"On, On, On!" Cried the Leaders in the Back

or: the charge of the light brigade and you

I know you all come to my Substack for that hard-hitting analysis, for all the hottest takes, for all the conversations about the least obscure subject matter. So here’s a post comparing the future of the American economy under Trump to the Charge of the Light Brigade of 1854 as told through four poetic interpretations of that event.

I

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

In 1853, the European world went to war over territory and influence, using religious conflict in Palestine as their excuse. Not an unfamiliar thing to today’s reader. It was the Crimean War, with Russia on one side and their eternal rival the Ottoman Empire on the other, with the UK and France backing the Ottoman Empire because they didn’t want Russia to expand and disrupt the balance of power.

The ostensible reason for the conflict was Catholic versus Eastern Orthodox control over the Christian population in Palestine, but that’s beyond the scope of what I want to talk about.

Europe wanted a war, and they got a war. In the end, the western powers prevailed.

But along the way, in 1854, a brigade of light cavalry rode to their deaths and immortality in a futile charge against a heavily-defended target. It was during the battle of Balaklava and led by Lord Cardigan, just to get as many references into knit clothing as possible into a dramatic and terrible day. Their orders were poorly communicated. The 607 men were not supposed to ride, lances and sabres, against 29,000 entrenched Russian troops armed with cannon and gun.

198 soldiers returned from their ride into the valley of death, which is more than you’d expect I suppose.

Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of England, wrote a charming enough poem called The Charge of the Light Brigade about the attack, which I’m using as the framing device for this article. It reads today like an anti-war poem. It was not intended as such. It was intended to honor those who died in the futile charge because they’d done their duty. To die discarded by their rulers a thousand miles from home fighting for nothing that affected their lives was the highest ideal of the true English soldier. All in the name of Queen and Country.

II

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Right now in the US, a right wing ideologue has been swept back into power by presenting himself as the revolutionary alternative to a crumbling system. Trump promised to bring down the cost of groceries by… creating tariffs. Which doesn’t, certainly in the short term, lower the price of anything. As soon as he was elected, he backpedaled and said “you know, grocery prices are hard to bring down.” As the world stumbles towards chaos and war and climate disaster, the worst possible people are being put in charge.

We’re riding into the valley, cannons on each side of us. People are going to go hungry. People are going to die of preventable diseases as healthcare and oversight is gutted. The “leopards eating people’s faces” party is going to let a lot of leopards eat a lot of faces. People are going to die on the altars of capitalism and Christian nationalism, killed by the leaders. It’s the highest ideal of the true American patriot, to die of preventable diseases. All in the name of God and Country.

III

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade is on my mind tonight for a silly enough reason: I’m writing some fiction about World War Three Point Five in the year 2054 and some pterosaur riders have been gunned down by Russian guns in a futile charge that I’m clearly copying from the famous battle.

So it was on my mind, and I put on one of my favorite songs, by one of my favorite bands, The Charge by New Model Army. It’s a song about, you know, the Charge of the Light Brigade. They have a different take, because of one specific reason: they’re not a bunch of mindless nationalists.

They sing:

On, on, on, cried the leaders at the back
We went galloping down the blackened hills
And into the gaping trap
The bridges are burnt behind us and there's waiting guns ahead
Into the valley of death rode the brave hundreds

The Charge (the song) was written in the 1980s to compare the struggle of the suffering miners in England to the fate of the soldiers of the Light Brigade. Here are people told to do their good, patriotic duty to suffer in good British silence. Keep that stiff upper lip, you know?

I listened to it over and over tonight while my dog and I played on the couch. We played one of his favorite games: “I try to hit him in the head and he tries to bite my hand.” It’s sweeter than it sounds.

I listened to The Charge over and over because this is us, this is America. “On, on, on!” cried the leaders in the back. The rich are pushing their economic ideas as some kind of moral crusade. They’ve been doing it forever, it’s not just Trump. The capitalist order has been doing it to us since before any of our great-great grandparents were born.

They want us to fight and die in their wars, to be sure. They also, now and always, want us to work and die for their economy. Workers build their palaces all while being bled dry. They want us to go to our deaths accepting impossible healthcare fees. They want us to play the shell game of electoral politics while climate change waits for us like Russian artillery.

IV

Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

A generation after Tennyson, in 1890, another poet took a turn talking about the Light Brigade. This poet was as far from the Left as they come: Rudyard Kipling, who has written more words in honor of the British Empire than perhaps any other man in history. He literally coined the term “the White Man’s Burden,” in a poem of that name about why the US should colonize the Philippines. He’s not a man I am designed to like.

Kipling’s poem was called The Last of the Light Brigade. It’s not a particularly beautiful poem, just a story that is told in rhyme. In the poem, the last twenty survivors of the Light Brigade show up to Tennyson’s house. They’re all destitute and starving. They ask not for money, but for Tennyson to write a new poem talking about how they’ve been forgotten and are starving, despite being becoming the literal icons of British bravery.

Even this iconic rightwing poet was critical of how the soldiers were glorified as icons while they themselves were left to starve.

Trump’s new administration is, of course, massively threatening veteran’s healthcare. No administration has ever been particularly good to the rank-and-file veterans who didn’t have the good sense to die when they were tossed into the meat grinder, tossed against the Russian artillery.

V

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

But we’re using the charge as a metaphor here, comparing the Light Brigade to all of us about to face the waiting guns of hunger, driven on by the leaders in the back. There is a romantic beauty to facing down death. There will never not be. All of us face down death simply by living, and those who do so more directly will always be, on some level, inspiring.

But I think about another group of people who fought in this case alongside the British. During World War One, the famed TE Lawrence, a British soldier, worked with Arabs revolting against Ottoman rule. This was a guerilla struggle, and, as I understand it, one of the things that separated the nomadic fighters from the regular military is that the nomadic units simply refused to take heavy losses. They were brave and they fought well and they helped turn the tide of the war time and time again, but they simply would not listen to commands that put them into the meat grinder. They refused that British idea of bravery.

VI

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

A battle is not a war, and the British prevailed in the Crimean War. I’m too far removed from that war by time, geography, and ideology to really have a strong opinion about that. Western victory against Russia started the chain of events that freed the Russian Serfs, sure, but it also protected the British rule of India. Colonial powers duking it out while the rest of us suffer, it’s a story as old as the concept of a state.

A hundred and seventy years later and across an ocean, only the poem Charge of the Light Brigade remains in our memory of that war. Tennyson wanted us to be inspired by their bravery, but I look upon those riders with sorrow. Obedience was the death of them, for no reason at all. The innate human desire to be useful and brave was manipulated by the state to kill those cavalry riders, to say nothing of their horses.

A hundred and seventy years later, and we’re still led by the leaders in the back, who use our best nature against us. Who use poetry against us. Who use glory against us.

They expect us to follow their orders, and I hope we don’t.

A fourth poet took a shot describing the charge of the light brigade: Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the movie version of Tolkien’s story, Denethor, the delusional steward of Gondor, sent his disfavored son Faramir and a few hundred other riders to retake the city of Osgiliath. The doomed men ride through Gondor and accept flowers, doom writ across their faces. Gandalf, ever the voice of reason, tells them to turn back. Faramir says he will gladly give his life to defend the city, then rides off into a hail of arrows.

Faramir’s best traits, loyalty, bravery, and humility, have been used against him by the steward of Gondor.

Hopefully, more of the would-be kings of the world just set themselves on fire and throw themselves off their own castle walls. Hopefully they do it soon, before they send us all to die at work or war or leave us all to sicken and die in our homes.

Would save us a lot of trouble.