Charge of the Light Brigade diary fetches £8,500 at Cambridge auction

The captain's diary, medals and a portrait were sold at an auction in Cambridge

A British soldier's diary documenting the horrors of the Charge of the Light Brigade against Russian forces in 1854 has sold as part of a lot at auction for £8,500, four times its guide price.

It was written by Capt Michael Stocks of The Royal Dragoons, and handed down through generations at the family home in Hilgay, Norfolk.

He described the battle, which left 118 cavalrymen dead, as "the greatest trap that ever was made".

The diary was sold in Cambridge.

Describing the offensive at the Battle of Balaclava on the Crimean peninsula, and how the Dragoons fought alongside the Royal Scots Greys, Capt Stocks, who later became a major, wrote: "We and the Greys advanced first and then somebody said 'let the light cavalry go on', and on they went...

"We followed at a trot, they went at a gallop and we saw nothing more of them until we saw them coming back by ones and twos some mounted but mostly dis-mounted, such a smash never was seen..."

A reconstruction of the Charge of the Light Brigade filmed in Aldershot for the silent film Balaclava in 1928

Describing how he narrowly escaped being hit, he wrote that "the shot and shells and bullets came down on us like hail, every second I expected to get one".

Reflecting on the day, he said: "Thank God I am here to write this."

Charles Ashton, director of Cheffins Fine Art Auctioneers, said the diary was "a rare, true-life account of one of the most fabled events in British military history".

The Charge of the Light Brigade 1854

The charge of the Light Brigade at the battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War

• The Light Brigade was commanded by the Earl of Cardigan in Crimea on the northern Black Sea coast, in 1854

• An order was misinterpreted and led to a charge of 673 soldiers into rows of Russian artillery

• They were bombarded from all sides and suffered heavy casualties

• It was a fiasco and only a charge by French cavalry saved the Light Brigade from being completely wiped out

• The disaster led to a blame game between senior army officers

Source: National Archives

The auction lot also included a Russian-pressed metal medallion taken from the body of a dead Russian; the soldier's Crimean War medal with clasps for Sebastopol, Inkermann and Balaclava, with miniature medals; as well as a portrait miniature of Maj Stocks.

The estimated guide price for the lot was between £1,000 and £2,000, so it fetched more than four times the top estimate.

It was purchased by a UK-based trade buyer, the auction house said.

The Crimean peninsula was annexed from Ukraine by Vladimir Putin's Russia in 2014, and the neighbouring Black Sea coast has been one of the central battlegrounds in the current war in Ukraine.