Hell Riders: The Truth about the Charge of the Light Brigade

Hell Riders: The Truth about the Charge of the Light Brigade by Brighton, Terry. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780805079357.

“An outstanding work that strips away much of the nonsense that has surrounded a tragic military blunder . . . [a] splendid examination.” —Booklist On October 25, 1854, acting in defense of their base at Balaklava during the Crimean War, the Light Brigade of the British Cavalry Division made the most magnificent and brutal charge in military history. Seven hundred men armed with sabers and lances charged straight at the muzzles of Russian cannons. In the slaughter that followed, many fell to roundshot and shell. Those who survived took a terrible revenge on the enemy. In this vivid and extraordinarily detailed account of the charge and the bloody melee that followed, Terry Brighton draws on twenty years of research to tell the story in the words of the survivors themselves for the first time. Hell Riders takes the reader closer than ever before to the experience of charging into the valley of death, and reveals the horrific truth about the charge of the Light Brigade exactly as the survivors lived it.