IV. degree in which he may have been qualified for that CHAP. very peculiar kind of duty must of course be a subject of conjecture rather than proof; but his composure under heavy fire was so perfect that, even in an army where prowess evinced in that way was exceedingly general, it did not escape observation. 'Yes, ' damn him, he's brave,' was the comment pronounced on Lord Lucan by one of his most steady haters. This is not the place for giving the general tenor of Lord Lucan's services as commander of our cavalry in the Crimea ;* but I have sought to prepare for my account of the action in the plain of Balaclava, by conveying beforehand some impression of the officer who there commanded our cavalry. Some such glance was the more to be desired because Lord Lucan's abilities were evidently of a higher order than those he found means to disclose by the part he took in the battle. It should be understood that Lord Lucan did not thrust himself into the command of our division of horse. All he had asked for was to have charge of a single infantry brigade. The English division of horse numbered two brigades, one of which comprised the Light Cavalry, the other our Heavy Dragoons. The Light Brigade, as we know, was commanded by the Earl of Cardigan. Lord Cardigan, when appointed to this command, Lord Cardigan. was about fifty-seven years old, and had never seen war service. From his early days he had eagerly The place for that will be the chapter in which I deal with the period of Lord Lucan's recall. CHAP. longed for the profession of arms, and although preIV. vented by his father's objections from entering the army at the usual period of life, he afterwards that is, at about twenty-seven years of age-was made a cornet in a cavalry regiment. He pursued his profession with diligence, absenting himself much from the House of Commons (of which he was at that time a member) for the purpose of doing orderly duty as a subaltern in the 8th Hussars. Aided partly by fortune, but partly by the favour of the Duke of York and the operation of the purchase system, he rose very quickly in the service, and at the end of about seven years from the period of his entering the army, he was a lieutenant-colonel. He had a passionate love for the service-a fair knowledge, it is believed, of so much cavalry business as is taught by practice in England-a strong sense of military duty-a burning desire for the fame. which awaits heroic actions-and, finally, the gift of high courage. Lord Cardigan's valour was not at all of the wild, heedless kind, but the result of strong determination. Even from his way of riding to hounds, it was visible, they say, that the boldness he evinced was that of a resolute man with a set purpose, and not a dare-devil impulse. He bore himself firmly in both the duels he fought; and upon the occasion which opposed him to an officer against whom he was bitterly angered, he shot his foe through the body.* His mind, although singularly barren, and wanting in dimensions, was not without force; and he had * Without, I think, killing him. IV. the valuable quality of persistency. He had been so CHAP. constituted by nature, or so formed by the watchful care which is sometimes bestowed upon an only son, as to have a habit of attending to the desires and the interests of self with a curious exactitude. The tendency, of course, was one which he shared with nearly all living creatures; and it was only from the extraordinary proportions in which the attribute existed, and from the absence of any attempt to mask the propensity, that it formed a distinctive peculiarity. When engaged in the task of self-assertion or self-advocacy, he adhered to his subject with the most curious rigour, never going the least bit astray from it, and separating from it all that concerned the rest of creation as matter altogether irrelevant and uninteresting. Others before him may have secretly concentrated upon self an equal amount of attention; but in Lord Cardigan there was such an entire absence of guile, that exactly as he was so he showed himself to the world. Of all false pretences contrived for the purpose of feigning an interest in others he was as innocent as a horse. Amongst his good qualities was love of order; but this with him was in such morbid excess, that it constituted a really dangerous foible, involving him from time to time in mischief. One of his quarrels was founded upon the colour of a bottle; another upon the size of a tea-cup. In each case the grievance was want of uniformity. To his formulated mind the distinction between lawful and right was imperceptible. A thousand times over it might be suggested to him that he ought not to have been sleep CHAP. ing on board his yacht-a yacht with a French cook IV. on board-when not only all the officers and men under him, but also his divisional chief, were cheerfully bearing the hardships and privations of camp life; but a thousand times over he would answer that he indulged himself thus with the permission of Lord Raglan; and the lawfulness of the practice being thus established, he never seemed to understand that there could remain any question of propriety, or taste, or right feeling. With attributes of this kind, he was plainly more fitted to obey than to command. Having no personal ascendancy, and no habitual consideration for the feelings of others, he was not, of course, at all qualified to exert easy rule over English gentlemen, and his idea of the way to command was to keep on commanding. There surely was cruelty in the idea of placing human beings under the military control of an officer at once so arbitrary and so narrow; but the notion of such a man having been able to purchase for himself a right to hold Englishmen in military subjection is, to my mind, revolting. Lord Cardigan incurred a series of quarrels, and was removed from the command of his regiment; but afterwards, by the special desire of the Duke of Wellington, he was restored to active service. There can hardly have been any well-founded expectation that Lord Cardigan would be able to go through a campaign without engaging in quarrels ; and never, surely, by action or speech, did he convince the dispensers of military authority that he was a IV. man who would be competent to meet the emergen-C HAP. cies of war with the resources of a fruitful mind. I imagine that the first active Bishop or Doctor of Divinity whom the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards might chance to have met on horseback would probably have been much more competent than Lord Cardigan (whose mind worked always in grooves) to discover and seize the right moment for undertaking a cavalry charge. Yet without the attributes of a commander, a man may be a resolute, faithful, heroic soldier; and that surely is the kind of glory-it is glory of no mean kind-which can best be claimed for Lord Cardigan. In despite of all the faults which he had manifested to the world when appointed to the command of the Light Brigade, there still remained good grounds for trusting that, as long as he should be acting in the performance of what he might clearly understand to be his duty, he would perform it with precision, with valour, and, if need be, with unsparing devotion. can and digan re conjoint ly. If between Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan there Lord Lucould be discovered any points of resemblance, these Lord Carwere not of such a kind as to be conducive to har- garded mony. They were, both of them, contentious; and whether from natural gifts, or from long habits of disputation, they had both of them powers of a kind which are commonly developed in lawyers, though not certainly in lawyers of the same quality. Lord Lucan was the able, the cogent, the strenuous, the daring advocate, whose opponents (especially if they happened to be in the right) were to be not VOL. IV. E |