Louis Edward Nolan

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Louis Nolan, around 1850

Louis Edward Nolan (born January 4, 1818 in Upper Canada , † October 25, 1854 at Balaklava ) was a British officer who achieved fame for his role in the Battle of Balaklava .

Life

Louis Edward Nolan's parents were Captain John Babington Nolan, of the British Army's 70th Infantry Regiment , and his wife Elisa Harleston Hartley. They married in Perth ( Scotland ) in 1813 . It was the third marriage for his mother. From previous marriages, with Andrew Macfarlane and Charles Ruddach, she brought in two older sons. A year after Nolan's birth, his parents returned to Scotland as Cpt. Babington left his regiment and retired. Little is known about the following years in Edinburgh . The family lived in Piacenza in 1829 , shortly afterwards in Milan , which was then part of the Austrian Empire . Babington became Vice-Consul here at half pay .

During this time, Nolan and his brothers had joined the Austrian army. At the age of 14 he became a cadet in the 10th Kuk Hussar Regiment in 1832 and attended the engineering school in Tulln. He then served with the 10th Hussars in Hungary and Poland from 1835 and was promoted to first lieutenant three years later .

In 1838 Nolan visited London for the coronation of Victoria and decided a few months later, following family tradition, to join the British Army and on March 15, 1839, he became a cornet with the 15th King's Hussars . His other stations were Bangalore and Madras in India . However, due to a fever that Nolan contracted shortly after his arrival in India, he was sent back home. There he was stationed in the cavalry depot in Maidstone. In 1841 he was promoted to lieutenant and in May 1843 he returned to India. He spent more than six years in India and served a. a. as aide to General George Berkeley's. It is uncertain whether his return to Great Britain in 1851 was directly related to the death of his father a year earlier.

In 1851 Nolan began work on his first book, The Training of Cavalry Remount Horses: A New System . He traveled through Europe between March and August 1852 to gather material for his next book, Cavalry: Its History and Tactics , which was published a year later. During this time he also worked on a new saddle for the cavalry , which was first used in the Crimean War and which was adopted for all regiments after his death.

Nolan gained dubious fame during the Battle of Balaklava on October 25, 1854. He returned the command of Commander-in-Chief Lord Raglan incompletely (and probably incorrectly) to Lord Lucan , Commander of the Cavalry Division. This led to the legendary attack by the Light Brigade , in which 156 men of the 673 mounted soldiers who entered died and 122 were wounded. Captain Nolan was one of the first to fall while trying to reach the top of the light brigade. It can be assumed that he had realized his mistake and tried in vain to hold back the commander of the brigade Lord Cardigan .

In the film The Light Brigade Attack , his role was played by David Hemmings .

literature

  • David Buttery: Messenger of Death. Captain Nolan and the Charge of the Light Brigade . Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley 2008, ISBN 978-1-84415-756-3 .
  • Hubert Moyse-Bartlett: Louis Edward Nolan and his influence on the British Cavalry . Leo Cooper Ltd, London 1971, ISBN 0-85052-072-X .