![]() ![]() This brigade was supposed to pursue a Russian artillery train but, due to miscommunication, was instead sent into a frontal assault against heavily fortified Russian defenses. The famous charge of the British light cavalry took place at the Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854. It spanned three years, from 1853 to 1856, and was largely concerned with the territories of the Ottoman Empire, which by this time was in decline. The Crimean War was a conflict between the Russian Empire and the forces of the British Empire, French Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Kingdom of Sardinia. The rhymes also tend to intensify the emotion and suggest the inevitability of the situation rather than something like unrhymed free verse would have done, which would have evoked mere chaos. Anaphora is also used (repetition of the same word at the beginning of multiple lines), which here creates the sense of the barrage the soldiers were facing, and which in general intensifies the emotion of the scene. This gives the sense of boldly galloping or thundering like a drum. The meter is dactylic, meaning that one stressed syllable is succeeded by two unstressed syllables. The poem has six stanzas of differing lengths. Another famous British poet, Rudyard Kipling, took up the same event in his work “The Last of the Light Brigade,” but focused on how poorly the soldiers were treated once they were back in England. It was tremendously popular during its day, especially as it celebrated both the military and the common man’s perspective. Tennyson’s son said later that the phrase from the article “some hideous blunder” caught his imagination in the poem Tennyson’s words are “some one had blunder’d.” The poem was also included in an 1855 publication of his works. It is said that Tennyson read a newspaper article about the Battle of Balaclava, where the charge took place, and wrote this poem within a matter of minutes. As the poet laureate of England, Tennyson published this heroic and rousing poem in theExaminer on December 9, 1854, to commemorate the valiant actions of the light brigade that fought this battle in the Crimean War. ![]()
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