Crimea Painting

[freddie]

The best piece of fictional propaganda ever written.
The cannons to the left had been captured by the Chasseurs d'afrique, the cannons to the right were the captured Turkish guns and hardly fired at all.

The man who wrote this based it upon an article written by a correspondant who turned up just in time to see the last stragglers return from the charge which actually suceeded with relatively few casualties. The brigade took the guns that they charged spiking many of them and drove off the Russian cavalry behind said guns. The casualty figures were less than half what the infantry lost at any of the other battles.

Unfortunately everyones view is based upon a poem written 3 days after the event, based upon reports by two men (William Howard Russell and Lord Raglan) who both failed to see what happened.

Acording to the book 'The Charge' by Mark Adkin and published in 2000 'The charge lasted seven minutes; of 673 officers and men who went into action, 247 were lost, as were 497 horses.' Many of the wounded later died at Scutari hospital, including the trumpeter who sounded 'The Charge'.

[Archangel]

More fun trivia: the captured cannons provide the metal for the Victoria Crosses. As more awards are given out, the cannon are taken back from their locations. Apparently, the two cannons in our Victoria Park (London, Ontario) are the next ones to be melted down.