What isn't shown is that the condition of the Russian army was far worse. As for the Crimean War, it also depicts the drum beat to war accurately and the implication that most of the dying was done by commoners and much of the death was caused by disease. Nolan's roll in the battle remains controversial and whether he delivered inaccurate verbal orders to Acrdigan to charge to prove the effectiveness of cavalry even against artillery or warn the brigade away has not been established because Nolan was killed. At the time, there was a debate about the effectiveness of cavalry with some believing that no defensive position could withstand the full force of a disciplined cavalry charge-a left over from the Napoleonic Wars-while others thought a charge into artillery was near suicidal. In fact, Nolan wrote a book complaining about the need to professionalize the army but it took the near disastrous Crimean War to affect any serious changes (it too the British Navy another generation or more to make similar changes). It was a largely decadent and unprofessional army and the movie I think characterizes it rather well. This was a period when one gained advancement in the army by money or title. The movie depicts the British army as it existed in 1850. The movie was made entirely with British actors and a British director and the Brits never had an antiwar movement (because their government gave up its militarism after Suez in 1955). This movie was made in 1968 but I never got the impression from watching it that it was anti war.
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