![]() It’s not difficult to see why people assume this is the Charge of the Light Brigade (as commemorated in Tennyson’s poem of the same name). ![]() But tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.” Hence it’s probably far too late to put the record straight now.)Īs an evocation of the shock and awe inspired by a cavalry charge, Elizabeth Butler’s painting could hardly be bettered. (Notice the site’s motto: “ Tell me a fact, and I’ll learn. For one thing, their long rifles and bayonets clearly show they’re infantrymen – try using them from the back of a galloping horse.)Īnd this Today in History “fact” doesn’t show the Charge of the Light Brigade either: (Incidentally, the soldiers shown in the photographs aren’t Light Brigade either. Nor this, from a Times Education Supplement teaching resource: It is not this handsome print for sale on GumTree: Here are some more examples of Not-the-Charge-of-the-Light-Brigade. ![]() The original painting is Elizabeth Butler’s Charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo in 1815, known as “ Scotland For Ever” – an event that took place nearly four decades before the catastrophic Light Brigade Charge at Balaclava (25th October 1854). Above all, this Charge had the opposite outcome (it ended in victory). It’s the wrong cavalry (heavy brigade not light), and the wrong enemy (France not Russia), and even the wrong war (Napoleonic not Crimean). Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, Lady Butler, “Scotland for Ever”, 1881, Leeds Art Gallery, (Larger version here.)īut just so you know, it’s actually not the Charge of the Light Brigade.
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