Who's The Poet - For Non-British Only

[eyebee]

Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

 

I had to look it up.

 

It is the account of what I suspect is the *ONLY* successful cavalry charge against a fortified position in all the history of warfare on Planet Earth. Pickett tried it a few years earlier, at Gettysburg (if memory serves me), unsuccessfully, and the butcher's bill was horrendous.

 

The Light Brigade was successful, but it cost them something like 90% casualties. "Another victory like that and I am undone!" (I don't remember who said it, but I think it was some Roman general.)

 

 

Maybe it was Pyrrhus, from whom we get the phrase "A Pyrrhic victory".