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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 7, Issue 362, 24 September 1863, Page 1

THE BALAKLAYA CHARGE. [From the Times, June 11th.] During tlie whole of Tuesday and the-! forenoon ofyesterday the Court of Queen’s Bench was engaged in arbitrating upon a! question of military honor. On the 25th! October, 1854, as all the world knows,! Lord Cardigan led the light Cavalry Bri-. gade in the famous charge of Balaklava.j He was believed at the time to have borne i himself like a hero, and on his return to ! this country he met with a hero’s frecep-l tion. The blame of that 'fatal blunder, | which cost us so many of our choicest; 'troops, lay between Lord Raglan atid | 'Lord Lucan, unless it could be shiftedj 'upon the deceased Captain Nolan, but noj one doubted that the man who headed the j attack was clear of it. By degrees unpleasant rumous began to circulate, and it was first whispered and then loudly as-: serted that Lord Cardgian was [no hero after all. These ugly reports were gathered up into a definite allegation of misconduct, if not of cowardice, on the Earl’s part, in a volume which appeared at the end of 1856. It was entitled “Letters from a Staff Officer in the Crimea,” and purported to be founded on information procured at head-quarters. When it became known that its author was the hon. Major Calthorpe, the nephew of Lord Raglan, it was eagerly read, and a second and third edition appeared respectively in j 1857 and 1858. Among other passages j reflecting on Lord Cai'digan, the first edition contained a positive statement jthat at the most critical juncture of this .charge he was not to be found, having retired between the advancing lines of the |4th Light Dragoons and Bfch Hussars. jThe statement was so worded as to imply Jthat he never reached the Russian batteries at all ; but* this awkward circumstance was explained by the fact that his horse having taken fright, swerved round, and galloped off. Lord Cardigan, however justly appreciating the material difference between riding back before the danger had been confronted and riding back when a general retreat had become.inevitable, and seeing that a fallacy of time upon this vital point might involve his reputation for personal courage, insisted on the passage being altered. It was filtered in the two following editions, for a notice was prefixed to the one and a note appended to the other attributing his Lordship’s retrograde movement to some cause which was not specified, but which was pointedly declared to be other than the restiveness of his horse. Beyond this retraction Colonel Calthorpe positively refused to go and reiterated the assertion that Lord Cardigan was retreating while the brigade xiAler hisoi’ders was still advancing. This wls the libel in respect of which a rule nisi fora criminal information was granted last term, and discharged yesterday though without costs.

Before we allude to any other aspects of this enquiry, itjis due to Lord Cardigan, who has thus been subjected for years to Ja vague imputation of cowardice, that we should draw attention to its main result. It is now placed beyond dispute, by the testimony of many eye-witnesses and the admission of his most presistent detractor that he did charge at the head of his troops up to the Russian battery, and beyond the battery. When credible persons declared on oath that they saw him in the rear of the guns, defending himself against the Cossacks, and that they themselves went to the rescue, the doubt if any existed was at an end. Against such evidence the statement of one man that he saw Lord Cardigan’s horse swerve and apparently turn round, or of another thathe observed him afterwards riding the wrong way, is simply worthless. The whole affair lasted less than twenty minutes, and the duration of many incidents in it must have been measvu*ed by seconds! Whether the horse swerved or not, and [ whether Lord Cardigan was first or last! in the sauve quipcut which alone saved the brigade from utter destruction, was not the question raised by Colonel Caltliorpe. The question was whether lie|ever got up to the Russian batteries and shared in the desperate fighting behind them, or turned his back to the enemy before executing the duty assigned to him. In deciding this question with so much confidence, Colonel Calthorpe seemslto have forgotten that what A has seen cannot be disproved or even shaken, by the fact that B, C, and D, did not see it. He is now obliged to admit, through his counsel, that his negative data have misled him, that his informants have been |in error, and that Lord Cardigan did remain till the batteries were passed, in the post of danger which he had represented him to have quitted through cowardice. Driven from his ground, the Staff Officer now takes his stand upon another, which may or may not be tenable, but to which the Court declined, and the public will certainly not cai’e, to follow him. He now urges that if Lord Cardigan was foremost in the attack instead |of flinching under fire, at all he did not rally his shattered squadrons or play the part of a General in bringing up the retreat. This is an entirely new issue, for though in the original libel Lord Cardigan was said to have been absent when he was most wanted, the context clearly pointed to a time