Charge of the Heavy Brigade

Captain Bernard, 5th Dragoon Guards (Roger Fenton, 1855)

In 1854, the 4th, 5th and the 6th Dragoon Guards rode together in the charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, Crimea. In this action, eight hundred men utterly routed nearly three thousand five hundred of the Tsar's finest Cavalry, with minimal loss to themselves, and so demoralised the Russian horseman that they did not dare to follow up the subsequent disaster to the Light Brigade later that same day.