The Reason Why: The Story of the Fatal Charge of the Light Brigade Paperback – Illustrated, July 1, 1991

Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why recounts the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade with unparalleled style. Not a truly objective history, Woodham-Smith's book is an eloquent, sweeping condemnation of the Victorian class system. Using two officers - Lords Cardigan and Lucan - as a prism on British society, she shows the combination of arrogance, bad judgment and miscommunication that led to the sacrifice of the "Noble 600."James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan proves singularly representative of aristocratic shortcomings. The only son in a family of daughters, he grew spoiled by parental dotage, generating an egotism mixed with dreams of military glory. By adulthood Cardigan was an almost caricature nobleman: handsome and gallant, but arrogant, snobbish and short-tempered. Woodham-Smith's claim that Cardigan's "glorious golden head had nothing in it" (15) is unfair; biographer Saul David shows that Cardigan was both intelligent and a good student. However, Cardigan certainly lacked in other areas: common sense, tact and especially temperance.Commanding first the 15th, and later the 11th Hussars, Cardigan proved harshly exacting. His stringent standards made the 11th Hussars England's premiere cavalry regiment, but they also engendered the loathing of his officers and men. He certainly kept England's press abuzz with sundry scandals. Minor breaches of etiquette sent him into apoplexy: he scandalized the Army by blackballing John Reynolds, a young captain who dared serve Moselle at a champagne dinner (the famous "black bottle" affair), and flogging a soldier on Easter Sunday. Cardigan himself violated societal mores through repeated duels and scandalous love affairs. He was publicly booed at theaters and public gatherings, becoming a perennial headache for his superiors. An exasperated Duke of Wellington proclaimed "he had never known the time of the staff... to be taken up in so useless a manner" (100).Profiled in parallel is George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan. Lucan easily bested Cardigan in sheer bloody-minded nastiness. He gained infamy for cruelly managing his Mayo estates during the Irish potato famine. Consolidating land holdings and evicting tenants en mass, he caused untold suffering among his subjects and intense hatred: "it is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all" (113). Like Cardigan, he was also a martinet of the worst sort, a brutal taskmaster "perpetually entangled in trifles" (33) in commanding his troops and often contemptuous of superiors. Lucan found increasingly petty and bizarre ways of exerting authority: at one point, he ordered his cavalry drilled in antiquated Napoleonic tactics against Raglan's express orders.Not surprisingly, these men loathed each other. Lucan married Cardigan's sister and by all accounts mistreated her, igniting a personal feud. Naturally, when the Crimean War broke out Cardigan (heading the Light Brigade) found himself serving under division commander Lucan. Commanding general Lord Raglan exacerbated things by separating Cardigan from Lucan's main body, thus undermining Lucan's authority. Even in the field, the two men never missed an opportunity to spite or undermine each other, with disastrous results.Woodham-Smith forcefully attacks the British military that spawned them. The purchase system, by which officers could literally buy a higher rank, had its benefits. It forestalled the establishment of a powerful, Prussian-style military class, and forced officers to take personal responsibility for their regiment's upkeep. In practice however, it populated the Army with dilettantes and adventurers, seeing military service as a stepping stone to easy prestige. Nominally officers could advance by merit; in practice men without experience or qualification leapfrogged over seasoned career soldiers. Lord Palmerston proclaimed that "it was very desirable to connect the higher classes of Society with the Army" (30), whether or not they were fit to lead.The lack of a major war since 1815 ensured an antiquated senior staff. Commanding the Allied armies was Fitzroy Somerset, Baron Raglan. Wellington's longtime secretary, Raglan's bravery (he had lost an arm at Waterloo), amiability and organizational skills were unquestioned. His greatest achievement was ensuring smooth relations with his French and Turkish allies. Yet Raglan had never led troops in the field, and proved a spectacularly inept tactician. "Without the military trappings... one would never have guessed him to be a soldier," Woodham-Smith says (161). He proved frustratingly absent-minded, constantly confusing his French allies with the Russian enemy. An exasperated junior officer complained that "everything [is] old at the top. This makes everything sluggish."The Crimean disaster becomes tragically predictable. Horses crowded into transport ships died en route to the Crimea. Raglan botched the Allied attack at the Alma, forcing British troops to take and retake the same ground repeatedly. Over-caution and mis-communicaton prevented a complete victory when Raglan refuses Lucan's request to launch a follow-up attack. Raglan ill-advisedly shifted the Allied supply base to Balaclava, a tiny village ill-suited for supplying two massive armies. Finally, administrative muddle ensures inadequate supplies and medical treatment, causing thousands of troops to die of disease and exposure.In fairness, most officers shared many misfortunes with their men. Both Raglan and his French counterpart Marshall St. Arnaud ultimately succumbed to dysentery. Lucan was wounded at Balaclava and even his detractors granted him personal bravery. Cardigan however spent evenings on his yacht in Calamita Bay, entertaining civilian friends and distancing himself from his brigade's hardships. Lest this seem unduly extravagant, military buffs may remember American General George McClellan lunching while the Battle of Malvern Hill raged, Boer War commander Charles Warren stopping his division's advance for a bath, or Charles Townshend dining on plum duff at Kut while his troops starved. This mixture of sang froid and self-indulgence seems unfortunately prevalent.Woodham-Smith hits her rhetorical stride with Balaclava. She recounts the stirring stand of Colin Campbell's "Thin Red Line," and the gallant Charge of the Heavy Brigade, where 300 cavalrymen under James Scarlett defeated 2,000 Cossacks in a wild uphill charge. Woodham-Smith captures the excitement and fleeting glory of these skirmishes. Against all odds, the British seemed poised to win a spectacular victory. Yet Cardigan stood by, using a discretionary order from Lucan as an excuse not to attack the routed Cossacks. Had Cardigan followed up on Scarlett's success, the third phase of the battle might never have occurred.Instead, a classic example of mismanagement follows. Raglan dictates an unclear order to quartermaster Richard Airey, instructing Lucan to attack Russian troops taking capture guns away from the Causeway Heights. Captain Louis Nolan, Raglan's impulsive aide, delivers the message to an agitated Lucan, emphatically pointing at the nearest guns. Neither man recognizes Nolan's fatal mistake: that Lucan cannot see the Heights from his position. Nolan instead gestures towards a mass of Russians supported by artillery in the valley ahead. Stung by accusations of "looking on" in earlier engagements, Lucan does not ask Nolan to clarify his order, and Cardigan protests halfheartedly. Before anyone realizes it, the Light Brigade initiates its fateful charge.Historians still dissect the Charge in hope of assigning blame, following the footsteps of Cardigan and Lucan's vicious postwar press feud. Woodham-Smith dodges the issue of individual guilt, viewing Balaclava instead as the logical conclusion of an entire system. For all their gallantry, the British cavalry could not achieve the impossible, and find themselves decimated by well-placed cannon and overwhelming numbers. With so many egotists and incompetents staffing the Army, the Light Brigade's fate seems inevitable. If the British Army was gradually reformed after Crimea, it came at great cost and only grudgingly. The purchase system was not abolished until the Cardwell reforms of 1868-1874, largely at the impetus of Crimean veteran Garnet Wolseley.If The Reason Why isn't definitive, it's because of its limited portrayal of the Crimea (the book mostly ends at Balaclava) and its editorial tone. More recent works (Terry Brighton's Hell Riders, Saul David's The Homicidal Earl) eschew Woodham-Smith's polemical approach for more balanced analysis. Still, Woodham-Smith's passionate anger and vivid prose make it the most readable account of the Light Brigade's sorry fate, and a classic account of military incompetence.

This book was well-written and very enjoyable. Highly recommended! The seller delivered as promised, with a great price, on-time delivery and the book was well-packaged and as described by the seller.

I bought this book after rewatching one of my favorite movies, 'Charge of the Light Brigade,' (1968). The relationship between Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan is astounding. Two congenital aristocrats with differing strengths and weaknesses who won't let a war get in the way of their dislike for each other. It really is fodder for black comedy. The only drawback to the enjoyment of all this insane Peacocking, is the realization that human life was at stake. You see Lucan during the potato famine (although the author does go out of her way to describe the multi-layered complexity of the situation) as a cartoon evil landlord dispersing starving Irish on horseback, only it's no cartoon. While it's fun to marvel at the outlandishness of these characters, their callous cruelty to anyone born beneath them spoils it, and you're left with a sense that they were indeed unthinking, uncaring and incredibly narrow. Still, it's well written, detailed and does indeed give you the reason why, even if that reason is mostly petty vanity.

As a history major who often gets fixated on a particular historical event, I got hooked on The Charge of the Light Brigade and bought this book after reading multiple reviews online. The author takes their time walking through the lives and careers of the two principals - almost to the point where you wonder where it’s all going - until the climatic battle where the reader finally understands the many layers of context undergirding the decisions that day. It’s a deep read, a long read, and a good read.

Great read!

Overall I am recommending this book if you want to understand what happened at Balaclava and you know little or nothing about the Crimean campaign. But I have serious reservations about this book that may be useful for you to be aware of. Let me be clear first of all - I think this is a good book, I recommend it, but with the following provisios.1. There is an over emphasis early on in the book on the lives and experiences of Lords Cardigan and Lucan, their private lives, childhood experience and record of marriages. As an Irish man I found Lucan's actions during the great potato famine to be of interest, but it was entirely off the point. The Irish Potato famine has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Charge of the Light Brigade. A lot of this could be cut out.2. There is no good explanation of the tactics of troops and in particular of Cavalry in this period. The author fails to make it clear how cavalry should operate and how this differs from the way Raglan insisted upon the cavalry staying close to the troops.3. The book is light on statistics. There is a lot of commentary on the Cholera epidemic, but how serious was it? What percentage of troops died of Cholera? How many died in battle? This kind of information puts events in perspective.4. The book is written almost exclusively from the British Point of View. At times you can forget that the French were even there. It would be useful to have analysed the reasons for the Crimean conflict from the perspective of Britain, France, Russia and Turkey. Did the Sultan invite the English and French to act on his behalf???5. For me Raglan is the culpabale party. He was commander in the field. He allowed a brigade commander to believe he was independent of his divisional commander. He removed the divisional commander from his division. He interfered with the management of the command. He restricted the actions of cavalry to behaving like infantry. In battle he put himself in positions where he could not communicate with his troops. This was particularly acute in Alma, when he got onto the Russian side, over a mile from the main advance, and could not order supporting actions.6. The book stops after the charge, without fully explaining the final outcome of the campaign or its consequences.Overall I feel this is a book with too many holes in it. I am itching to have a go at improving upon it myself. Were I the authors teacher in school I would probably have written something like "good effort, well written lots of hard work, but you need to stick to the point and draw clear conclusions."

The study of this book was a mandatory part of my Eng. Lit. GCSE course almost 50 years ago. I promised myself one day that I would read it again perhaps when it would mean more to me having had some life experience etc. I was not disappointed - this isn't just a study of that ill fated charge but also a very insightful study of those times. The power structures and hierarchies of a time when the aristocracy still pretty much ruled the roost. Lord Cardigan (who led the charge) himself was perhaps the most enigmatic of all. He was pretty much a bully, martinet and very much a pedant when it suited him. Yet despite his many failings he was possessed of a genuine remarkable courage. I say this because if the story written here is to be believed he led the charge knowing full well it was reckless in the extreme and indeed did not personally expect to survive it. The superior officer who gave the order was a long time rival if not enemy of Lord Cardigan and he had thought little of disobeying or ignoring orders from him in the past - so I can only speculate why suddenly he was so obedient. My theory is that the other orders had more to do with the day to day running of the camp or were more administrative in nature and therefore it is possible that Lord Cardigan did not attach as much importance to such orders as those concerning direct military action. This is the only part of the story that I wish had been examined in more detail and indeed it is quite possible that other books about Lord Cardigan and\or the ill fated charge have shed more light on this apparent contradiction. All in all though I thought it a remarkable book obviously well researched and gives the modern reader a window into a world (for better or worse) now long gone forever.

Now have a clear understanding of why this ridiculous charge was made due entirely to the incompetence and rivalry between the upper class fools who were in charge

Very interesting insight into the army, the politics and society in general in the 19th century.Although with 21st century hindsight, if the descriptions of the author are to be considered accurate, it's difficult to comprehend how such a bunch of mal-adjusted bunglers built an Empire. As described, the characters involved could not be trusted to organise the proverbial gathering at the local beer manufacturer.I found the book both entertaining and informative, with a cliff-hanging climax leading to the well-known disaster. However it left me with a desire for further research. I can't help but think that the author over-egged the pudding in her descriptions of the main protagonists as over-privileged hooray henrys.Good read though, and recommended.

The subject is all in the title of the book. It was brought to my attention by a note in "Flashman" by Gorden MacDonald Fraser referring to this book. The book is a very easy book to read and is extremly informative about the characters who were involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade and their influence on the outcome.Almost in the style of "Flashman" Cecil Woodham Smith explains the whole of the story of the charge and how it fits into the outcome of the Crimean War. She relates how two brothers-in- law (Lord Cardigan and Lord Lucan) personal enmity came to be an enormous infulence on how the charge came about.

By far the best study of this particular military misadventure and the attitudes that led up to itCadogan and Lucan! What can you say?If their brains were made of gunpowder, they couldn't blow their hats off just about sums them up