Balaklava and the Charge of the Light Brigade
Balaklava stands on a narrow inlet bent into an S. Ships in the harbour cannot be seen from the sea: steep slopes close the entrance. Whoever holds the rock with the Genoese fortress of Cembalo holds the entrance to the bay. That is why the British and their allies in the Crimean War made Balaklava the base for the siege of Sevastopol.
In Soviet times Balaklava was a closed district of Sevastopol: submarines were hidden in the rock. The fortress on the cape is what remains of Genoese Cembalo.
Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Dasha of Sevastopol
In 1854 the harbour was full of supply ships and the slopes were covered with tents. Mary Seacole kept the British Hotel here: a canteen for soldiers and a shelter for the sick and wounded. Florence Nightingale spent most of the war at the hospital in Scutari near Istanbul, but she came to Balaklava twice. On the first visit she fell seriously ill. With her was Alexis Soyer, the cook who advised the British army on feeding the troops and the hospitals.
Women also helped the wounded on the Russian side. The best known is Daria Mikhailova, daughter of a sailor killed at Sinope in 1853. When the allies landed at Balaklava she cut her hair, put on men's clothes, loaded a horse with linen, wine and vinegar for wounds, and went to the lines. With other women she worked through the siege, often beside the surgeon Nikolai Pirogov. Soldiers called her Dasha of Sevastopol.
The battle of 25 October 1854
The fighting was not in the town itself but a few kilometres to the north, in the valley in front of Sapun Ridge. The valley was later called the Valley of Death because of the charge of the Light Brigade. Russian troops tried to take a position against the base at Balaklava. Artillery hit the Turkish redoubts. A cavalry attack on the Scottish Highlanders was beaten off, and the British Heavy Brigade pushed the Russians back.
To drive the Russians off a ridge and recover guns they had taken from the Turks, Lord Raglan sent an order to Lord Lucan, the cavalry commander. Captain Nolan carried the note. The order was misunderstood: the Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan rode straight at the Russian guns, about two and a half kilometres up the valley, under fire from both slopes.
The charge lasted about twenty minutes. The brigade numbered about 670 horsemen. They broke through to the guns and had to return by the same valley. A large part of the men and horses did not come back.
The French general Bosquet, watching from the side, said: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre" - it is magnificent, but it is not war. The quarrel in the British command ended with Lord Lucan having to give up his command.
William Russell, correspondent of The Times, wrote that "some hideous blunder" had been made. Within three weeks Alfred Tennyson was already composing the poem. An extract in the original:
Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The battle ended without a winner. The Russians did not take Balaklava, but they held part of the ridges and the guns. The British and the Turks lost the redoubts, but they kept the base.
The photographs of Roger Fenton
Roger Fenton spent four months in Crimea in 1855 and photographed the war for the British government. Before that he was a solicitor, studied painting in the studio of Charles Lucy, and began to photograph around 1847. In 1852 he photographed Charles Vignoles's chain bridge over the Dnipro in Kyiv. The Crimean series is held by the Library of Congress: loc.gov/pictures/collection/ftncnw.
Crimea is temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. For now it is not a place for tourism.