Messenger of Death

A biography of the British Army officer and his role in the Crimean War at the Charge at Balaklava.

Captain Louis Nolan delivered the order that produced one of the most famous blunders in all military history—the Charge of the Light Brigade. Nolan’s conduct and the Charge itself have been the subject of intense, sometimes bitter debate ever since. Yet there has been no recent biography of Nolan. He remains an ambiguous, controversial figure to this day. In this fresh and perceptive study, David Buttery attempts to set the record straight. He reassesses the man and looks at his military career, for there was much more to Louis Nolan than his fatal role in the Charge. This sympathetic account of his life throws new light on the Victorian army and its officer class, and on the conduct of the war in the Crimea. It also offers the reader an inside view of the most notorious episode of that war, the Charge at Balaklava on 25 October 1854.