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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Arrogance and stupidity..., Jun 16 2004
Cecil Woodham-Smith's story of the Charge of the Light Brigade is the biography of two men: Lords Lucan and Cardigan; brothers-in-law whose hatred for each other was surpassed only by arrogance and ineptitude as officers. Woodham-Smith's book is the story of two men cradled by an absurd system of rank and class, who came together as two of the highest-ranking officers in one of the worst-run campaigns in British military history, which resulted in one of the most legendary blunders in all of military history.In the lifetimes of Lucan and Cardigan (the late eighteenth and early nineteeth century), the best way to get ahead in the British Army was to purchase your rank. The purchase system, as it was called, was basically a way for England's wealthy classes to keep the most powerful positions in the army for themselves, and exclude those individuals who were not of the same social stratum. This system was supported by Britain's greatest military mind, the Duke of Wellington, who, it is explained, somehow managed to hide the deficiencies of the system behind his military brilliance. However, by the time Lucan and Cardigan came into a position of authority, Wellington had long since passed away, none of the high officers involved in the Crimean campaign had heard a shot fired in anger, and the only combat-experienced officers in the British Army (those who had served in India) were unwanted. The biography portion of the book gets a little bit cumbersome at times, especially for those of us who aren't entirely familiar with the British nobility system, but it provides an interesting backstory to the disaster in the Crimea. How two men so completely arrogant and inept came to a position of power in the British Army is shocking, especially when one considers that it was widely known that neither man was fit to command cavalry squadrons, let alone brigades and divisions. Ultimately, Woodham-Smith's argument is effective: the purchase system, coupled with the British class system, was ripe for a disaster. By allowing incompetency to buy its way up the ranks while more competent solders were bypassed and more experienced soldiers were shunned, it was only a matter of time until the British experienced a debacle such as Balaclava and the entire Crimean Campaign. Unfortunately for the British, it took two spectaculary arrogant and stupid men to breed such a disaster, and when it finally happened, it happened in spectacular fashion.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still the best account of the Charge of the Light Brigade, Feb 26 2002
The Reason Why remains the classic study of the intriguing and sadly ludicrous episode in military history known as the Charge of the Light Brigade. The author, coming from an Army family and relying heavily on the writings of officers, largely neglects the experience of the private soldier and concentrates on the main characters in the drama. The story is dominated by these extraordinary personalities, serving as a reminder that war is an inherently human drama. On a second level, it is a criticism of the privilege system of the British Army of the mid-nineteenth century. In retrospect, one is hard pressed to believe such a purchase system could have ever won a victory at Waterloo. Intolerant aristocrats with no experience in battle, paltry leadership skills, and maddening unconcern for the soldiers under their command, bought their commissions. The Charge of the Light Brigade illuminated all of the faults of the system and proved that bravery alone was insufficient for victory. While human blunders led to the debacle that was the Charge of the Light Brigade, the British military system was intrinsically to blame.
The heart of this book concerns the relationship between society at large and the military. Military leaders feared nothing so much as public scrutiny, for widespread discontent could lead to political interference and, indeed, political control of the army. Whether in dealing with the incorrigible personalities of Lords Lucan and Cardigan or in covering up the series of blunders that resulted in the sacrificial ride of the Light Brigade, the military leadership acted with the overriding principle of preserving the Army from governmental control.
The embarrassments of the Crimean campaign proved uncontainable. A great source of difficulty was the incompetence of the Army staff; rank and privilege were held to be superior to actual experience. When these difficulties led to humiliation and defeat, the commanders' concern was not with the men they had lost nor the future of the war effort; to the exclusion of these, their main concern was that bad publicity would appear in Britain, that the public would hear of the lack of success, that the House would begin to ask questions of the military leadership, that the press would begin to criticize the Army. This great fear of political interference was realized in the aftermath of the Crimean War. The author portrays this as the one positive effect engendered by the War effort. A new era of military reform was born in Britain, Europe, and America. Experience now became a prerequisite for command, and officers were trained in staff colleges. The author's final point is that, above all, the treatment of the private soldier changed as the military system was humanized to some degree. Her assertion that at the end of the Crimean War the private soldier was regarded as a hero seems rather bold, but it is clear that he was no longer seen as a nonhuman tool of his commanders' designs.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A good read - but......, Aug 13 2001
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."
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