On 25 October 1854, at Balaclava in the Crimean War, the British Light Brigade charged straight at Russian guns. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade” on 2 December 1854, and The Examiner published it the following week. Its best-known line names no one: “Someone had blunder’d.”
Captain Louis Nolan delivered Lord Raglan’s order to Lord Lucan, who sent the Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan forward. Nolan was the first casualty of the charge. Contemporary accounts blamed Nolan. Some modern historians share the blame among Nolan, Raglan and the cavalry commanders.