Within a few minutes, those that remained of the first line were in among the Russian gunners at the end of the valley. Cardigan, whose horse flinched from the guns’ last salvo at close range, was said to be the first man through. ‘The flame, the smoke, the roar were in our faces,’ recalled Corporal Thomas Morley of the 17th Lancers, who compared it to ‘riding into the mouth of a volcano’. Cutting down the gunners with their swords, the Light Brigade charged on with their sabres drawn to attack the Cossacks, who were ordered forward by Ryzhov to protect the guns, which some of the attackers were attempting to wheel away. Without time to form themselves before they were attacked, the Cossacks were ‘thrown into a panic by the disciplined order of the mass of cavalry bearing down on them’, recalled a Russian officer. They turned sharply to escape and, seeing that their way was blocked by the hussar regiments, began to fire their muskets point-blank at their own comrades, who fell back in panic, turned and charged into the other regiments behind. The whole of the Russian cavalry began a stampede towards Chorgun, some dragging the mounted guns behind them, while the advance riders of the Light Brigade, outnumbered five to one, pursued them all the way to the Chernaia river.
The panic flight of the Russian cavalry was watched from the heights above the river by Stepan Kozhukov, a junior artillery officer, who described the cavalry amassing in the area around the bridge, where the Ukrainsky Regiment and Kozhukov’s battery on the hill had been ordered to block off their retreat:
Here they were stampeding and all the time the confusion was getting worse. In a small space at the entrance of the Chorgun Ravine, where the dressing station was, were four hussar and Cossack regiments all crammed together, and inside this mass, in isolated spots, one could make out the red tunics of the English, probably no less surprised than ourselves how unexpectedly this had happened … . The enemy soon came to the conclusion that they had nothing to fear from the panicstricken hussars and Cossacks and, tired of slashing, decided to return the way they had come through another cannonade of artillery and rifle fire. It is difficult, if not impossible, to do justice to the feat of these mad cavalry. Having lost at least a quarter of their number during the attack, and being apparently impervious to new dangers and losses, they quickly re-formed their squadrons to return over the same ground littered with their dead and dying. With desperate courage these valiant lunatics set off again, and not one of the living, even the wounded, surrendered. It took a long time for the hussars and Cossacks to collect themselves. They were convinced that the entire enemy cavalry were pursing them, and angrily did not want to believe that they had been crushed by a relatively insignificant handful of daredevils.
The Cossacks were the first to come to their senses, but they would not return to the battlefield. Instead they ‘set themselves to new tasks in hand – taking prisoners, killing the wounded as they lay on the ground, and rounding up the English horses to offer them for sale’.30
As the Light Brigade rode back through the corridor of fire in the North Valley, Liprandi ordered the Polish Lancers on the Causeway Heights to cut off their retreat. But the Lancers had little stomach for a fight with the courageous Light Brigade, which they had just seen charge through the Russian guns and disperse the Cossacks in a panic flight, and the few attacks they made were against small groups of wounded men. Larger groups they left alone. When the retreating column of the 8th Hussars and 4th Regiment of Light Dragoons neared the Lancers, recalled Lord George Paget, the commander of the Light Dragoons, who had rallied them together before the retreat, ‘down [the Lancers] came upon us at a sort of trot’.
Then the Lancers stopped (‘halted’ is hardly the word) and evinced that same air of bewilderment (I know of no other word) that I had twice before remarked on this day. A few of the men on the right flank of their leading squadrons … came into momentary collision with the right flank of our fellows, but beyond this they did nothing, and actually allowed us to shuffle, to edge away, by them, at a distance of hardly a horse’s length. Well, we got by them without, I believe, the loss of a single man. How, I know not! It is a mystery to me! Had that force been composed of English
In fact, the English ladies were on the Sapoune Heights with all the other spectators who watched the remnants of the Light Brigade stagger back in ones and twos, many of them wounded, from the charge. Among them was Fanny Duberly, who not only watched the scene in horror but later on that afternoon rode out with her husband to get a closer look at the carnage on the battlefield:
