Close of the Action. 1 2 1
partial collision which caused us but small loss. The remaining regiment, the 1 3th Light Dragoons, mustered only ten mounted men at the close of the action. The mounted strength of the brigade was then 195 ; it had lost 247 men in killed and wounded, and had 475 horses killed, and forty-two wounded.
The First Division, after its circuitous march by the Col, was now approaching the Woronzoff ridge, followed by the Fourth. It could see nothing of what was occurring in the adjoining valley ; but it presently began to have tokens of the charge, in the form of wounded men and officers who rode by on their way to Balaklava.* Close to the ditch of the fieldwork on the last, hill of the ridge on our side lay the body of Nolan on its back, the jacket open, the breast pierced by the fatal splinter. It was but an hour since the Division had passed him on the heights, where he was riding gaily near the staff, conspicuous in the red forage cap and tiger-skin saddle cover of his regiment.
It was now believed that a general action would begin by an advance to retake the hills captured by Liprandi, and no doubt such an intention did exist, but was not put in practice. The Russians were left undisturbed in possession of the three hills they had captured, with their seven guns. At nightfall the First Division marched by the Woronzoff road up to the plateau, and thence to its camp. It was long before that road
*The commander of the Royals Colonel Yorke, rode by the writer with a shattered leg. He died in 1890, while this chapter was being written, at the age of seventy-seven.
122 No Attempt at re-capture.
was used again, for the presence of Liprandi's troops and batteries rendered it unavailable during great part of the winter.
It is easier to point to the faults of the Allies than to say how they should have been remedied. To post men and guns in weak works commanded by neighbouring heights, and having no ready supports in presence of an enemy's army, was to offer them up as a sacrifice. But where were the supports to come from ? Then it has been said that the most effective way of bringing the Allied Divisions down from the upland would have been by the Woronzoff road. But that is on the supposition that it was intended to bring the Russians 'to a pitched battle. That, however, if the English general thought of it, formed no part of Canrobert's design. He believed that his part was at present limited to pushing the siege towards the grand object of the expedition, and covering the besieging army from attack; and he was not to be drawn into doubtful enterprises outside of these. This accounted, too, for the failure to attempt the recapture of our outworks — to what purpose retake them when it was proved that we had not troops enough to hold so extended a line ? The ruin of the Light Brigade was primarily due to Lord Raglan's strange purpose of using our cavalry alone, and beyond support, for offence against Liprandi's strong force, strongly posted ; and it was the misinterpretation of the too indistinct orders, sent with that very questionable intention, which produced the disaster. And yet we may well hesitate to wish that the step so obviously false had never been taken, for the
Weak Point in Allied Defences. 123
desperate and unfaltering charge made that deep impression on the imagination of our people which found expression in Tennyson's verse, and has caused it to be long ago transfigured in a light where all of error or misfortune is lost, and nothing is left but what we are enduringly proud of.