AQA Power and Conflict: Understanding 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I've written on 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' before in my 'poem a day' blog a few years ago here so some of this will repeat comments there; nonetheless, I've had some further thoughts which I hope will be useful. It's not a poem that you can easily 'use up' in terms of insights. 

The battle to which 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' refers took place during the Crimean War (1853-1856), in what is now the Ukraine, near the town of Balaclava (and yes, that is where the name comes from--very practical headgear for this cold Russian winters!). The poem reputedly originated format he moment when Tennyson read an account of the battle in The Times newspaper published on November 14th, 1854, written by William Russell Howard, the Times's war correspondent in the Crimea. Having an eyewitness account of a battle published in this way was something new for Victorian Britain, and it created an immediate impression. The story of the battle was presented unmediated by any 'official line', and the suggestion that a mistake had been made had far-reaching implications.

The article described in vivid terms the disastrous charge of a cavalry brigade down a narrow valley towards a set of Russian guns, and comments favourably on the courage of the men who made the charge in such circumstances. 'Brigade' at that time was an informal term, and does not reflect the size of a brigade in the modern army, which may consist of thousands of soldiers. As Tennyson says in his poem, over 600 men were involved (658 to be precise) and nearly 250 of them were killed or severely wounded, with many also captured. 475 horses also died. You can see a copy of the original newspaper and a a transcript of the article online.

Although the charge is famous because of the numbers of men injured and killed in an ultimately fruitless action, when you consider what they were actually doing, it seems more remarkable that any of them survived at all. The 'Light Brigade', as the name implies, was a group of relatively lightly armed cavalry. This meant that not only were they on small, nimble horses, but that they were not armoured in the way that a 'heavy brigade'  would be. Carrying lances and sabres, they were designed to advance and withdraw quickly, often attacking retreating troops  or heavy artillery moving position, where their speed and manoeuvrability was a great advantage. They were used to harass the enemy, for communications, and for light skirmishes, whereas the 'heavy' cavalry , with armoured horses and men, would be used for a cavalry charge. In this instance, the brigade, commanded by Lord Cardigan (another useful warm garment) were ordered to attack a team of retreating Russian gunners, and harass them as they were moving the heavy guns from position. Instead, they ended up charging directly at a team of active gunners, with predictable results.

The brigade galloped down a blind valley, with heavy artillery on the left and right of them, towards an emplacement of guns. Amazingly, they did actually manage to attack the gunners when they got there, but in realistic terms the action was a disaster. There are different accounts as to why it was such a disaster and who was ultimately responsible which discuss issues such as lack of communication, a mistake in indicating which valley to gallop down, a failure to realise the range of the guns, or simple mismanagement or hubris on the part of the generals (some modern views also suggest that it was actually a fairly effective action in military terms, and that it only became seen as a disaster because the public were so unfamiliar with the ways in which war works). Tennyson's poem transformed what was a national tragedy into a paean to patriotism. 

It was partly the reporting by William Howard Russell that made the charge sound as though it was a victory, or at least as though the men involved in it were noble rather than suicidal--many of the words and phrases that he uses are picked up by Tennyson, and used in the poem. Consider this passage from near the beginning of his article, for instance:

They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. We could scarcely believe the evidence of our 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.

The use of free indirect speech here (we can hear the peoples' thoughts, although the writer does not use the locution 'they said') may suggest perhaps the use of 'all the world wondered' at the start of the poem. The semantic field of the poem is also similar to the Times article, not just in simple terms but in terms of structure. Russell uses words such as 'heroic', 'noble', 'valour', 'spendour' and so on at the start of his acount, but also contrasts this with the language at the end of the article where we have 'wounded' 'sad', 'dead and dying' instead. This is something that we also see in the poem. 

The moment that the poem opens, the strong triple rhythm 'half a league, half a league' seems to imitate the beat of the hooves of a galloping horse. This metre (one strong beat, followed by two weaker beats) is called a dactylic rhythm--remember it, as I do, by imagining pterodactyls over the valley of death. The metre is not wholly dactylic--the line is missing a beat at the end, so that instead of being dactylic tetrameter, it has three dactyls followed by a trochee. The effect of this is to create a brief pause and then urge you on quickly to the next line. The four strong stresses in each line keep up a quick, relentless rhythm. The poem swiftly comes to the dramatic climax of the orders: '"Forward the Light Brigade! / Charge for the Guns" he said', with the person giving the orders remaining an anonymous 'he'. The simple brutality of the order is emphasised by the immediate repetition of the words 'the valley of death' and the unquestioning obedience of the soldiers.


The image of the Valley of Death in these lines is a powerfully spiritual one for Tennyson's original audience, coming as it does from one of the most famous psalms of the Christian Church, one still often sung at weddings and funerals.  The lyrics of psalm 23 'The Lord is my Shepherd' create an image where God protects the singer through all of life's calamities before finally bringing them to heaven at the end of their life. The verses appear in the King James Bible (the one Tennyson would have been familiar with) in this form:

1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.² He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
³ He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
⁴ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
⁵ Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

The psalm was generally interpreted as a prophetic forerunner of Christ as 'The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep'. The mention of the Valley of Death, therefore, is also a promise that God was with the soldiers, even in these terrifying circumstances. As such it would have acted as a powerful reference. The initial repetition of the words creates a sense of unbearable anticipation as the subtle but comforting reassurance of the psalm is juxtaposed with a situation where people might doubt their faith in the terror of this genuine valley of death. Speaking of death, you might also like to notice the dead rhymes where a word is rhymed with itself (e.g. hundred/hundred), creating a relentless and deadening effect. 

In the second stanza, the controversial orders are repeated again, the use of direct speech here may suggest that the orders have had to be repeated--as though the soldiers were disbelieving of what they have been told to do. The use of the rhetorical question 'was there a man dismayed?' nonetheless indicates the impossibility of the soldiers being rebellious in the face of the orders. Tennyson deftly does not apportion blame, merely saying that 'someone had blundered', but makes it clear that the soldiers themselves realise that the orders are unreasonable. The following lines use anaphora and parison to emphasise the inevitability of the soldiers following the orders: 'theirs not to...theirs not to ...theirs but to' The shift from the expected 'not to' in the third line to 'but to' emphasises the conclusion to which the soldiers come--it is not their business to question the decisions of officers, only to obey them. The powerful use of the monosyllabic 'die' as the final rhyme emphasises how their obedience will be rewarded.


Parison is used again in stanza three to hammer home the overwhelming effect of the guns.  The choice of 'volleyed' is an interesting one, paralleling the gunfire with sport and also creating a hollow assonance that imitates cannon fire (it is interesting that the first sense of 'volley' as a noun is the military meaning, whereas it is the second sense of the verb). The short sharp clauses give a breathless feel to the poem at this point, while the peaceful image of the 'valley of death' of the psalms is changed into the terrifyingly anthropomorphic 'jaws of death' and 'mouth of hell', personifying destruction as an almost demonic force (one thinks of the mouth of hell in medieval mystery plays and church frescos). This personification, and idea of the mouth may have come from Russell's article, who writes of death literally embracing the soldiers and describes the cannons as 'mouths':  '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 1200 yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame'. 

In stanza four we notice again echoes of Russell's article. The idea  of the sabres 'flashing in air', is drawn surely from 'Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flashing as they rode up to the guns'. The sibilance in this stanza is striking, aligned to the stressed syllables, and moving to a climax at the lines 'sabre stroke / Shattered and sundered' which almost recreates the sound of the sabres swishing through the air. When you're thinking about the poem, try and concentrate on some of the amazing sound effects that Tennyson creates. He is very fond of alliteration and assonance, and this is something that you should notice.The repetitive nature of the next stanzas enact the journey of the soldiers back through the carnage, and powerfully restores their reputation with the words 'Back from the mouth of hell'. The shift in the repetition here, form the repeated 'six hundred' to 'left of six hundred' creates additional poignancy. The repetition in the poem throughout may remind you of a ballad--and it has something of this feel to it--and here we see the old ballad technique of incremental repetition used to devastating effect, where with the change of a single word or so drip-feeds us with information, until, for instance, we finally find that not all the 'six hundred' come back.

The video below gives you a sense of what the context of the charge was, has some interesting quotations from survivors of the battle, and also provides you with a recording of Tennyson reading the poem.