The Charge of the Light Brigade

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1:09Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:57Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, just cracking us up. And this is Stuff You Should Know. That's right. Kind of a rare, detailed war battle episode. Yeah, we don't do a lot of war stuff. Yeah. A little bit here and there. A little here or there, yeah. But usually it's like some crazy commando story. Like, you know, and usually where the Nazis are getting beat up because we love that narrative. Yeah. We usually don't like say, hey, let's let's dive into some specific battles of the Crimean War. Right. But for all of you fans of the Crimean War who didn't look at the title, you're like, oh, I know what this one's about.

2:38Of course, it's about the charge of the Light Brigade. And if you were an English student, sorry, an English student, and you studied poetry, you're probably familiar with the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I think you're supposed to say the comma out loud from what I understand. Yeah, like the colon. But that was a real deal. That really happened. And it's a really complicated, complex story that's also extremely fascinating and totally nuts at the end. Yeah. So I guess we should probably set up a little bit about just what the Crimean War was. Yeah. Yeah. So the Crimean War was over the course of a few years from 1853 to 56.

3:24It was in Europe, fought between Russia and Britain, France and Turkey, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was, that is. And it was known for a lot of things. There were some, you know, interesting people that came out of this, ended up being super famous and some a lot of lives lost. But notably, most of the half a million lives lost, like maybe as many as 75 percent died from disease and things like that instead of on the battlefield. Yeah, which is terrible. That was a reason that two now famous women showed up to help. One was Florence Nightingale, who's very well known as the lady with the lamp.

4:06She showed up and started using like evidence based treatments. And apparently the mortality rate at these horrible field hospitals went from 41 percent when she showed up down to 2 percent at the end of the war. It's pretty impressive. And then there's a less well-known woman named Mary Seacole who was born in Jamaica. She was mixed race. And she appealed to be sent to the Crimean front like Florence Nightingale was, was turned down. So she went herself and showed up and made huge gains in saving lives there as well. Yeah, and it was the first big war covered by the press. Notably, Tolstoy got his start there, you know, writing about the, you know, dispatches from the front, basically.

4:53Right. It's also, weirdly, where the balak lava comes from that, you know, what we in America might call a ski mask. Or a scary mask. Or a scary mask or a cat burglar mask. It comes from here. So lots of sort of little weird things. And obviously, like you mentioned, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the very famous poem. But the whole thing started over a religious argument, basically, in the Ottoman Empire, wherein for several years, the French Catholics were battling it out with the Russian Orthodox Church over who controlled the holy sites, the Christian holy sites within the Ottoman Empire, which really ticked off Tsar Nicholas I.

5:36Yeah. Yeah. So he also, we should say the Ottoman Empire was very powerful for a while, but we're joining them at the twilight, maybe even the end of their empire, which I think broke up in World War I. And this is about 60 years before that. So the Ottoman Empire was not in a very good position to defend itself against Tsar Nicholas I, who's like, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to invade part of your Ottoman Empire. and I'm going to invade what's in modern day Romania, Moldavia and Wallachia, which is where Dracula is from. And he invaded, and again, the Ottoman Empire, I think they were known as the sick man of Europe.

6:15There was not a lot they can do about it. So France and Britain came to their aid and not for any necessarily altruistic reason, but because they were not happy with the idea of Russian expanding itself into Europe And in particular, getting a foothold in the Mediterranean. And when they set up shop in Wallachia and Moldavia, they were on the Danube, which would take them straight to the Mediterranean. So France and Britain became concerned and they're like, we'll back you up, Ottoman Empire. Yeah, it's boy, the more things change, the more they say the same. Yeah, it's true, man. it's crazy when you see this stuff that happened back in the 1850s and uh you can draw sort of a straight line to things that happened today in russian expansion it's just it's really interesting stuff yeah uh but um all that to say is that what is now like you said modern day romania he now occupied uh france and britain got their hackles up they sent warships to the black sea in 1853, declared war on Russia in 1854.

7:20And the first big, you know, this could have ended at all. The first big major defeat against that English and French alliance was at Odessa there in the Black Sea. And Tsar Nicholas withdrew basically that land he had occupied. He pulled back out in July of 1854. And that could have been the end of it. But the Frenchies and the Brits said, you know what? Now we want to punish them for their aggression. So we're going to go on the offensive. And that turned out to be a bit of a boondoggle. It did. Nations do that kind of thing, though, when especially when they soundly defeat an expansionist nation, they they often want to make an example of be like, don't try that again.

8:03This is not like completely out of left field. But yeah, the way it turned out was not great. And they chose to invade Russia by landing on the Crimean Peninsula. And they chose Crimea for a couple of reasons. One, it's where Russia's naval ships were stationed that they would use to take over the Mediterranean if they could get a foothold there. And then two, they couldn't make it to mainland Russia because Germany was neutral at the time. They were the Austro-Prussian, I guess, kingdom. They were like, you can't send your troops through here to get to Russia. They're like, OK, we'll go attack Crimea.

8:41And then there was one other thing about Crimea, Chuck. It offered a way to attack navally, which is what the Brits favored. And it also offered at the same time a way to attack on land, which is what the French preferred. And so. Surf and turf. Exactly. It was the surf and turf strategy. And yeah, the Crimean Peninsula served all of those purposes. Yeah, which was mainland Ukraine, by the way. So I guess the first battle, or not the first battle, I guess this would be the second battle we're talking about. And the one that really sets up the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade is the siege of, you know, in California, there's a town called Sebastopol with a B.

9:23Yeah, my aunt lives there. In Sebastopol? Mm-hmm. It's quite nice. It is. Lovely, wooded Northern California. Yes. I've been there myself. Okay. But this is with a V, and I don't know if it's probably not pronounced Sevastopol. It's probably Sevastopol would be my guess. Oh, you know what? I've never heard anybody say it like that, but I'll bet you're right. I'll bet a bunch of Ukrainians just stood up and went, yeah. I wonder if there's any connection there, too. I was going to look that up. Surely. That'd be one heck of a coincidence. I agree. Somebody just put a bunch of letters together, and they're like, Sevastopol.

10:00Also, the name of a good solo album by Jay Farrar of Uncle Tupelo and Sunvolt is Sebastopol. Nice. With a B or a V? With a B. Okay. Wait, did you say B or V? Because they rhyme. B as in boy do we need to get back to the topic at hand. V as in boy?

10:21All right. It's September 1854. We've got a little over 60 ,000 troops total from this alliance, 30 ,000 from the French, about 26 ,000 British troops and about 4 ,500 Turks. They land on the coast of Crimea and start to hike inland for the turf section, 30 miles in. And that port city of Sevastopol is where they're headed. Yeah. So I think that's where the Russians had that navy that they would invade the Mediterranean with. And the Russian commander was a guy named Prince Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov. Great name. Russians have great names. Right. There was, I think, an initial skirmish after they landed at Kalameda Bay, but it didn't really count as the first battle.

11:12The first battle was the Battle of the Alma River. And that's where Menshikov decided, like, OK, this is where we're going to start to take on this alliance force. And it was a pretty serious battle. I think both sides lost many thousands of men. But the Brits and the French were not turned back. The Russians retreated instead. That's right. And this is when a really interesting decision comes about. They were worried that there were more Russian armies coming in to that port city to help defend their navy, I guess. And so they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. we're going to do the old hook and ladder and we're going to take a wide path around the city so we can attack from the south.

11:55What they didn't know was that at that time it was very poorly defended there. So if they would have, if they would have just kept charging forward, it probably would have been over pretty quickly. But since they took the long way around, which they thought was a decent strategy that gave the Russians the chance to re-fortify basically and stock up with men and supplies. Yeah. And they couldn't have known that the city wasn't very well defended, but everybody had fled. And apparently they sunk a bunch of ships in the harbor to keep the British Navy from being able to land there. Yeah. But isn't part of war trying to know that stuff?

12:32Yes. And ironically, you would use the light brigade for that kind of stuff to scout and spy and report back. Okay. So when you said they couldn't have known, what you really meant was they didn't know because they didn't do it good. That's yes. Okay. You're right. So for the siege of Sevastopol, not just the Russians set up and refortified the city, the British basically regrouped and they settled at a port town called Balaclava. And it's about 10 miles south of sevastopol and like you said that's where the headgear comes from or the name of it because it actually doesn't just come from that town it comes from this actual battle that happened there so there's a road between balaclava and sevastopol and they are um because they're connected both sides need that for supplies right yeah so it's a really strategically important road and before the Brits could try to take the road or secure it, the Russians decided to.

13:38And they made a really risky move. They took some of their troops who were battling, because by this time the Brits and the French were now laying siege to Sevastopol and the Russians were fighting them off. And the Russians took some of their troops and moved them around the siegers and put them squarely between the alliance forces sieging Sevastopol and the alliance forces at Balaclava on the road to try to take the road. It was a risky move, but it was also what they had to do to kind of cut the Brits off, the sieging Brits off from supplies 10 miles south at Balaclava. That's right. So they attack these artillery positions of the allies on the hills outside of Balaclava.

14:25It turned into a pretty chaotic battle scene there. and the Russians did pretty good at first. They had a lot of cavalry. They had a pretty substantial infantry there and they captured these gun positions, these Turkish and British gun positions on that hilltop. And this is a place called Causeway Heights. They tried next to take another town called Katakoy and that was basically the last stop before you got to Balaklava. But this is where the Scots come in, the legendary 93rd Sutherland Highlanders wearing kilts with swords and rifles. And no underwear. Yeah. I mean, that's the most intimidating part of all of this.

15:11They were led by Major General Sir Colin Campbell, and he had a pretty good idea to defeat these guys, and it worked. Yeah. Normally, the Highlanders would form a square of four rows, right? And you're able to defend your flank a lot easier. There's less men exposed. Instead, Campbell said, we're going to form two lines. And they were like, this is mind blowing. So there were more men exposed, but they were able to shoot further across. Right. Yeah. Just more bullets, basically. Yeah, exactly. And it turned out that the Highlanders were successful in attacking the Russian cavalry. I'm sorry, the Highlanders were standing the ground to defend Katakoy.

15:52And it was the Russian cavalry that was rushing at them. The Highlanders fired on them. There was a volley of musket or bullets, I guess. And the Russians were like, oh, no. And they turned left. And when they turned left, they exposed their flank. And the Highlanders fired again and really just messed the Russian cavalry up and just caused disarray. And they had to retreat. So it was a really good stand. So much so that, like, these guys, like you said, they're legendary now, in part because of this battle. And I guess I should probably say, I think I'm, am I saying cavalry? Calvary? I think you're probably accidentally saying cavalry, which I do all the time too.

16:32But that's where Jesus was crucified, right? Right. So cavalry is the horseback troops. They should really have named those things two completely different sounding words. Yes, exactly. It's very confusing. And the only reason I even know is because there's a lot of old hymns, church hymns that I sang that you sing about Calvary. Oh, yeah, I know all about that. Yeah. Did you sing hymns? Not about Calvary. The Catholics don't pay attention to that for some reason. No, I just didn't know how much Catholics sang in church. Oh, dude. I don't even know if you can call it singing unless it's kind of like a reformist 70s hippie church.

17:14It's chanting. Okay. And it scares the bejesus out of non-Catholics who, like, go with a friend to a Catholic mass. It freaks people out. I got you. Because in Baptist churches, it was just the big bombastic sort of, you know, hymnal songs. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Maybe more fun, but I don't know. Than chanting? Yeah. But I never chanted. Well, you should try it sometime. All right. I'll give it a shot. Where do we leave? The Scots, the Highlanders won. And did you did you say that that's where we got the term, the thin red line? No, no, I didn't mention that. Yeah. So, you know, we talked about this being one of the first major wars where there was journalism going on.

17:59And there was a guy named William Howard Russell. Was he Irish, I think? Yeah, he was an Irish correspondent. Yeah, so he was writing from the front lines and in the Times, he described the line of men that, you know, those two lines of men in their brick red coats as the thin, a thin red streak tipped with steel. And that eventually morphed into the thin red line, which is another weird sort of thing that came out of this war. Yeah. And another really hardcore war movie, too. Good one. Or no, I'm thinking of Big Red One. No, no, no. The thin red line was Terrence Malick. They're both war movies.

18:35Okay, but I was thinking of the, is it Big Red One? Yeah, that was good too. Mark Hamill and the guy from Revenge of the Nerds. Yeah, I think Mark Hamill gets his testicles blown off by a grenade. Somebody does. I think I said before that was the first R-rated movie I saw in a theater. And yeah, was it Mark Hamill's testicles? I believe it was, but I could just be making that part up. I got you. Hey, so one more thing before we go to break, because I can sense that coming on. This is the first war, as far as I know, where some soldiers' wives traveled with them to the front and basically set up a household there.

19:16It was a very bizarre setup, and they were very unhappy there because it was not a fun place to be. But they were there to support their husbands. A lot of them were. Wow. Man, Crimean War. Who knew? Yeah. All right. Well, we'll be right back, right? Yes. All right.

19:48New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week, we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

20:21Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.

21:04He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.

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22:20Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles.

22:30All right. So I feel like we've kind of been dancing around this whole light brigade thing. And for a long time, until I started researching this for this episode, I just assumed light as in like a bright light or something like that. Oh, interesting. OK. It makes way more sense now that what you're talking about is a light brigade. Right. Like weight wise, sort of. Yeah, rather than as opposed to a heavy brigade, both of which are part of the cavalry that the Brits and the French used at the time. Yeah. And when I said weight wise, I meant, you know, lighter horses, faster horses, presumably lighter men on those horses.

23:13I imagine it was just a bunch of people that were fleet of foot and horses that were fleet of hoof. Their job, if you were a light brigade, was to ride very quickly across the battlefield, to move places with great speed, sometimes to deliver battle orders with great speed. The heavy brigade is exactly what you would think. Bigger horses, bigger men, close combat, breaking through enemy lines, kind of kicking butt and taking names. Yeah, and so like when the heavy brigade broke up, the enemy line is like the enemy was retreating. you'd send in the light brigade who would chase the enemy down and slash them with their swords and stuff, right?

23:50Yeah. They probably had better hair in the light brigade. They probably did. You know, like the handsome, like, all right, now all the rough stuff's done. Get us in here on our little fleet horses. With their Habsburg chins. Oh, totally. So there was, in addition to the charge of the light brigade at this, so we're at the Battle of Balaclava still. This is where all of this happens, right? Remember that the Highlanders already turned back the Russian cavalry once. Now the heavy brigade is actually sent in. Their charge of the heavy brigade came before the charge of the light brigade. And I think it was pretty effective when they hit up the Russians.

24:34I think there were 800 horsemen in the heavy brigade running into 3 ,000 Russians in the Russian line. yeah but it's the heavy brigade so they did a lot of damage uh the russian uh cavalry now it's in my head uh they kind of scrambled to get out of there and here's where we get to a point where there's a sort of a fateful confusing order that brings us to the actual light brigade story uh and we're going to introduce some some people here uh none of whom seem to be very competent yeah at warring So basically people like you and I would have been. Yeah. Imagine if we were rich and said, I want to be a lieutenant.

25:18I'm going to pay to be a lieutenant in the army and command soldiers. That's it. That was a thing. That's exactly what these men had done. With the exception of Lord Raglan, he had battle experience. He had fought Napoleon at Waterloo. He lost an arm in that battle. So he was a war hero. But he was 25 when that happened. And by this time he was 65. Yeah. A little dotty, maybe. He apparently, remember, there was a French-English alliance that was battling the Russians. But when he would refer to the French, say strategically, they were talking about what the French were doing, he referred to them as the enemy.

25:58That was very confusing. And this battle, the Battle of Balaclava, was the first time that he had ever led, like, commanded men in battle. Yeah. Up to that point, he'd been subordinate. this was the first time he was the one calling the shots for the battle. So he had the most experience and this was the first time he was doing that. Yeah, for sure. So he gets up on this high, about a 600 foot high ridge. So he's got a great view of the battlefield. The guys down there don't have any kind of view at all. So the orders are going to be getting maybe a little bit confusing because they can't really see what's going on like Raglan can.

26:38Uh, he's also pretty far away. So it takes 20 minutes to get, even with the light horse brigade or the light runner who we'll meet in a minute too, who hates everybody that's involved here, as it turns out, it takes him about 20 minutes to get there and deliver an order and, you know, presumably a little bit of time to sort of suss that out. And then another 20 minutes to come back. So it's probably like 40 minutes to an hour for this whole exchange of information to take place. And what Raglan is trying to do is trying to stop the enemy from taking away these heavy guns that they had captured at that Causeway Heights battle.