the captured redds Lord Raglin can see that the Russians are bringing up engineering equipment and putting tackles on the British guns that the Turks have had to abandon and in the wellingtonian military tradition you must never lose a gun panicked into immediate action Raglan ordered the Light Brigade to advance to try and stop the Russians taking away the captured guns if you're going to send an order that must be acted on immediately you send the fastest man in the Army Captain Lewis Nolan was the obvious choice an impetuous young cavalryman Nolan rode at Breakneck speed down from the sapoon ridge into the South Valley to deliver the order to the Cavalry commander Lord Lucan what happened next is the key moment where everything went wrong and the Light Brigade was sent to its Doom he goes up to Lord lukan and he hands him the message from Raglin and Luan cannot see the [Music] guns Lucan was mystified he needed clarification and so asked Nolan where are the guns to which Nolan replied there are your guns throwing out his arm to point in the general direction of the redout guns but also in this direction was another set of guns the Russian Don CAC battery the order was vague Nolan was angry Lan was useless so Luan accepts the order to charge guns he's just going to charge the wrong guns somehow a fatal confusion was made between the captured British guns being dragged away trophies and the Russian Don CAC guns which were ready for action historians have always blamed Nolan's gesture for the massacre of the Light Brigade believing that he pointed to the DA CAC guns either deliberately or by mistake but is this really what happened Richard Rutherford Moore is a battlefield Explorer and guide for more than a decade he's been studying the actual location of the balaklava charge Richard believes the key to solving the mystery of what actually happened lies in understanding the terrain he wants to establish for the first time exactly what the principal characters could see during the battle he teams up with remote sensing specialist Jessica trogan through her work at bezim she's completed the first first terrain accurate survey of the balaclava valleys the first crucial Viewpoint they must establish is that of the commanderin-chief Lord Raglin finding raglan's command position up on the High sapoon Ridge will take some detective work a clue lies in the work of Roger Fenton the world's first celebrated War photographer this Photograph was taken after the battle from raglan's command position maybe this will help them find the spot that that bend is roughly where rown number two is in the foreground we seen these enormous rocks we're looking off towards valac clava so this rock should be somewhere on this Crest within about 100 m of where we are 50 m either side good in 1854 there were no trees here and so the Viewpoint takes some locating amidst the dense undergrowth what does it look like from your side so hard to tell with the vegetation in the way you think maybe satisfied that they're within meters of the spot where Raglin watched the chge of the Light Brigade Jessica records the position you know we think we're we're more or less in the right place in the photograph so I think it would be really neat to see what this would have looked like without trees in it you we can't do anything about it now but we can take it virtually look at the computer do a little line of sight analysis and see if they would have been able to have a clear shot through [Music] here it's an amazing piece of technology this is a geographic information system the nice thing about it is the way that it integrates different types of data so you've got graphic data topography our iconist image that we could zoom in on different uh levels of scale going out all the way to the P Crimea the computer incorporates satellite imagery into a full terrain survey enabling Jessica to test lines of sight between any given points in the area she first plots in the key points in the balaklava battle including the line of routs she then adds in commanderin-chief Lord raglan's Viewpoint it'll be interesting to see from here just just what Lord Raglin could see the green line reveals that Raglin could have seen the captured guns being removed from the rarts he also would have been able to see the da CAC battery at the far end of the North Valley this confirms the accepted historical accounts but what could Lucan see his Viewpoint is easier to find this is the British Memorial to the Battle of balaclava and we're standing in rout number five in this area here was where Lord Lucan stood and received the orders from Lord Ragin the big problem I've always had in trying to understand this part of the battle is the terrible view that you get over the area in front of you from the position in which that fourth order was received you can see the captured routs number one number two part of number three but you can't see anything that's going on Beyond them because of the Hill directly in front of you you can't see anything at all of the North Valley of balaclava Richard believes that Nolan could not have pointed to the wrong guns because it wasn't possible to see them from this position but it might just be that the view has changed in the 150 years since the battle there are now trees in the line of sight so from out number five how much of this area here low on the the side of the ridge could we see when lucan's Viewpoint is plotted in it's a very different story tells us no he could see neither the redout guns being removed nor the Don CAC guns he must have been totally confused by the order Richard's theory is confirmed Nolan could not have pointed directly at either set of guns they were not visible from this position Lucan confused and unsighted passed the order to Lord cardigan commander of the Light Brigade and the Cavalry set off down into the North Valley at first there didn't seem to be a problem Raglin looks down and he sees his Light Brigade moving off along the valley floor so far so good Nolan who knew which guns the Light Brigade was supposed to be going for is also thinking fair enough we're moving off down the valley we're going to go to the routs and will stop the Russians carrying off British guns suddenly Nolan must have finally realized something was very wrong there comes a point where for some reason Nolan rides out in front of the Brigade and heads off towards the causeway highs Raglin expected Nolan expected cardigan to turn right Nolan rides out in front of Lord cardigan going threes right threes right turn to the right in threes and cardigan doesn't understand what Nolan's shouting about he thinks that Nolan who is is an arrogant son of a sea cook anyway is trying to lead the charge himself and cardigan just puts his head down and keeps charging the Russian guns at the same time hear fire one of the 18 Pounders sends a shell over and it explodes exactly where Nolan is at the time a shell Splinter goes straight across his chest he admits u a loud shriek his sword Falls from his hand and eventually tumbles from his horse to be ridden over by the ranks of the Light Brigade after him Nolan was the man who'd set the charge in motion with his death The Last Hope to avoid disaster was gone so what Raglin sees is one half of his Cavalry Force charging in the wrong direction and worse than that Raglin sees half of his Cavalry charging to certain destruction there was now nothing anybody could do as the Light Brigade plowed on down the valley like a runaway train the Russian gun batteries around the Valley open fire the Russian Gunner at that point can't see through the smoke he only sees his own gun but the Russian Gunners even through the noise and the shock of serving their pieces and firing their guns could feel the rumble coming up through their feet a subsonic Rumble the moment of surprise is now passed for the Russian Artillery the light briat getting very close to the guns there's going to come a point where uh the charge will be blown the Lancers will come down the swords will go out everybody will dig their spurs in and hit the target they hit the guns and this terrible fight developed around the battery one British Trooper said the entire place was like Darkness it was like fighting at night it was surrounded by an Inky Blackness of gunm smoke clashes of Swords men shouting horses screaming although bravely executed the charge was a complete disaster commander-in-chief Lord Raglan and the rest of the British army could only look on in stunned silence as one by one the remnants of the devastated Brigade returned back up the North Valley but what happened to these survivors George L Smith the last who returned up the valley after The Charge of the Light Brigade at balac clava Ken Horton is the world's foremost expert on the men who made up the Light Brigade he spent more than 30 years tracking down the Amazing Stories of the individuals who took part particular troop sergeant major George ly Smith of the 11th haar is one of the most celebrated among the survivors this is an amazing collection of stuff how remarkable to save all this piece of Russian black bread found on the baffle field at Alma looks a little toasted now ly Smith's extraordinary collection of Crimean War artifacts includes the actual jacket he wore in the charge complete with the button he took from a man in the Russian 11th hazar now this is ly smone tunic and it's pretty well identified by the tag there in fact is the Russian button and the number 11 on it this button was cut off the jacket of one of the 11th Russian huzar at balaka amazing isn't it it was during the course of this painstaking research that Ken uncovered a startling fact that would change the accepted story of the Light Brigade he'd found the truth behind one of the most enduring myths of the noble 600 these are human records and one I like to collect it is the information of the men of that that were in the charge and how they suffered as Ken began to uncover more and more stories of charged survivors he realized the truth there were only 102 killed outright from the 670 56 were taken prisoner of which half of those died in captivity uh but at the end of the war coming back to England I'm always reckon that at least 450 of those original men did return to these Shores the 600 were not wiped out at all though the Brigade was written off militarily nearly six out of seven Light Brigade men survived the famous charge how then did the myth come about that it was annihilated lurid British newspaper reports sensationalized the scale of the disaster and Tennyson's famous poem popularized this inaccurate myth of Epic sacrifice although the Light Brigade faced artillery during the charge has the scale of Russian fire been exaggerated is there a way more than 150 years later that we can find out the answer can be found by a careful mathematical examination of the timing of the charge from aamps we know it took the Brigade only 7 and a half minutes to reach the dong CAC battery 2,000 M down the valley 10 minutes after 11:00 a.m. the Brigade moved off at 30 seconds they would have entered the Field of Fire of the leftand battery 10 guns on the FED Hills firing solid round shot and explosive shell a cavalry charge should be a carefully timed advance but as the fire came in the Brigade quickly accelerated the battery could have fired only around 70 rounds before the Brigade was through their field of fire at 3 minutes the Brigade would have come under long range fire from the eight dcac guns at 5 minutes this field of fire would have overlapped with the right hand battery eight guns on the causeway this should have caused more casualties but the Brigade now accelerated downhill with the racetrack cber of the valley at 6 minutes the crossfire would have ceased as the Brigade neared the end of its charge and the causeway guns held their fire to avoid hitting Don CAC Gunners at 7 Minutes the Brigade would have been within Point Blank Range of the Dawn battery but but the Russian Gunners were at a disadvantage unsighted by their own gun smoke they would have fired only approximately 100 runs before at 7 and A2 minutes the Light Brigade hit them in total the 26 Russian guns can only have fired around 200 shots the whole Infamous charge and withdrawal took less than 30 minutes despite the famous Legend the Light Brigade was never Under Fire from all three sides at once although far fewer men died than was realized the charge was still a needless sacrifice of young men's lives Russian troops remained in control of the causeway routs and the lost guns were never recaptured the only effect that The Charge of the Light Brigade had on the war as a whole was to convince the Russians that British soldiers were mad and were dangerous and reliable to do just about anything that they were murderous and uh and that that don't discount that because scaring the hell out of the enemy is a good thing to do in war but from the point of view of strategic or tactical aims The Charge of the Light Brigade is irrelevant much more relevant to the outcome of the battle was the Turks defense of redout number one they had faced at least 30 Russian guns in a single MK battery more than the Light Brigade faced but the Turks were not moving targets they were sitting ducks with no cover but the shallow Earth ramparts they endured Relentless Russian bombardment for almost three hours six times longer than The Charge of the Light Brigade and the Turks had still yet another unsung role to play in the battle for balak laava when the out fell 170 Turks laid dead their fellows fled back across the South Valley Russian Cavalry were following them up harrying them slashing at them with Sabers cutting their heads in half forcing them to flee at top speed mad panic but a lot of them didn't with the men from the redout numbers three and four they formed up on the next line of the defenses of balaclava soin Campbell's 93rd Highlanders the Light Brigade disaster was a mere Sideshow in the Battle of balaclava compared with the Highlanders vital stand now remembered as the Thin Red Line the 93rd action saved balaclava Harbor and so the entire British war effort from Russian attack there was about twice as many Turks as there were 93rd Highlanders in The Thin Red Line but of course all that anyone ever remembers is The Thin Red Line but even this vital contribution to the battle was underplayed the Turkish troops became the parias of the Allied Army eventually those Turkish troops that were left in the Crimea were set to carrying things as beasts of Burden they would carry wounded British and French down to the ships they would carry up food and firewood from balaklava Harbor up to the camps they weren't allowed to fight again they weren't allowed to do anything military again they were basically two-legged donkeys those who remained of the Defenders of redout number one did not survive the terrible Crimean winter whilst The Charge of the Light Brigade passed into Legend the story of the Turks slipped into Oblivion on the barren steep slopes of can Robert's [Music] [Music] Hill [Music]

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Id: G53S-yDtpp0

Length: 45min 9sec (2709 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024