senses! Surely that handful of men are not going to charge an army in position? Alas! it was but too true – their desperate valour knew no bounds, and far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part – discretion. They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death. At the distance of 1,200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from 30 iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken, it is joined by the second, they never halt or check their speed an instant; with diminished ranks, thinned by those 30 guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow’s death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries, but ere they were lost from view the plain was strewed with their bodies and with the carcasses of horses. They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as to a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I have said; to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of Russian infantry, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale – demi-gods could not have done what we had failed to do. At the very moment when they were about to retreat an enormous mass of Lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Showell, of the 8th Hussars, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them, cutting his way through with fearful loss. The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter. With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilized nations. The Russian gunners, when the storm of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common ruin. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life.
Following the outbreak of the Crimean War, in which France and Britain became involved to prevent Russia from expanding its reach by exploiting the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the allied forces besieged Sevastopol, home to the Black Sea fleet. The Russians counterattacked the British lines at the nearby port of Balaklava.
When some captured British guns began to be dragged away, Lord Raglan, the army’s commander, wrote an order to Lord Lucan, who led the light cavalry, telling him to avert this. From where he was, Lucan could not see the guns and the vague gestures of the officer who delivered the message, Captain Nolan, led him to presume Raglan meant him to attack the artillery positions in front of him, suicidal though this was.
About 670 cavalrymen set off along the mile of what Tennyson’s celebrated poem would commemorate as the ‘Valley of Death’. More than 300 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner in the charge.
It was witnessed by war correspondent William Howard Russell, whose reports for The Times detailing the conditions endured by soldiers suffering from cholera led to Florence Nightingale’s nursing mission, and eventually the resignation of the Prime Minister, the Earl of Aberdeen.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE INDIAN MUTINY
29 June 1857
At the two great stations of Meerut and Delhi the whole of the native troops have broken out into mutiny and murder. From the former place they have fled or been expelled. The latter (where no European troops were quartered) remained, at the date of the latest accounts, completely in their possession.
I will endeavour to digest into a continuous narrative as much of the fragmentary intelligence that has been day by day rushing down from Agra as has been proved, or may be reasonably conjectured to be true.
At the commencement of this month the native force at Meerut consisted of the 3rd Light Cavalry and the 11th and 20th Regiments of Native Infantry. Among the men of the cavalry corps the question of the greased cartridges, which had previously been mooted at Barrackpore and other stations, was freely agitated. The result of the movement was that 85 men of the regiment refusing to handle the cartridges found themselves in the early days of the month tried by court-martial, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment with hard labour. On the 9th their sentences were read out on parade, and the offenders marched off to gaol. Up to this time disaffection had shown itself only through incendiary fires in the lines, hardly a night passing without one or more conflagrations. But on the 10th it appeared at once in all its unsuspected strength. Towards the evening of that day, while many of the Europeans were at church – for it was Sunday – the men of the two native infantry regiments, the 11th and 20th, as if by previous concert, assembled together in armed and tumultuous bodies upon the parade ground. Several officers hurried from their quarters to endeavour to pacify them. Colonel Finnis, of the 11th, was one of the first to arrive, and was the first victim of the outbreak. He was shot down while addressing a party of the 20th, which is said to have been the foremost regiment in the mutiny. Other officers fell with the Colonel or in the terrible moments that ensued, for the troopers of the 3rd Cavalry poured out of their quarters to join the insurgent infantry, and the whole body, now thoroughly committed to the wildest excesses, rushed through the native lines of the cantonment, slaying, burning, and destroying. Every house was fired, and every English man, woman, or child, that fell in the way of the mutineers was pitilessly massacred. Happily, however, many of the officers and their families – the great majority, I hope and believe had already escaped to the European lines, where they took refuge in the Artillery School of Instruction. Mr. Greathed, the Commissioner, and his wife were saved, it is said, by the fidelity of their servants, who assured the assassins that their master and mistress had left their house, though they were at the time concealed in it. The mutineers set fire to the bungalow and passed on. The names of the victims I am unable as yet to give with certainty or completeness.
In the 1850s, the increasingly large portion of India that lay under the sway of Britain was still ruled on its behalf, and anomalously, by the East India Company. Its hundreds of thousands of sepoys – the native soldiers of its army – had, however, grown increasingly resentful of reductions in their status and privileges.
They were also alarmed by rumours that the grease on cartridges of powder with which they had been issued was derived from beef and pork. For Hindus and Muslims, respectively, contact with these fats as they tore open the packets with their teeth was deeply offensive to their religious beliefs.
There had already been several incidents of mutiny elsewhere in the weeks before violence erupted at Meerut, which held one of the largest concentrations of troops in India. From there it spread to Delhi and to many other northern and central parts of the country. The rebellion, marked by acts of cruelty on both sides, was largely suppressed by the middle of the following year. Thereafter, the Company’s rule was replaced by that of the Crown.
23 April 1859
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