Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Charge of the Light Brigade About this episode The Charge of the Light Brigade is a famous poem about a lesser famous military action during the Crimean War. Tune in today for a rare SYSK walk through wartime history.
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1:38 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:49 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, just cracking us up. And this is Stuff You Should Know.
1:57 Speaker 02 That's right, kind of a rare, detailed war battle episode.
2:03 Josh Clark? Yeah, we don't do a lot of war stuff.
2:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, a little bit here and there.
2:07 Josh Clark? A little here or there, yeah, but usually it's like some crazy commando story like,
2:12 Speaker 02 You're right.
2:12 Josh Clark? You know, and usually where the Nazis are getting beat up because we love that narrative.
2:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, we usually don't like say, hey, let's, let's dive into some specific battles of the Crimean War.
2:23 Josh Clark? Right, but for all of you fans of the Crimean War who didn't look at the title, you're like, oh, I know what this one's about. Of course, it's about the Charge of the Light Brigade. And if you were an English student, sorry, an English student, and you studied poetry, you're probably familiar with the poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, comma, Lord Tennyson. I think you're supposed to say the comma out loud, from what I understand.
2:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, like the colon.
2:51 Josh Clark? But that was a real deal, that, that really happened. And it's a really complicated, complex story.
3:00 Josh Clark? That's also extremely fascinating and totally nuts at the end.
3:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I guess we should probably set up a little bit about just what the Crimean War was.
3:09 Josh Clark? Yeah.
3:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, so the Crimean War was, over the course of a few years, from 1853 to 56. It was in Europe, fought between Russia and Britain, France and Turkey, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was, that is. And it was known for a lot of things. There were some, you know, interesting people that came out of this, ended up being super famous.
3:34 Speaker 02 And some, a lot of lives lost, but notably, most of the half a million lives lost, like maybe as many as 75% died from disease and things like that, instead of on the battlefield.
3:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, which is terrible. That was a reason that two now famous women showed up to help. One was Florence Nightingale, who's very well known as the lady with the lamp. She showed up and started using like evidence-based treatments. And apparently the mortality rate at these horrible field hospitals. Went from 41% when she showed up down to 2% at the end of the war. It's pretty impressive. And then there's a less well-known woman named Mary Seacole, who was born in Jamaica. She was mixed race and she appealed to be sent to the Crimean front like Florence Nightingale was, was turned down.
4:26 Josh Clark? So she went herself and showed up and made huge, huge gains in saving lives there as well.
4:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it was the first big war covered by the press. Notably, Tolstoy got his start there. You know, writing about the, you know, dispatches from the front, basically.
4:45 Josh Clark? Right.
4:45 Speaker 02 It's also weirdly where the, the balak lava comes from that, you know, the, what we in America might call a ski mask.
4:55 Josh Clark? Or a scary mask.
4:56 Speaker 02 Or a scary mask or a cat burglar mask. It comes from here. So lots of sort of little weird things. And obviously, like you mentioned, the charge of the light brigade, the very famous poem.
5:04 Josh Clark? Right.
5:05 Speaker 02 But the whole thing started over a religious argument, basically in the Ottoman Empire, wherein for several years, the French Catholics were battling it out with the Russian Orthodox Church over who controlled the holy sites, the Christian holy sites within the Ottoman Empire, which really ticked off Czar Nicholas the first.
5:28 Josh Clark? Yeah. So he also, we should say the Ottoman Empire was very powerful for a while, but we're joining them at the, at the twilight, maybe even the end of their empire, which I think broke up in World War One, and this is about 60 years before that. So the, the Ottoman Empire was not in a very good position to defend itself against Czar Nicholas the first, who's like, oh yeah, well, I'm going to invade part of your Ottoman Empire and I'm going to invade what's in modern day Romania, Moldavia and Wallachia, which is where Dracula is from. And he invaded, and again, the Ottoman Empire, I think they were known as the sick man of Europe. There was not a lot they can do about it.
6:09 Josh Clark? So France and Britain came to their aid and not for any necessarily altruistic reason, but because they were not happy with the idea of Russian expanding itself into Europe. And in particular, Be getting a foothold in the Mediterranean. And when they set up shop in Wallachia and Moldavia, they were on the Danube, which would take them straight to the Mediterranean. So France and Britain became concerned and they're like, we'll back you up Ottoman Empire.
6:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's boy, the more things change, the more they say the same.
6:42 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's true, man.
6:43 Speaker 02 It's crazy when you see this stuff that happened back in the 1850s and you can draw sort of a straight line to the things that happen today and Russian expansion. It's just, it's really interesting stuff.
6:53 Josh Clark? Yeah.
6:54 Speaker 02 But all that to say is that what is now, like you said, modern day Romania, he now occupied, France and Britain got their hackles up. They sent warships to the Black Sea in 1853, declared war on Russia in 1854. And the first big, you know, this could have ended it all. The first big major defeat against that English and French alliance was at Odessa there in the Black Sea and Czar Nicholas withdrew, basically that land he had occupied, he pulled back out in July of 1854 and that could have been the end of it. But the Frenchies and the Brits said, you know what? Now we want to punish them for their aggression.
7:38 Speaker 02 So we're going to go on the offensive and that turned out to be a bit of a boondoggle.
7:44 Josh Clark? It did. Nations do that kind of thing, though, when especially when they soundly defeat an expansionist nation, they, they often want to make an example of be like, don't try that again. This is not like completely out of left field, but yeah, the way it turned out was not great. And they chose to invade Russia by landing on the Crimean Peninsula. And they chose Crimea for a couple of reasons. One, it's where Russia's naval ships were stationed that they would use to, to take over the Mediterranean if they could get a foothold there. And then two, they couldn't make it to mainland Russia because Germany was neutral at the time. They were the Austro-Prussian, I guess, kingdom.
8:28 Josh Clark? They're like, you can't send your troops through here to get to Russia. They're like, okay, we'll go attack. Crimea. And then there was one other thing about Crimea, Chuck. It it offered a way to attack navally, which is what the Brits favored. And it also offered at the same time, a way to attack on land, which is what the French preferred. And so.
8:47 Speaker 02 Surf and turf.
8:48 Josh Clark? The exactly. It was the surf and turf strategy. And yeah, the Crimean peninsula served all of those purposes.
8:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, which was mainland Ukraine, by the way. So I guess the first battle, or well, not the first battle, I guess this would be the second battle we're talking about. And the one that really sets up the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade is the siege of, you know, in California, there's a town called Sebastopol with a V.
9:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, my aunt lives there.
9:16 Speaker 02 In Sebastopol?
9:17 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
9:18 Speaker 02 It's quite nice.
9:19 Josh Clark? It is.
9:20 Speaker 02 Lovely wooded Northern California.
9:23 Josh Clark? Yes.
9:23 Speaker 02 I've been there myself.
9:24 Josh Clark? Okay.
9:25 Speaker 02 But this is with a V. And I don't know if it's probably not pronounced Sebastopol. It's probably Sebastopol would be my guess.
9:32 Josh Clark? Oh, you know what? I've never heard anybody say it like that, but I'll bet you're right. I'll bet a bunch of Ukrainians just stood up and went, yeah.
9:41 Speaker 02 I wonder if there's any connection there, too. I was gonna look that up.
9:43 Josh Clark? Surely. That'd be one heck of a coincidence.
9:47 Speaker 02 I agree.
9:47 Josh Clark? Somebody just put a bunch of letters together. They're like Sebastopol.
9:52 Speaker 02 Also, the name of a good solo album by Jay Farrar of Uncle Tuplo and Sunvolt is Sebastopol.
9:58 Josh Clark? Nice. With a B or a V?
10:00 Speaker 02 With a B.
10:01 Josh Clark? Okay. Wait, did you say B or V? Because they rhyme.
10:05 Speaker 02 B as in, boy, do we need to get back to the topic at hand.
10:09 Josh Clark? V as in voy?
10:13 Speaker 02 All right. It's September 1854. We've got a little over 60,000 troops total from this alliance, 30,000 from the French, about 26,000 British troops and about 4,500 Turks. They land on the coast of Crimea and start to hike inland for the turf section, 30 miles in. And that port city of Sebastopol is where they're headed.
10:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, so that's, I think that's where the Russians had their, their, that navy that they would invade the Mediterranean with. And the Russian commander was a guy named Prince Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov.
10:54 Speaker 02 Great name. Russians have great names.
10:56 Josh Clark? Right. There was, I think, an initial skirmish after they landed at Calamita Bay, but it didn't really count as the first battle. The first battle was the Battle of the Alma River, and that's where Menshikov decided like, okay, this is where we're going to start to take on this alliance force. And they, it was a pretty serious battle. I think both sides lost many thousands of men, but the, the Brits and the French were not turned back. The Russians retreated instead.
11:26 Speaker 02 That's right. And this is when a really interesting decision comes about. They were worried that there were more Russian armies coming in to that, you know, port city to help defend their navy, I guess. And so they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do the old hook and ladder, and we're going to take a wide path around the city so we can attack from the south. What they didn't know was that at that time, it was very poorly defended there. So if they would have, if they would have just kept charging forward, it probably would have been over pretty quickly.
11:57 Josh Clark? Right.
11:58 Speaker 02 But since they took the long way around, which they thought was a decent strategy, that gave the Russians the chance to re-fortify, basically, and stock up with men and supplies.
12:07 Josh Clark? Yeah. And they couldn't have known that, that, that the city wasn't very well defended, but everybody had fled. And apparently, they sunk a bunch of ships in the harbor to keep the British Navy from being able to land there.
12:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, but isn't part of war, trying to know that stuff?
12:24 Josh Clark? Yes. And ironically, you would use the light brigade for that kind of stuff, to scout and spy and report back.
12:33 Speaker 02 Okay. So when you said they couldn't have known, what you really meant was they didn't know, because they didn't do it good?
12:39 Josh Clark? That's, yes.
12:41 Speaker 02 Okay.
12:41 Josh Clark? You're right. So for the siege of Sevastopol, not just the Russians set up and re-fortified the city, the British basically regrouped and they settled at a port town called Balaklava.
12:55 Josh Clark? And it's about 10 miles south of Sebastopol. And like you said, that's where the headgear comes from or the name of it. Because it actually doesn't just come from that town. It comes from this actual battle that happened there. So there's a road between Balaclava and Sebastopol. And they are, because they're connected, both sides need that for supplies.
13:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:20 Josh Clark? So it's a really strategically important road. And before the Brits could try to take the road or secure it, the Russians decided to. And they made a really risky move. They took some of their troops who were battling. Because by this time, the Brits and the French were now laying siege to Sebastopol. And the Russians were fighting them off. And the Russians took some of their troops and moved them around the siegers and put them squarely between the alliance forces sieging Sebastopol and the alliance forces at Balaclava on the road to try to take the road. It was a risky move, but it was also what they had to do to kind of cut the Brits off,
14:04 Josh Clark? the sieging Brits off from supplies 10 miles south at Balaclava.
14:08 Speaker 02 That's right. So they attacked these artillery positions of the Allies on the hills outside of Balaclava. It turned into a pretty chaotic battle scene there. And the Russians did pretty good at first. They had a lot of cavalry. They had a pretty substantial infantry there. And they captured these gun positions, these Turkish and British gun positions on that hilltop. And this is a place called Causeway Heights. They tried next to take another town called Catacroy. And that was basically the last stop before you got to Balaclava. But this is where the Scots come in.
14:50 Speaker 02 The legendary 93rd Sutherland Highlanders wearing kilts with swords and rifles.
14:56 Josh Clark? And no underwear.
14:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, that's the most, you know, intimidating part of all of this.
15:02 Josh Clark? Sure.
15:03 Speaker 02 Uh, they were led by a major general, Sir Colin Campbell, and he had a pretty good idea to defeat these guys and it worked.
15:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, normally the Highlanders would form a square of four rows, right? And you're able to defend your flank a lot easier. There's less men exposed. Instead Campbell said, we're going to form two lines and they were like, this is mind blowing. So there were more men exposed, but they were able to shoot further across, right?
15:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. Just more bullets, basically.
15:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, exactly. And it turned out that the, um, the Highlanders were successful in attacking the Russian cavalry. Or I'm sorry, the Highlanders were standing the ground to defend, um, Katikoi. And it was the Russian cavalry that was rushing at them. The Highlanders fired on them. There was a volley of, of, um, musket or bullets, I guess. And the Russians were like, oh no. And they turned left and when they turned left, they exposed their flank and the Highlanders fired again. And really just messed the Russian cavalry up and just caused disarray and they had to retreat. So it was a really good stand, so much so that like these guys, like you said, they're legendary now in part because of this battle.
16:15 Josh Clark? And I guess I should probably say, I think I'm, am I saying cavalry, cavalry?
16:20 Speaker 02 I think you're probably accidentally saying cavalry, which I, I do all the time too, but that's, that's where Jesus was crucified, right?
16:26 Josh Clark? Right. So cavalry is the horseback troops.
16:31 Speaker 02 They should really have named those things two completely different sounding words.
16:35 Josh Clark? Exactly.
16:37 Speaker 02 It's very confusing. And the only reason I even know is because there's a lot of old, uh, hymns, church hymns that I sang that, that you sing about cavalry.
16:45 Josh Clark? Yeah. Oh yeah. I know all about that.
16:48 Speaker 02 Yeah. Did you sing, uh, hymns?
16:50 Josh Clark? Uh, not about cavalry. The Catholics don't, um, pay attention to that for some reason.
16:55 Speaker 02 No, I just didn't know how much, uh, Catholics sang in church.
16:59 Josh Clark? Oh dude, I, I don't even know if you can call it singing unless it's kind of like a reformist seventies hippie church. It's chanting.
17:08 Speaker 02 Okay.
17:08 Josh Clark? And it scares the bejesus out of non Catholics who like go with a friend to a Catholic mass. It freaks people out.
17:16 Speaker 02 I got you, because in Baptist churches, it was just the big bombastic sort of, you know, hymnal songs.
17:23 Josh Clark? Sure, sure.
17:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe, maybe more fun, but I don't know.
17:28 Josh Clark? Than chanting?
17:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I never chanted.
17:32 Josh Clark? Well, you should try it sometime.
17:34 Speaker 02 All right, I'll give it a shot. Where did we leave? The Scots, the Highlanders won, and did you, did you say that that's where we got the term, the Thin Red Line?
17:43 Josh Clark? No, no, I didn't mention that.
17:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, so, you know, we talked about this being one of the first major wars where there was journalism going on, and there was a guy named William Howard Russell. Was he Irish, I think?
17:56 Josh Clark? Yeah, he was an Irish correspondent.
17:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, so he was writing from the front lines, and, and The Times, he described the line of men that, you know, those two lines of men in their brick red coats as the thin, a thin red streak tipped with steel, and that eventually morphed into the Thin Red Line, which is another weird sort of thing that came out of this war.
18:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, and another really hardcore war movie, too.
18:20 Speaker 02 Good one.
18:21 Josh Clark? Or no, I'm thinking of Big Red One.
18:24 Speaker 02 No, no, no, The Thin Red Line was Terence Malick, they're, they're both war movies.
18:27 Josh Clark? Okay, but I was thinking of the, is it Big Red One?
18:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that was, that was good, too, Mark Hamill and, and the guy from Revenge of the Nerds.
18:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think Mark Hamill gets his testicles blown off by a grenade.
18:39 Speaker 02 Somebody does. I think I said before that was the first R-rated movie I saw in a theater, and, yeah, was it Mark Hamill's testicles?
18:47 Josh Clark? I believe it was, but I, I could just be making that part up.
18:51 Speaker 02 I got you.
18:51 Josh Clark? Hey, so one more thing before we go to break, because I can sense that coming on. This is the, this is the first war, as far as I know, where some soldiers' wives traveled with them to the front and basically, like, set up a household there. It was a very bizarre setup, and they were very unhappy there, because it was not a fun place to be.
19:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:16 Josh Clark? But they were there to support their husbands, a lot of them were.
19:19 Speaker 02 Wow, man, cry me a war, who knew?
19:21 Josh Clark? Yeah.
19:22 Speaker 02 All right, well, we'll be right back, right?
19:23 Josh Clark? Yes.
19:24 Speaker 02 All right.
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23:07 Josh Clark? All right, so I feel like we've kind of been dancing around this whole light brigade thing. And for a long time, until I started researching for this episode, I just assumed light as in like a bright light or something like that.
23:21 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting, okay.
23:23 Josh Clark? It makes way more sense now that what you're talking about is a light brigade, right?
23:28 Speaker 02 Like weight-wise, sort of?
23:29 Josh Clark? Yeah, rather than opposed to a heavy brigade, both of which are part of the cavalry that the Brits and the French used at the time.
23:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, and when I said weight wise, I meant lighter horses, faster horses, presumably lighter men on those horses. I imagine it was just a bunch of people that were fleet of foot and horses that were fleet of hoof. Their job, if you were a light brigade, was to ride very quickly across the battlefield, to move places with great speed, sometimes to deliver battle orders with great speed. The heavy brigade is exactly what you would think, bigger horses, bigger men, close combat, breaking through enemy lines, kind of kicking butt and taking names.
24:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, and so like when the heavy brigade broke up the enemy line, as like the enemy was retreating, you'd send in the light brigade who would chase the enemy down and slash them with their swords and stuff, right?
24:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, they probably had better hair in the light brigade.
24:29 Josh Clark? They probably did.
24:30 Speaker 02 You know, like the handsome, like, alright, now all the rough stuff's done, get us in here on our little fleet horses.
24:37 Josh Clark? With their Habsburg chins.
24:40 Speaker 02 Oh, totally.
24:41 Josh Clark? So, there was, in addition to the charge of the light brigade at this, so we're at the Battle of Balaclava still, this is where all of this happens, right? Remember that the Highlanders already turned back the Russian cavalry once. Now, the heavy brigade is actually sent in. Their charge of the heavy brigade came before the charge of the light brigade. And I think it was pretty effective when they hit up the Russians. I think there were 800 horsemen in the heavy brigade, running into 3,000 Russians in the Russian line.
25:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, but it's the heavy brigade, so they did a lot of damage. The Russian cavalry, now it's in my head, they kind of scrambled to get out of there. And here's where we get to a point where there's a sort of a fateful, confusing order that brings us to the actual light brigade story. And we're going to introduce some. Some people here, uh, none of whom seem to be very competent.
25:45 Josh Clark? Yeah.
25:45 Speaker 02 At warring. Um, so basically people like you and I would have been.
25:50 Josh Clark? Yeah. Imagine if we were rich and said, I want to be a lieutenant. I'm going to pay to be a lieutenant in the army and command soldiers.
25:59 Speaker 02 That's it. That was a thing.
26:00 Josh Clark? That's exactly what these men had done with the exception of Lord Raglan. He had battle experience. He had fought Napoleon at Waterloo. He lost an arm in that battle, so he was a war hero, but he was 25 when that happened. And by this time he was 65.
26:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:17 Josh Clark? A little dotty, maybe. Um, he apparently, remember there was a French English alliance that was battling the Russians, but when he would refer to the French, say strategically, they were talking about what the French were doing, he'd refer to them as the enemy. That was very confusing. And this battle, the Battle of Balaclava, was the first time that he had ever led, like commanded men in battle.
26:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:43 Josh Clark? Up to that point, he'd been subordinate. This was the first time he was the one calling the shots for the battle. So he had the most experience and this was the first time he was doing that.
26:54 Speaker 02 For sure. So he gets, uh, up on this high, about a 600 foot high ridge. So he's got a great view of the battlefield. Um, the guys down there don't have any kind of view at all. So the orders are going to be getting maybe a little bit confusing because they can't really see what's going on like Raglan can. Uh, he's also pretty far away, so it takes 20 minutes to get, even with the, the light horse brigade.
27:19 Josh Clark? Yeah.
27:19 Speaker 02 Or the light runner, who we'll meet in a minute too, who hates everybody that's involved here, as it turns out. It takes him about 20 minutes to get there and deliver an order and, you know, presumably a little bit of time to sort of suss that out and then another 20 minutes to come back.
27:34 Josh Clark? Right.
27:35 Speaker 02 So it's probably like 40 minutes to an hour for this whole exchange of information to take place. And what Raglan is trying to do is trying to stop the enemy from taking away these heavy guns that they had captured at that Causeway Heights battle.
27:52 Josh Clark? Right.
27:52 Speaker 02 And so he sends the following order. Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate.
28:09 Josh Clark? Okay. A little vague.
28:12 Speaker 02 That's, that's the message. A little bit vague.
28:14 Josh Clark? Yeah. So that's problem one. It's vague. Problem two is, like you said, Ragland's up 600 feet with a bird's eye view of everything going on. And the two men who received this order, um, the Earl of Lucan, George Bingham, and the Earl of Cardigan, James Brutonell, they're down in one of the valleys. So they can't see these captured guns that, that Ragland's talking about. And when this man, who you said hated everybody, showed up, Captain Lewis Nolan, they're like, wait, what's, what's going on? What are you talking about? And before we get into that, we should probably talk a little bit about Bingham and Brutonell, because we kind of disparaged them a little bit. And I think we should explain why.
28:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, you mentioned being able to pay for a position. Uh, that's what both of these guys did. They paid for this position of, of leading these men. They were both wealthy gentlemen. Uh, I believe, um, Brutonell, the Earl of Cardigan was described at one point as brave, handsome, bad tempered and brainless. And these guys were brothers in law who hated each other's guts. So Cardigan was a subordinate to Lucan and didn't like being under his command. Uh, and like you said, this guy Nolan didn't like either one of them. Uh, he said, uh, and these are quotes. He said, "We call Lucan the cautious ass and Lord Cardigan the dangerous ass. And Lord Cardigan has as much brains as his boot."
29:38 Speaker 02 So no respect seemingly is happening for these, for these dudes down there leading these charges.
29:44 Josh Clark? No, and one other thing, the balaclava headgear came out of this battle. So did the Cardigan sweater.
29:51 Speaker 02 Now, I don't know whether or not at this point, and you're 18 to believe.
29:55 Josh Clark? Totally get that. I totally get that. This is one of those things where it's like, no, I'm joking. This is true. It's named after James Brutonell, the Earl of Cardigan. I think the seventh Earl of Cardigan.
30:05 Speaker 02 Cause I almost looked that up, but I just ran out of time because we're recording early and I had a hunch, but I didn't get to it. So you're not pulling my, uh, My ski rope.
30:14 Josh Clark? No, no, your rope trauma, rope.
30:17 Speaker 02 My rope trauma. Uh, all right. Well, another little Crimean war fact. I like that.
30:22 Josh Clark? And one other thing about George Bingham, the Earl of Lucan, he made his money by, um, as a landlord for poor Irish tenant farmers.
30:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:30 Josh Clark? And then would evict them and send them to the poorhouse when they couldn't pay rent. He was not a good guy at all, but that's how he became wealthy enough to buy his position as a commander of the brigade, the, the cavalry, I guess.
30:44 Speaker 02 Right. All right. So Nolan delivers this order. Uh, he's like we said, a pretty fast rider on that horse. He gets there pretty quickly. Uh, we don't know, this is where things get a little confusing. We don't know if he had other motives because he didn't like these guys.
30:58 Josh Clark? Right.
30:59 Speaker 02 He also was in the light brigade and he wanted to see some action. And at that battle of the Alma River, didn't get any action. And I think he was even frustrated because Lucan had orders to dispatch the light brigade. It didn't take it like these guys wanted to see action. They wanted to, to be heroes on the battlefield.
31:16 Josh Clark? Right.
31:17 Speaker 02 So he gets down there to deliver this message. They're looking around going like, what guns are you talking about? And he basically just says, over there, he points at the end of the valley and said, there, my lord is your enemy. These, there are your guns, which was not the correct direction to point.
31:37 Josh Clark? No, he was pointing at a heavily fortified Russian gun position, right? There were apparently like 30 or 40 cannons there. And what again Raglan was talking about were some poorly defended, captured artillery guns. Elsewhere, right? I think they were on one of the sides. So when he pointed, he was pointing to the center of three heavily fortified Russian positions. On a, um, I think a ridge overlooking a valley. And basically said Raglan is telling you to charge the light brigade. This isn't even a job for a light brigade, but you and the light brigade are supposed to charge straight to
32:17 Josh Clark? those Russian guns in the middle of this horribly dangerous place for you guys to be, let's go.
32:24 Speaker 02 That's right, and we don't know why he did that. We don't know if he was confused. We didn't know if he was doing it on purpose because he hated these guys. We don't know if he was doing it on purpose because he wanted that action. We don't know all this stuff because the guy who got the message wrong was one of the first people killed during this charge. Which is not funny, I'm not laughing, but it's just, I mean, this was known as sort of
32:50 Speaker 02 a war folly by the end of it, even though, as we'll see, it didn't turn out to be a complete loss.
32:55 Josh Clark? No. I know we haven't gotten to the light brigade, the actual charge yet, but should we take a break now?
33:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think it fits the act structure.
33:04 Josh Clark? Sorry, everybody.
33:06 Speaker 02 We'll be right back.
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34:28 Josh Clark? You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off, because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.
34:43 Speaker 02 That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction. Signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system. The constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance, and why they seem to be on the rise, to how digestion changes as we age, and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.
35:11 Josh Clark? Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
35:30 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
35:33 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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35:52 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
36:00 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
36:06 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
36:12 Speaker 02 And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
36:15 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
36:19 Speaker 03 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
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36:45 Speaker 02 All right, so now we're finally at the Light Brigade charge. It was not supposed to happen that way. Again, it was a misunderstood or misdelivered, at least, order. And Lucan and Cardigan didn't know. They had 670 cavalrymen in this Light Brigade. One of the most famous blunders in military history. They said, basically, all right, let's do this thing. And they went charging through what was known as the Valley of Death.
37:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, and there was no one there who was like, oh, okay, that's, this is a good idea. Let's do this. But they, they didn't question the orders. So when they entered this Valley of Death, that's what I think Tennyson called it later, right?
37:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:29 Josh Clark? They were, again, charging right for Russian cannons straight ahead. And then there were Russian artillery positions on either side, and they're running right through this. And right when they start riding through the, this Valley of Death, they just start getting fired upon. They're fired upon from all three directions, although apparently not all at the same time. But still, like, this was a, it was essentially a suicide mission that they'd just been sent on, and it just went badly immediately.
38:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, they were people that survived it, and they said that limbs were being shot off, heads were being shot off, horses were running around without people on them or with just bodies on them, without heads. There was so much smoke, apparently. One soldier said it was like riding into the mouth of a volcano. The Heavy Brigade, it was going so badly, the Heavy Brigade was supposed to follow. It was kind of reversed, I guess. And Lucan said, no, he pulled those orders back and pulled back the Heavy Brigade even.
38:32 Josh Clark? He said, "They have sacrificed the Light Brigade. They shall not have the Heavy if I can help it."
38:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:38 Josh Clark? So what's crazy about this is these 675 riders riding into 3,000 ish Russians in their cannons. All most of them, the majority of them made it. They made it to this, these Russian lines and they broke them up. They actually, at least the Russian artillery position that they were charging toward in the center.
39:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:03 Josh Clark? They captured that. They actually managed to, to force the, the Russian soldiers to retreat from that. And so they captured those guns. That's insane that that, that that happened. Like this should have, there should have been no one alive. And yet they actually fulfilled this nutso mission that should have never happened in the first place because it was a miscommunication.
39:26 Speaker 02 Yeah. And they ended up getting all three of those positions because they went back into position. The light brigade took out one of those positions, which by the way, I don't know if we made it clear, but one of those positions was the original order. Which I guess they eventually got to.
39:40 Josh Clark? Right.
39:41 Speaker 02 They just did it out of order. And then the other one was destroyed by a French light cavalry unit. Called the African hunters or the, how would you pronounce that?
39:51 Josh Clark? Chez le da freak.
39:53 Speaker 02 Very nice.
39:54 Josh Clark? Thanks. I took three years of French in high school.
39:58 Speaker 02 Hey, it's been paying off for 18 years for us. So. A little French from you, a little German from me and everything else mispronounced.
40:05 Josh Clark? Oh, well, don't forget your Italian accent though.
40:08 Speaker 02 Well, sure.
40:09 Josh Clark? We have the whole of Europe covered.
40:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, most of it.
40:13 Josh Clark? So when the light brigade charged through this valley of death and broke up the, the Russian artilleries. And the French broke up another one. I think there was actually one left still. They had to ride back and were being fired upon by that remaining one too. So they had to ride back from the valley to get to where they started back, you know, to safety again. And when they got back, they found that of the 670 members of the light brigade who, who undertook this charge, 110 were killed. 160 were wounded. 375 horses were killed. So 670 of the members, more than half of them lost their horse. And apparently some of the men told cardigan that they were ready to go again.
40:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, I guess it was, you know, they felt like they did good work. They wanted to do more.
41:03 Josh Clark? I mean, I can't imagine if you thought you were going on a suicide mission and it actually worked out and you made it back alive. I'm sure you were invigorated is probably underselling it.
41:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, but guys like you and I would have said, how about we don't do that again?
41:17 Josh Clark? We would have been like, wait, are you sure that's what he said? Because this doesn't make any sense. Let's talk this through.
41:25 Speaker 02 All right. So William Howard Russell is writing about this thing like we talked about. He is the one that ends up, and he did some beautiful writing as far as that kind of stuff goes. But he is the one who ended up inspiring Tennyson's poem.
41:39 Speaker 02 Maybe I'll read this last line at least. It's a pretty good example. At the distance of 1,200 yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks by dead men and horses, by steeds, flying wounded or riderless across the plain.
42:01 Josh Clark? That's pretty good reporting.
42:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, pretty good stuff.
42:04 Josh Clark? So I think you mentioned before that the Charge of the Light Brigade is viewed as an enormous military blunder. It's still very much taught in schools as like what not to do.
42:17 Josh Clark? It's also, I think it's also shorthand among military people as like for any senseless waste of soldiers' lives by higher up calling higher ups calling bad shots. But it's also revered as an incredibly brave, courageous act. And that's what's celebrated, not, not the fact that they even were successful. That's, that's not the most celebrated fact. It was that these men just basically put their nose down and did what they, they had to do. However, you feel about that, that's essentially what the, what the poem celebrates most of all.
42:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, which was when he was poet laureate of England in 1850, I think. I think it was about six weeks after that battle is when he published The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Examiner initially.
43:09 Speaker 02 Should we read this last, the second stanza?
43:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's the most famous of all of them.
43:14 Speaker 02 Why don't you take this one?
43:16 Josh Clark? I think you should.
43:18 Speaker 02 Okay.
43:21 Speaker 02 Forward the light brigade. Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew someone had blundered. There's not to make reply. There's not to reason why. There's but to do and die into the valley of death rode the 600.
43:36 Josh Clark? Yeah. And apparently Tennyson recorded himself reading this on a wax cylinder. And there's places on the internet, including YouTube, I believe, where you can hear it. And it bears an uncanny resemblance to that. Remember that doll in the dolls episode? The old timey talking doll from the 19th century? It sounds a little bit like that. But even getting past that, he, I don't think he does a very good job reading it. It's the, it's the worst reading I've heard of that ever.
44:09 Speaker 02 So you're saying my reading is better than Tennyson's own?
44:12 Josh Clark? I am. It is.
44:13 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
44:14 Josh Clark? Yeah. So way to go, man.
44:15 Speaker 02 Whew. I appreciate that. Maybe I should be poet laureate reader of England.
44:19 Josh Clark? I've been secretly lobbying for you to be named poet laureate of the US for years now.
44:27 Speaker 02 My high school had a poet laureate.
44:29 Josh Clark? Who was it?
44:31 Speaker 02 Natasha Tretheway, if I'm not mistaken.
44:33 Josh Clark? Wow.
44:34 Speaker 02 She was there when I was there. Pretty cool stuff.
44:36 Josh Clark? That's impressive you remember that.
44:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think she might have been in my grade. So, yeah. She was, who knows? I might have had English class with her for all I know.
44:47 Speaker 02 So there was also, from Tennyson, the charge of the heavy brigade at Balaklava. It was years after the war, though. And this was, and this is kind of where we end the story is, British war veterans had a very hard time after this in a lot of cases. And there were many efforts to try and raise money and raise awareness for that, that a lot of them went to poorhouses and weren't cared for. And this poem was written years later to try and raise money for these war veterans, along with Kipling, right?
45:17 Josh Clark? Kipling wrote another one, The Last of the Light Brigade, that actually commemorates the charge of the heavy brigade at Balaclava in Tennyson's writing of it. And Tennyson actually makes an appearance in this Kipling poem. And but both of them were basically for the same reason, to call attention to the fact that these Crimean war veterans had just been totally abandoned by their nations and were living in total poverty in a lot of cases. And what's really sad is that a fundraising effort that Tennyson led, thanks to his poem and his fame too, I mean, like, he was a very famous person at this time, they were only able to collect 24 pounds.
45:59 Speaker 02 That can't, can't have been too much, even back then.
46:01 Josh Clark? No.
46:03 Speaker 02 There were a couple of movies. There was one from 1936, The Charge of the Light Brigade, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.
46:10 Josh Clark? And Olivia de Havilland had her breakthrough role in Airport 77 years later.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what she's known for.
46:19 Speaker 02 There was, it was a love triangle movie about British, British soldiers that takes place, you know, sort of around this fatal charge. And then another one from 68, right?
46:29 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's called The Charge of the Light Brigade, but this one is a satire, is satirizing the British aristocracy, especially in the Victorian Age, essentially just hungering for war so they could get their, their own glory. Again, buying offices or ranks in the military. And it was John Gilgood as Lord Cardigan. And yeah, I haven't seen it.
46:54 Speaker 02 Vanessa Redgrave, like, what a cast.
46:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's quite, quite a cast. Every time I see John Gilgood or hear his name, I replace his name with Dr. Feelgood, the Motley Crue song.
47:05 Speaker 02 He's the one they call John Gilgood.
47:07 Josh Clark? Sir John Gilgood, you have to add the sir.
47:10 Speaker 02 He's the one they call Sir John Gilgood.
47:12 Josh Clark? There it is. He's the one that makes you feel all right.
47:16 Speaker 02 That's right. If you're watching Arthur, that is.
47:18 Josh Clark? Was he in that? Was he the butler?
47:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think he won an Oscar for that role.
47:24 Josh Clark? For the butler?
47:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean.
47:27 Josh Clark? I mean, that's impressive.
47:29 Speaker 02 He was great. This is one of my favorite movies growing up, still is.
47:32 Josh Clark? Awesome. Well, that's The Charge of the Light Brigade, everybody.
47:36 Speaker 02 That's right.
47:36 Josh Clark? Chuck said that's right, so it's time for listener mail.
47:41 Speaker 02 Hey guys. Long story short, I've been listening for four plus years. And as many others say, you two have no idea how much appreciation your fanbase has for you. Writing this, I was scouring through old episodes I came across and up where you two disagreed on the subject. I can't remember what it was, but you kept the animated conversation going for a few minutes. It was a subtle reminder that the two of you, just like anybody else, are friends and can totally have disagreements or differing opinions, but let's have a little fun. Can you share an example of when you disagreed with the other, but rather than voice it on the air, you kept it to yourself? Or are there any topics where you had a disagreement and you cut it out? That is warmly from Warner Finn. P.S. Mom and Dad.
48:22 Speaker 02 I'll go ahead and answer from my part in that I don't think we've ever had a disagreement that we've like cut off, cut out of the episode that I can think of.
48:32 Josh Clark? No, we, we almost, yeah, we leave those in. I can't think of one either.
48:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I can't think of, I mean, there's the famous, you know, watering the lawns and things like that from past episodes, but I mean, I'm sure there's lots of little things I might disagree on in the moment that I keep to myself that just aren't a big deal. And I don't bring them up because it's just not worth mentioning in a show episode.
48:56 Josh Clark? Yeah. You want to keep the show going. Plus also, I mean, you can only correct one another so often before you start seeming like a know-it-all or whatever, or just is interruptive. Most of the time it just doesn't matter. Like chassis. You remember you were saying chassis? And I didn't correct you?
49:13 Speaker 02 Oh, man.
49:13 Josh Clark? It just didn't matter, you know?
49:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I think that sums it up best. We, and on just big stuff philosophically, we're pretty much aligned as humans and friends. So like, that's why there's never any big stuff is because we both kind of park our cars in the same garage.
49:32 Josh Clark? It would be a much different podcast if we, if we didn't see eye to eye generally on the big stuff, I think.
49:39 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I mean, I think most of the disagreements are like, you didn't like that movie? That kind of stuff. And who cares about that?
49:47 Josh Clark? Or you've never had pizza rolls?
49:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, like I don't like pickles and mustard. And even though you're determined to convince me there's a pickle and a mustard I might like.
49:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, no, I finally accepted both.
50:01 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
50:01 Josh Clark? I've accepted it that you don't like pickles. It's okay.
50:04 Speaker 02 Well, that's recent because last week you tried to feed me a pickle mustard sandwich.
50:07 Josh Clark? It's just from yesterday. I really gave a lot of thought to it in the sauna.
50:12 Speaker 02 Okay, good.
50:13 Josh Clark? And yeah, I'm like, you just didn't like pickles.
50:16 Speaker 02 I wonder what you were thinking about that day.
50:17 Josh Clark? That was it.
50:19 Speaker 02 All right.
50:19 Josh Clark? All right, who was that from?
50:22 Speaker 02 That was from Warner Finn in Los Angeles.
50:26 Josh Clark? Oh, I thought you were gonna say something else. Thanks a lot, Warner.
50:30 Speaker 02 I was, but I stopped myself. See how that happens.
50:32 Josh Clark? Were you gonna correct me or something?
50:34 Speaker 02 No, not at all. I'll tell you after.
50:35 Josh Clark? Okay. Thanks a lot, Warner. That was a really great email. It reminds me of the kind of questions we get at the Q and A we do at our live shows, which we have coming up. I think we're probably in the middle of them right now when this comes out.
50:47 Speaker 02 That's right.
50:47 Josh Clark? But we're gonna be other places too, so you can find out where we're gonna be by going to stuffyoushouldknow.com and clicking on the on tour button. And in the meantime, if you want to send us an email like Warner did, you can send it to [email protected] .
51:06 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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