Henchmen and Minions

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Films and Music, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods, Villains

Tags

A History of Scotland, Albrecht Duerer, Alexandre Dumas, Cardinal Richelieu, Droids, druid, Emperor Palpatine, Flying Monkeys, gangster, Henchmen, Mignon, Neil Oliver, Odysseus, Orcs, Robin Hood, Saint Columba, Saruman, Sauron, Sheriff of Nottingham, Telemachus, The Lord of the Rings, The Three Musketeers, The Wizard of Oz, Tolkien, Winkie Guards

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

A henchman was originally a hengestman, from hengest “horse/stallion” + man “man”—in other words, a groom, a servant who takes care of horses.

Although the word began with the meaning of “groom”, it has certainly changed over time and now it suggests something like “ thuggish follower”—like these gangster henchmen.

The word minion comes from the Old French word mignon, “a (little) darling”, but its meaning has also changed–even more than henchmen, now indicating a kind of low-level person who simply follows orders, which the peasants in this picture by Albrecht Duerer make us think of.

These words originally came to mind while we were watching the first episode of Neil Oliver’s excellent BBC series A History of Scotland. (Smart writing and wonderful photography.)

In the episode, a scene was reenacted, in which Saint Columba (521-597AD)

faces off against a Pictish druid.

(This is the closest we can come to an image of a druid. As far as we know, there are, in fact, no surviving images of the learned class of the Celtic world, just often very imaginative illustrations with little or no factual basis.)

In Adomnan’s (c.624-704AD) Life of Columba, Book II, Chapter XXXIV, Columba struggles to free a slave being held by the druid, Broichan.

The saint wins, of course, but what struck us about this story—and in this DVD depiction—was that it was a one-on-one contest: neither man called upon backup—something which one might especially expect from the antagonist of the story, as in so many. After all, we thought, just think of villains in all kinds of stories—

The Sheriff of Nottingham has his henchmen ready to try to capture Robin Hood at the famous archery contest.

Or, if you prefer—

The evil Cardinal Richelieu

has his guards

to fight the musketeers

in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.

The Wicked Witch of the West

has two sets of henchmen: the flying monkeys

which have been the terror of many childhoods, in our experience, and the Winkie Guards,

whose drum beat and deep chant always made us a little nervous when we were little (not to mention their skin color and odd noses).

Here’s a LINK, in case you’ve forgotten what they were like.

In a more modern story, the Separatists have so many droids,

as Emperor Palpatine has so many stormtroopers.

And, of course, Saruman

has so many orcs

as, along with all of his human minions, does Sauron.

We can imagine several reasons for such overwhelming force in these stories. For the protagonist/s, the more of the enemy there are, the more impressive their defeat, as when Odysseus faces so many suitors (over a hundred) with only his son, Telemachus, and a couple of servants to help him.

(And Athena, of course!)

For the antagonist/s, there is the sense that they are so powerful that they have only to command and vast numbers of henchmen will do their bidding.

At the same time, we wonder if, underneath all of that force, there is a basic insecurity, a feeling that “my power by itself is really not enough—I can’t do this alone”? After all, it’s not the Sheriff of Nottingham who faces Robin Hood in the 1938 film,

but the secondary character, Guy of Gisborne (played by Basil Rathbone, who was the first great film Sherlock Holmes).

The Wicked Witch of the West relies upon her monkeys and her guards and Saruman and Sauron upon their armies and none ever faces an opponent alone: for that matter, we never even see Sauron except as a shadow at his fall.

And perhaps that underlying insecurity has some roots in reality: the only antagonist who actually confronts the protagonist is a little too sure of himself and of his major henchman and we all know what happens next…

As always, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC, dear readers!

War Game

23 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Games, Military History

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Tags

Floor Games, Franz Ferdinand, Great War, H.G. Wells, Kriegsspiel, Little Wars, Medieval tournament, Polemus, Sir Henry Newbolt, Troy Game, Vitae Lampada, War Games, wargame, William Britain, WWI

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

In our last, Sam Gamgee, while discussing their current situation with Frodo, says:

“The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say.” (The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”)

We suggested, in our last, that this might, in part, be a comment upon the enthusiasm for war in Britain in the later months of 1914, with its dramatic posters.

image1poster

Now, rereading the posting, we wanted to take the passage in a different direction, that of “kind of sport”, or, rather, game. “Game” took us to a once-well-known poem by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938),

Vitae Lampada (“The Torch of Life”, 1897):

Vitai Lampada

(“They Pass On The Torch of Life”)

There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind —
‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

Here we see battle equated with playing football at school, the implication being that one must stick to it, whether it be in a game or in life.

People have been making a game of battle for many years. The Romans seem to have had some sort of equestrian display called the “Troy Game” (lusus Troiae), about which most of what we know comes from Vergil’s Aeneid, Book 5, lines 545-603—here’s a LINK so that you can read it for yourself in translation), and there appears, as well, to have been some sort of cavalry event complete with masks (although, recently, there have been questions raised about these masks).

(These masks also remind us of a piece of armor used in eastern Europe, especially by the early warriors of Russia and its allies.)

Certainly, medieval warriors enjoyed jousting as a game

including a kind of general mayhem called a melee.

Such events proved so dangerous, however, that, in 1130, Pope Innocent II banned tournaments and, in time, several English and French monarchs did the same, with very mixed results as far as obedience went, although melees eventually seem to have died out, even as jousting continued in popularity.

Tournaments might keep knights in training, but, by the Napoleonic era,

military authorities had begun to think about how they might train their young soldiers off the battlefield. Beginning in the early 1800s, officers in the Prussian army began to experiment with board games, called “Kriegsspiel” (literally, “game of war”).

(Here’s a LINK to great site if you want to know more about such games or, even better, play them.)

Board games like this continued to be developed and popular. Here’s Polemus from 1888.

In 1911, H.G. Wells (1866-1946),

published Floor Games,

at the end of which he promised that, some time in the future, he would write about what he called “little wars” and, in 1913, that book appeared, Little Wars.

This was a whole new kind of game. It was a kriegsspiel, in that it was a wargame, but it was a wargame which, instead of using maps and wooden pieces, as earlier board games had, this was a much more realistic game, played with scenery and hundreds of small metal soldiers, mostly based upon the soldiers manufactured by William Britain, beginning in the 1890s.

Such games, with even more elaborate scenery, figures, and rules, are played today around the world.

(Here are links to both books so that you can have your own copies: Floor Games, 1911; Little Wars, 1913.)

Besides kriegsspiels, by the early 20^th century European armies began to create full-sized 3D equivalents, called maneuvers. In these, large numbers of actual soldiers, divided into sides like “Red Army” and “Blue Army”, would march across the countryside, seeking to gain advantage over the other side, while referees looked on and judged how successful those movements were.

In the summer of 1914, the Austrians were due to hold their summer maneuvers in the hills of Bosnia, to the west of Serbia. The Austrian Crown Prince, Franz Ferdinand, who was to observe those maneuvers,

arrived in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on the 28^th of June with his wife, Sophia—and then things went very wrong

and wargames turned into actual war, a war which lasted till November, 1918, in which perhaps as many as 16.5 million people died.

This leads us back to something which HG Wells suggested at the conclusion of Little Wars and which we wish were true:

“And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind—splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more—and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable “patriots,” and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers—tons, cellars-full—and let them lead their own lives there away from us.”

What more can we say?

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

Metatextual

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Tags

Beowulf, Game of Thrones, Great War, Great War Posters, Metatextual, Propaganda Posters, Samwise Gamgee, Story, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, trench warfare, Writing, WWI

Welcome, dear readers, as always—and don’t be weirded-out by the hyperliterary title. We’ve been thinking about an odd moment in The Lord of the Rings, a moment when two of the main characters seem to possess the ability, at least for that moment, to step away from the story, and to see themselves as characters, which is one way in which metatextuality, meaning “outside the text”, works. (For a useful definition, see this LINK.)

It’s a passage in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 8, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”. Sam and Frodo are pausing before Gollum leads them through a passageway which will bring them into Mordor. They have a meal, then talk about where they’re about to go and Sam says:

“…And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say.”

Because Tolkien was writing this after the Great War, we might imagine that, at one level, he’s reflecting upon the war fever which captured Great Britain in the early days of the conflict, with its recruiting posters and popular art depictions like these—

and its masses of volunteers crowding recruitment offices.

This was all before the grim reality of trench warfare

and casualties beyond anyone’s pre-war comprehension

dampened that early enthusiasm, leading to a realistic cynicism mostly quietly expressed,

although soldiers could sometimes express their opinion of the war vocally—see this LINK for some of that vocalizing.

What Sam says next seems to agree with this:

“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it.”

So, “adventures” now, to Sam, are no longer “a kind of sport” which “wonderful folk” seek out, but rather something which just happens to people—in fact, people like Sam and Frodo. And, just like Sam and Frodo, “…I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t.”

The consequences of rejecting those chances are obvious: “And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on…”

And Sam’s sense of the consequences of “just going on” is very realistic: “—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same—like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in!”

So far, then, we might see this as the clear thinking of someone who believed in those 1914 posters and came to learn otherwise. Sam continues, however, and here’s where that metatextuality comes in:

“I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”

We know that Sam has long been fascinated by tales of elves and dragons. As Gaffer Gamgee says:

“Crazy about stories of the old days, he is, and he listens to all of Mr. Bilbo’s tales. Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters…” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-Expected Party”)

The Gaffer’s last remark suggests that not only has Sam heard tales, but he may even have read them. We think that it should be no surprise, then, that, when put into a situation far beyond the usual, Sam might believe that it’s not just daily life, but, in fact, a “tale”. And so he asks, “…what sort…?”

To which Frodo replies:

“I wonder…But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”

In Sam and Frodo’s case, they clearly don’t and can’t know, but, although they don’t know their fate (although we think that Frodo has an idea, saying “Our part will end later—or sooner.”), they both believe that they are in a tale, as Sam says:

“Still I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards.”

This is ironic, of course, as we know that this very story is drawn as Tolkien-as-editor says in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, from The Red Book of Westmarch (see “Note on the Shire Records”), a volume jointly written by Bilbo and Frodo and perhaps completed by Sam himself (see The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”).

There is also, to our minds, as we said, something odd about this view of themselves and their situation. In general, characters in epic stories—just as Frodo says—are unaware that they are in them. Achilles never turns to Patroclus in the Iliad and asks, “I wonder how this epic will end?” nor does Beowulf spend time discussing just what sort of tale he and Wiglaf have gotten themselves into. (You can see a touch of metatextuality in the Game of Thrones series, however, when one of its evilest characters, Ramsay Bolton, can say, “If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”)

Frodo takes the idea of their being characters one step farther when he then suggests indirectly that their story is actually in the hands of its readers:

“…We’re going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: ‘Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.’ “

As in his earlier remark, that “Our part will end later—or sooner”, we see that Frodo imagines that they’re already in such a bad place that a young audience will want to stop the story.

This then leads us to a question as odd to us as their view of themselves as already-fictional characters in a tale: if dad listens and agrees, closing the book, what will happen to Frodo and Sam then?

Thanks, as ever, for reading and

MTCIDC

See, the Conquering Hero?

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Films and Music, Heroes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narrative Methods

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Battle of Culloden, Beethoven, celebrations, Crowning of Aragorn, endings, George Lucas, Haendel, Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, oratorio, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Field of Cormallen, the Force, The Grey Havens, The Last Jedi, The Lord of the Rings, The Phantom Menace, The Red Book of Westmarch, The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.

With Star Wars IX to appear in mid-December, completing the series, we’ve been going back through all of the previous episodes, from I (The Phantom Menace)

through VIII (The Last Jedi).

It’s a remarkable achievement and we’re very grateful to George Lucas,

for bringing it so far, even if his strong sense of the story seems to have been abandoned after VI (Return of the Jedi).

Because there are now so many films (including all of the offshoots, like the animated features, as well as Rogue One and Solo), it’s sometimes hard to remember that, once upon a time, there was only Star Wars (only later A New Hope), with its triumphant conclusion—mass formations of troops, Princess Leia in an actual princess outfit, and medals all around.

The next film—now V (The Empire Strikes Back) had a much less secure ending, with Darth Vader and the Emperor appearing to win and Han Solo a prisoner, on his way to Jaba the Hutt,

but VI (The Return of the Jedi) is once more triumphant, both in its original ending, on the forest moon of Endor,

and in the later revised version, where we see galaxy-wide celebrations.

Among the other films, we’ve seen another celebration, on Naboo, at the end of I (The Phantom Menace),

a secret marriage in II (Attack of the Clones),

and a complex web of plot, including the construction of the Death Star, the separation of the babies—Leia to Alderan, Luke to Tatooine—and the funeral of Padme in III (The Revenge of the Sith).

VII (The Force Awakens) had a mysterious ending: Rey having gone to what appears the far end of the galaxy to find—

while VIII (The Last Jedi) seemed vaguely hopeful, with an unnamed stable boy showing signs of having the Force within him, as Anakin did in I.

With such a build-up, we’ve been wondering how IX (The Rise of Skywalker) will end. As it’s supposedly the final episode, we assume that it will not conclude up in the air, like V, but will it have a mass celebration, like I, IV, and VI?

Or will it, like III, have multiple endings? As we’ve thought about it, you could really see that as the case with The Lord of the Rings.

First, like I, IV, and VI, there are celebrations: of Frodo and Sam at the field of Cormallen, in The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 4, “The Field of Cormallen”.

Then, in Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”, we have the crowning of Aragorn

followed by the wedding of Arwen and Aragorn.

After that, we have the return of the hobbits to the Shire and the defeat and death of Saruman in Chapter 8, “The Scouring of the Shire”. The Shire has been badly damaged by Saruman and his henchmen, however, so that, although they are gone, the healing will take many years.

And the story doesn’t conclude there. Only a little time goes by and then there is another ending: the trip to the Grey Havens and beyond in Chapter 9, “The Grey Havens”.

And then the story finally ends—or does it? We’ve seen in Star Wars VIII, when the stable boy seems to use the Force, though only for a moment,

the implication that perhaps the title, The Last Jedi, is more of a puzzle than it would first appear. The very last line of The Lord of the Rings, spoken by Sam, is “Well, I’m back…” and it’s true, as far as Sam won’t go off on another adventure. Before this, however, Frodo has been busy writing:

“There was a big book with plain red leather covers; its tall pages were now almost filled. At the beginning there were many leaves covered with Bilbo’s thin wavering hand, but most of it was written in Frodo’s firm flowing script. It was divided into chapters but Chapter 80 was unfinished, and after that were some blank leaves…

‘Why, you have nearly finished it, Mr. Frodo!’ Sam exclaimed. ‘Well, you have kept at it, I must say.’

‘I have quite finished, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘The last pages are for you.’”

But what does this imply? We have no idea what Sam may have added, but the volume Frodo gave him was the origin of The Red Book of Westmarch, the basis not only for The Lord of the Rings, but for The Hobbit, as well. Are we being told that writing about adventure is an adventure in itself, and almost as important?

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC, of course!

When we think of music in triumphs, the first piece which pops into our minds (after the Gungan march, of course) was one written by Haendel (1685-1759), “See, the Conquering Hero Comes”.

It was originally intended for his oratorio, Joshua (1747), but it fit his earlier piece, Judas Maccabaeus (1746) so well that he transferred it to the score of that oratorio. Judas Maccabaeus was composed as a tribute to the second son of George II of England, William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland,

after he had decisively beaten the attempt to overthrow his father and replace him with the son of the former monarch, James II, at the battle of Culloden.

Here’s a LINK to a stirring performance.

In 1796, the young Beethoven (1770-1827)

wrote a series of 12 variations on the theme for cello and fortepiano. It’s a lot of fun to hear what Beethoven can do with Haendel’s tune, so we give you a LINK here.

Light on Their Feet

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by lebedusya1 in Literary History, Military History

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Tags

Alfred Tennyson, Austrian, Balaclava, British Cavalry, chasseurs a cheval, Crimean War, Errol Flynn, Flashman, French, Gallic, gendarmes, George Macdonald Fraser, Heavy Brigade, Hungarian, Hussars, jinetes, lancers, Light Brigade, Light Dragoons, Napoleonic, North Africans, Olivia deHavilland, Renaissance cavalry, Romans, Russian Artillery, Spanish, St Helena, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Recently, someone asked us about the Light Brigade—that is, the collection of regiments of British cavalry who fought in the Crimean War (1854-56).

These are the troopers who mistakenly charged Russian artillery in the series of battles fought on 25 October, 1854, called, collectively, Balaclava.

The question was, “Why was it called ‘the Light Brigade’? Were the soldiers thin? And was there a Heavy Brigade, where they were all fat?”

It seemed to us a very reasonable question and our answer began, “Over many centuries, cavalry has had a number of uses, but they could probably be broken down into two groups by those uses: 1. raids, skirmishes, scouting, and pursuit; 2. attacking enemy cavalry and infantry formations—and pursuit. The former (#1) is the job of light cavalry, the latter (#2) of heavy cavalry.”

The Romans, who themselves only produced cavalry early in their history, quickly preferring to hire the job out, might, for example, use North Africans as light cavalry.

If heavy cavalry were needed, then the task might go to Spanish or Gallic soldiers.

And this would be true throughout military history—Renaissance cavalry might have heavily-armored gendarmes

to break up an enemy unit (or more) with the weight of its charge, but would also use lightly-armed jinetes

image6jinete

to find out the enemy’s positions, or attack their supply routes.

In the 18^th century, most cavalry were heavy—although armor had almost disappeared.

The Austrians and then the French added to those heavies light cavalry originally from the Hungarian world, hussars.

Not to be outdone, the English fleshed out their heavy cavalry

not with hussars, but something they called “light dragoons”.

Dragoons had originally been mounted infantrymen, who rode to battle on horseback, then dismounted to fight,

but, by the mid-18^th century, dragoons were just heavy cavalry—bigger men on bigger horses—and light dragoons were smaller men on smaller horses, with mostly different functions.

By the end of the century and just beyond, during the Napoleonic era, the French, in particular, had developed a whole series of light cavalry types—hussars,

chasseurs a cheval (literally, “hunters on horseback”),

and lancers, as well.

The English, to match the French, converted some regiments to hussars,

but only after 1820, when Napoleon was in his second and final exile on St. Helena, did they convert several other regiments to lancers.

(You can see that they borrowed their style of dress from that of Polish lancers in Napoleon’s armies.)

These lancers

along with hussars

and light dragoons

made up the famous Light Brigade of Alfred Tennyson’s (1809-1892)

image21at

1854 poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

This, in turn, inspired one of our favorite adventure movies, the 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade.

(We wonder how different children must have been in 1936—we loved that movie as kids!)

And this film, in turn, inspired a 20^th-century adventure writer, George Macdonald Fraser (1925-2008),

who wrote a series of 12 books detailing the life of one Harry Flashman, beginning with Flashman (1969).

In part, these are a parody of the life of a typical Victorian officer, who eventually becomes General Sir Harry Flashman. He appears at many of the famous military events in mid-Victorian British history, from the First Afghan War (1839-1842) to the Zulu War (1879), along with appearances at later events, including a cameo appearance at the British declaration of war against Germany on 4 August, 1914. The joke is, although he wins all sorts of honors, including that knighthood, he is, in fact, a complete coward and it’s only amazing luck that he manages to survive as long and as well as he does. And there is a second joke within the first: Flashman is actually the school bully in a very famous earlier novel, Tom Brown’s School Days (1857),

by Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), a book which is the ancestor not only of many later such novels and short stories, but also of the Harry Potter books.

The fourth novel in the Flashman series, entitled Flashman at the Charge (1973),

gives us Fraser’s hero as actually leading that famous attack by accident, an accident which leads to his capture by the Russians—and many further adventures.

So, our answer to the original question is: “No. The Light Brigade wasn’t skinny, but was called that because it was smaller men on smaller horses with very specific jobs which required rapid movement and greater flexibility than heavy cavalry.”

And, with that answer, we say thank you for reading and

MTCIDC

There was, in fact, a Heavy Brigade,

who made their own equally-heroic, but more successful, attack on the same day as the more famous Light Brigade charge. Bigger men on bigger horses, they drove advancing Russian cavalry out of the Heavy Brigade camp.

doubtfulsea

~ adventure romance fantasy

Monthly Archives: October 2019

Henchmen and Minions

War Game

Metatextual

See, the Conquering Hero?

Light on Their Feet