Book Review: The Reason Why (1953, Cecil Woodham-Smith)

The historian and her work.

Note: An early version of this article originally appeared on Amazon.com. My reason for posting this here will become apparent, if a) you noted my recent hints about researching a larger, in-depth article; b) you know the book's connection with a certain movie.

Cecil Woodham-Smith (1896-1977) was born of an Irish family in Wales. Marrying a London solicitor, Woodham-Smith busied herself raising children and writing potboiler novels, before becoming an historian. After finishing an acclaimed biography of Florence Nightingale (1950), she remained fascinated with the Crimean War, especially the Charge of the Light Brigade. Several years of further research resulted in The Reason Why (1953). An instant critical and popular success, the book's rarely been out of print in the past 60 years. Today it remains the most decisive influence on the public's perception of the Crimean War.

The Reason Why recounts the Light Brigade's fate at Balaclava (October 25th, 1854) with unparalleled style. Not a truly objective history, Woodham-Smith's book is an eloquent, sweeping condemnation of the Victorian class system. Using two officers - Lords Cardigan and Lucan - as a prism on British society, she shows the combination of arrogance, bad judgment and miscommunication that led to the sacrifice of the "Noble 600."

James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan proves singularly representative of aristocratic shortcomings. The only son in a family of daughters, he grew spoiled by parental dotage, generating an egotism mixed with dreams of military glory. By adulthood Cardigan was an almost caricature nobleman: handsome and gallant, but arrogant, snobbish and short-tempered. Woodham-Smith's claim that Cardigan's "glorious golden head had nothing in it" (15) is unfair; biographer Saul David shows that Cardigan was both intelligent and a good student. Her general assessment of Cardigan's character, however, feels more accurate (p. 40-41):

Lord Cardigan.

"He was genuinely surprised to encounter opposition. His nature had a curious simplicity, so that, but for his violence, he would have been childlike and naive. He was completely absorbed in one object, himself.  It was not... that he deliberately disregarded other men's opinions and feelings - they simply did not exist for him. Like a child playing in a corner of a nursery with his toys, he was wholly absorbed in himself, the rest of the world was an irrelevance." 

Commanding first the 15th, and later the 11th Hussars, Cardigan proved harshly exacting. His stringent standards made the 11th Hussars England's premiere cavalry regiment, but they also engendered the loathing of his officers and men. He certainly kept England's press abuzz with sundry scandals. Minor breaches of etiquette sent him into apoplexy: he scandalized the Army by blackballing John Reynolds, a young captain who dared serve Moselle at a champagne dinner (the famous "black bottle" affair), and flogging a soldier on Easter Sunday. Cardigan himself violated societal mores repeatedly: among other incidents, he shot a subordinate in a duel and eloped with Fanny Paget, sister-in-law of a fellow cavalryman. He was booed at public gatherings, becoming a perennial headache for his superiors. An exasperated Duke of Wellington proclaimed "he had never known the time of the staff... to be taken up in so useless a manner" (100).

Profiled in parallel is George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan. Lucan bested Cardigan in sheer bloody-minded nastiness. He gained infamy for cruelly managing his Mayo estates during the Irish potato famine. Consolidating land holdings and evicting tenants en mass, he caused untold suffering among his subjects and intense hatred: "it is doubtful if he considered the Irish as human beings at all" (113). Like Cardigan, he was also a martinet of the worst sort, a brutal taskmaster "perpetually entangled in trifles" (33) in commanding his troops and often contemptuous of superiors. Lucan found increasingly petty and bizarre ways of exerting authority: at one point, he ordered his cavalry drilled in antiquated Napoleonic tactics against Lord Raglan's express orders.

Lord Lucan.

Not surprisingly, these two men loathed each other. Lucan married Cardigan's sister and by all accounts mistreated her, igniting a deeply-felt vendetta. Naturally, when the Crimean War broke out Cardigan (heading the Light Brigade) found himself serving under division commander Lucan. Commanding general Lord Raglan exacerbated things by separating Cardigan from Lucan's main body, thus undermining Lucan's authority. Even in the field, the two men never missed an opportunity to spite or undermine each other, with disastrous results.

Woodham-Smith forcefully attacks the British military that spawned them. The purchase system, by which officers could literally buy a higher rank, had its benefits. It forestalled the establishment of a powerful, Prussian-style military class, and forced officers to take personal responsibility for their regiment's upkeep. In practice however, it populated the Army with dilettantes and adventurers, seeing military service as a stepping stone to easy prestige. Nominally officers could advance by merit; in practice men without experience or qualification leapfrogged over seasoned career soldiers. Lord Palmerston proclaimed that "it was very desirable to connect the higher classes of Society with the Army" (30), whether or not they were fit to lead.

The lack of a major war since 1815 ensured an antiquated senior staff. Commanding the Allied armies was Fitzroy Somerset, Baron Raglan. Wellington's longtime secretary, Raglan's bravery (he had lost an arm at Waterloo), amiability and organizational skills were unquestioned. His greatest achievement was ensuring smooth relations with his French and Turkish allies. Yet Raglan had never led troops in the field, and proved a spectacularly inept tactician. "Without the military trappings... one would never have guessed him to be a soldier," Woodham-Smith says (161). He proved frustratingly absent-minded, constantly confusing his French allies with the Russian enemy. An exasperated junior officer complained that "everything [is] old at the top. This makes everything sluggish."

Lord Raglan.

The Crimean disaster becomes tragically predictable. Horses crowded into transport ships die en route to the Crimea. Raglan botches the Allied attack at the Alma, forcing British troops to take and retake the same ground repeatedly. Over-caution prevents a complete victory when Raglan refuses Lucan's request to launch a follow-up attack. Raglan ill-advisedly shifts his supply base to Balaclava, a tiny village ill-suited for supplying two massive armies. Finally, administrative muddle ensures inadequate supplies and medical treatment, causing thousands of troops to die of disease and exposure.

In fairness, most officers shared their men's misfortunes. Both Raglan and his French counterpart Marshall St. Arnaud ultimately succumbed to dysentery. Lucan was wounded at Balaclava and even his detractors granted him personal bravery. Cardigan however spent evenings on his yacht in Calamita Bay, entertaining civilian friends and distancing himself from his brigade's hardships. Lest this seem unduly extravagant, military buffs may remember American General George McClellan lunching while the Battle of Malvern Hill raged, Boer War commander Charles Warren stopping his division's advance for a bath, or Charles Townshend dining on plum duff at Kut while his troops starved. This mixture of sang froid and self-indulgence seems unfortunately prevalent in military history.

Woodham-Smith hits her rhetorical stride with Balaclava. She recounts the stirring stand of Colin Campbell's "Thin Red Line," and the gallant Charge of the Heavy Brigade, where 300 cavalrymen under James Scarlett defeated 2,000 Cossacks in a wild uphill charge. Woodham-Smith captures the excitement and fleeting glory of these skirmishes. Against all odds, the British seemed poised to win a spectacular victory. Yet Cardigan stood by, using a discretionary order from Lucan as an excuse not to attack the routed Russians. Had Cardigan followed up on Scarlett's success, the third phase of the battle might never have occurred.

Instead, a classic example of mismanagement follows. Raglan dictates an unclear order to quartermaster Richard Airey, instructing Lucan to attack Russian troops taking capture guns away from the Causeway Heights. Captain Louis Nolan, Raglan's impulsive aide, delivers the message to an agitated Lucan, emphatically pointing at the nearest guns. Neither man recognizes Nolan's fatal mistake: that Lucan cannot see the Heights from his position. Nolan instead gestures towards a mass of Russians supported by artillery in the valley ahead. Stung by accusations of "looking on" in earlier engagements, Lucan does not ask Nolan to clarify his order, and Cardigan protests halfheartedly. Before anyone realizes it, the Light Brigade initiates its fateful charge (p. 242):

"And now the watchers on the heights saw that the lines of horsemen, like toys down on the plain, were expanding and contracting with strange mechanical precision. Death was coming fast, and the Light Brigade was meeting death in perfect order; as a man or horse dropped, the riders on each side of him opened out; as soon as they had ridden clear the ranks closed again. Orderly, as if on parade ground, the Light Brigade rode on, but its numbers grew every moment smaller and smaller as they moved down the valley... It was at this moment that Bosquet, the French General, observed 'C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre'."

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Doughty. (source)

Historians still dissect the Charge in hope of assigning blame, following the footsteps of Cardigan and Lucan's vicious press feud. Woodham-Smith dodges the issue of individual guilt, viewing Balaclava instead as the logical conclusion of an entire system. For all their gallantry, the British cavalry could not achieve the impossible, and find themselves decimated by well-placed cannon and overwhelming numbers. With so many egotists and incompetents staffing the Army, the Light Brigade's fate seems inevitable. If the British Army was reformed after Crimea, it came at great cost and only grudgingly. The purchase system was not abolished until the Cardwell reforms of 1868-1874, largely at the impetus of Crimean veteran Garnet Wolseley.

If The Reason Why isn't definitive, it's because of its limited portrayal of the Crimea (the book mostly ends at Balaclava), occasional niggling errors (eg., claiming Captain Nolan was half-Italian) and its editorial tone. More recent works (Terry Brighton's Hell Riders, Saul David's The Homicidal Earl) eschew Woodham-Smith's polemical approach for more balanced analysis. Still, Woodham-Smith's passionate anger and vivid prose make it the most readable account of the Light Brigade's sorry fate, and a classic account of military incompetence.