54mm scale resin kit. Sculpted by Eduard Pérez. Boxart by Jaume Ortiz. Kit includes: 9 kit parts.

“Half a league, half a league, 
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.“

The Charge of the Light Brigade. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Battle of Balaclava, an important combat action that happened in 1854, during the Crimean War, is one of those epic moments in British military history that has inspired countless remembrances and also a few controversies.

That day, the episode known in a popular way as “The Thin Red Line”, where a firing line of the 93rd Highlanders successfully repelled a Russian cavalry charge, would have already been the highlight of the battle, if it wasn’t for the disastrously failed charge led by the British Cavalry Light Brigade, composed of the 8th and 11th Hussars, the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons and the 17th Lancers.

The Light Brigade was supposed to capture certain gun battery to prevent the Russians taking it away but, due to a mistake in the communications of the orders, it was sent in a frontal assault
towards a different gun battery, which was properly manned and ready to defend the position. The 600 members of the Brigade rode through a narrow valley towards the Russian positions, sustaining really heavy casualties due to the direct fire of the enemy. They managed to reach the battery but were forced to retreat immediately, most of their men dismounted and wounded.

Until today, there is a lot of discussion about who was really responsible for the communications problem that caused the charge. Most of the blame falls in Captain Morris, who was the officer who actually transmitted the order to Lord Lucan. He was the first casualty of the charge when a Russian shell exploded directly in front of his mount.

Our miniature depicts a dismounted trooper of the 17th Lancers, fighting fiercely for the control of the Russian position.

Text Courtesy of FeR Miniatures