"If the exhibition of the most brilliant valor, of the excess of courage, and of a daring which would have reflected luster on the best days of chivalry can afford full consolation for the disaster of today - we can have no reason to regret the melancholy loss which we sustained in a contest with a savage and barbarian enemy.
"At 11:10, our Light Cavalry Brigade rushed to the front. They numbered 607 sabers (actually 673) as well as I could ascertain.
"They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendor of war. We could hardly believe the evidence of our senses! Surely that handful of men were not going to charge an army in position?
"Alas! It was but too true. Their desperate valor knew no bounds. Far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part - discretion.
"They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death.
"At the distance of 1,200 yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from 30 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 rider-less across the plain.
"The first line was broken. It was joined by the second. They never halted or checked their speed an instant.
"With diminished ranks, thinned by those 30 guns which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flashing steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a noble fellow's death cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries.
"Ere they were lost from the view, the plain was strewed with their bodies and with the carcasses of horses. Demigods could not have done what they had failed to do.
"At 11:35, not a British solder - except the dead and dying -- was left in front of these bloody Muscovite guns."
