The Charge of the Light Brigade happened in the Crimean War (1853 to 1856). Great Britain, France, and Turkey were allied against Russia, which was aggressively trying to make inroads on the decaying remnants of the Ottoman Empire.
On the day of the battle, the Allied commanders were on top of a hill 600 feet above the battlefield. From their vantage point, they could see that the Russians had captured a Turkish gun position and were trying to make off with the cannons. They sent a messenger down to the battlefield to tell the Light Brigade to move in and stop them. From their position on the field, the Light Brigade couldn’t see the Turkish gun position. The messenger wasn’t much help. He just waved his arm in the general direction of the battlefield and said, “That way.” The Light Brigade looked across the field, saw sunlight glinting off of metal, and thought that was their intended target. Instead of attacking the Turkish gun position, which they could easily have taken, they charged straight into the heaviest concentration of Russian artillery.
They got slaughtered. 673 men made the charge. Less than 200 of them returned. They did briefly overrun the Russian artillery, but the Russians immediately counterattacked and forced a retreat. From the top of the hill the Allied commanders could only watch with the sick feeling of someone seeing a disaster unfold, and were powerless to stop.
