Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 5.
'Flashed All Their Sabres Bare'
Reginald B. Hale
In a neat little house at Low in the Gatineau Valley hangs a sword. Romance and mystery are in its story, a tale of faraway battles, of disaster and glory.
The house belongs to our next-door neighbours, Bill and Leith Dodd, and is the sort of home where folk drop in for a yarn. Many happy hours I‘ve spent there chatting over mugs of coffee and sorely I‘ve missed Bill since his death in 1976.
One day our talk shifted from tomatoes and hybrid corn to history. Bill said “You like old things, Reg. There's something in the cellar that might interest you." He disappeared downstairs and returned waving a curved sabre. The handle was cracked, the blade black with grime: Bill had been using it to chop down his corn stalks. But on the knucklebow of its brass hilt glinted the Royal Cipher of King George III.
“Where the heck did you get this?“ I asked and Bill replied “My great-grand-father served in the King‘s Royal Rifle Corps during the Crimean War (1853-56). After the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, he went out onto the battlefield and picked this up as a souvenir."
A sword, which had taken part in the most famous cavalry charge in all history, found rusting in a Gatineau cellar! Yes, and there are many more treasures lying unknown or forgotten in Canadian cellars, attics and barns.
Yet as I examined this weapon, I felt there was some mystery about it. At the time of the battle at Balaclava it must have been nearly fifty years old and quite obsolete in style. So I borrowed it from Bill to mend and clean it and find anything l could about its history.
Examination showed that it was a British infantry officer's sword made about 1810. What was it doing in a cavalry charge in 1854? Curiosity demanded a search of books and records of the Crimean War to learn about the commanders, troops and events. So I wrote to museums, military experts and the authors of books about the Crimea. Meanwhile the sword, polished and handsome again, was displayed in an Exhibition in Ottawa and then returned to a place of honor on Bill's living room wall. The neighbours began to call him "Balaclava Bill".
In brief outline, the Crimean War was fought by Britain, France and Turkey against the Russians. In 1854 the allies landed their armies on the Crimean peninsula to besiege the Black Sea naval base of Sebastapol. The British supply base was at the fishing village of Balaclava which was defended by one understrength infantry division and the Heavy and Light Brigades of cavalry.
In the dawn of October 25th, 1854 the Russians moved overwhelming forces to attack the British supply base. A heavy ground mist enabled them to achieve surprise and they over-ran the Turkish outposts and captured their guns. Now only a lone kilted regiment, the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, blocked their path. A mass of Russian cavalry galloped forward to sweep them out of the way but the Scots remained in their “thin red line" and with three perfectly delivered volleys blasted them into rout. Then the big men and horses of the Heavy Brigade smashed into them and hurried them back the way they had come. The Russians withdrew to reform behind the cover of their artillery drawn up at the end of a mile-long valley. And they still controlled the captured Turkish guns which could fire down into the valley from the Causeway Heights.
This then was the situation immediately before the fateful charge of the Light Brigade. Both cavalry Brigades were under the command of the Earl of Lucan, “an awfully decent chap" but so indecisive that the troops called him “Lord Look-on." To make matters worse, the Light Brigade was commanded by Lucan's own brother-in-law, the Earl of Cardigan. The two Earls loathed each other.
Cardigan was personally brave but narrow minded, haughty and vain, more concerned that due respect be paid to his rank than that the Brigade be tactically well handled. He was a stickler for detail and even under combat conditions insisted that every buckle and button be in place. It is hard to believe that he would have permitted any officer of the Light Brigade to carry an obsolete infantry sabre.
Whoever dropped the sabre must have fallen early in the charge or late in the retreat because no Rifleman, looking for a souvenir, would have risked going any nearer the enemy guns than he had to. Less than a dozen officers died in the action and any who fell within reach of the British lines were fetched in by batmen or friends who doubtless also retrieved their swords if possible. Nor was it too easy for a cavalryman to lose his sword because, before going into action, he put the leather sword-knot round his wrist.
In view of all this, I became convinced that the owner of Bill's sword would be found outside the Light Brigade. Was there any other officer who took part? Perhaps a romantic man, wearing his father's old sword for reasons of sentiment. A man who, because of his rank and duties, might take liberties in the matter of his uniform. A man who perhaps had not intended to take part in the charge and had neglected to put the sword-knot round his wrist.
One officer fulfills all these requirements. His name was Captain Edward Nolan of the 15th Hussars. A brilliant man, at the age of 35 he was regarded as one of the Army's leading authorities on cavalry training and tactics. He was the son of a poor Irish soldier who won a Commission during the Napoleonic War when he served in the infantry in Italy, rose to be a Major and married an Italian girl. All the passion and romance of both Ireland and Italy was inherited by his son Edward. Captain Nolan was precisely the sort of man to wear his father's sword. And his father's sword would have been of the date and pattern of Bill's sword.
On the day of the battle Captain Nolan was serving on the Staff of the British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Raglan, an elderly warrior who had lost an arm at Waterloo forty years earlier. He was notoriously casual about uniform, himself wearing an odd mix of service and civvy dress and allowing his Staff to wear what they liked. Not that Edward Nolan dressed casually — he was always turned out like a fashion plate — but no one on the Staff would have objected if he chose to wear an antique sword.
From Army Headquarters on a high ridge Lord Raglan, looking down on the battle, had an almost aerial view. He saw the enemy trying to drag away the captured guns on the Causeway Heights. Those guns must be recaptured immediately! The Order was hastily scribbled and Raglan called for a Staff Officer to take it to the commander of the cavalry. Captain Nolan volunteered. He was almost beside himself with excitement at the prospect of a cavalry action but he was also running a fever, being ill with influenza.
Rather than follow the winding road from the ridge, Nolan put his charger down the steep hillside and slid and slithered to the valley floor in minutes, galloped up to Lord Lucan and handed him the C-in-C's Order. Both these men disliked each other intensely, the slow-witted aristocrat and the brilliant cavalryman of humble origin. The Order read “Advance rapidly to the front and prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Immediate." Lord Lucan stared around but from where he stood in the valley he could not see the captured Turkish guns but only the Russian guns a mile away at the end of the valley. His temper flared. “Guns, sir?" he barked “What guns?" Captain Nolan waved his hand dramatically. “There are the enemy, General, and there are your guns." he retorted insolently.
Lord Lucan was stung to action. The Order read “immediate” and he was not going to debate the matter further with this cocky Captain. Instead he sent on the fatal Order to his brother-in-law commanding the Light Brigade.
Cardigan must have known that a frontal attack on the well-placed Russian guns was a death sentence for his Brigade but his pride would not let him question the Order, lest his hated brother-in-law should call him a coward. instead he rode to the head of the Light Brigade muttering “Here goes the last of the Brudenells." Conspicuous in the slung-jacket and cherry-red trousers of the 11th Hussars, he placed himself fifteen horses’ lengths ahead of the front rank and commanded “The Brigade will advance." At a walk the three lines of Lancers, Hussars and Light Dragoons started down the valley.
Captain Edward Nolan had taken position beside Captain Morris of the Lancers, his close friend. The Brigade gathered momentum. Suddenly Nolan drew his sword and galloped forward alone, passing in front of the Earl of Cardigan and waving his sword wildly towards the Causeway Heights. Had he suddenly realized the charge was headed in the wrong direction? No one will ever know what he was trying to tell them because the first cannonball fired by the Russians hit him in the chest, his escaping breath emitting a ghastly shriek. The sword dropped from his hand but, knees still gripping the saddle, the upright body was carried by his horse back through the lines.
Cardigan, who had not seen him hit, rode on in cold fury believing that the Captain had attempted to usurp the command of his Brigade. He thought of nothing but this insult during the whole charge.
“Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered."
Saddles emptied, wide gaps were torn in the lines but the Brigade closed up and raced for the guns.
“Flashed all their sabres bare, flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there, charging an army
While all the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery smoke, right through the lines they broke.
Cossack and Russian reeled from the sabre stroke.
Then they rode back again but not -
Not the Six Hundred.“
Among those who struggled back through the gunfire was a large young man, Lieutenant Alex Dunn of the Hussars, educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto. His heroism in the Valley of Death won him the Victoria Cross, the first ever conferred on a Canadian.
It was all over in just twenty minutes. Six hundred and seventy three cavalrymen had charged. Four hundred and twenty six came back. They had done what nobody believed could be done. But in the words of a French General who watched the charge: “C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre.“
As daylight faded friends ventured down into the valley to bring in the fallen. Two of his friends found Captain Nolan’s body. They retrieved his watch and scabbard but there is no record that his sword was ever found.
Probably no one will ever know for sure. Perhaps it hangs on the wall in a trim little house in the Gatineau Valley.
This article by Reginald B. Hale of Ottawa and Low, Que., was a prize-winner in the sixth annual Essay Contest sponsored by The Historical Society of the Gatineau — 1977