So ended the work of the Seventeenth on the 25th October 1854. It is customary to look upon the attack of the Light Brigade as a mere desperate ride into the Russian battery. It was far more than this. The advance down the valley through the murderous fire from front and both flanks was but the prelude to a brilliant attack. Discipline never failed even among the scattered fragments of the first line. Where their own officers were still alive with them, the men of the Seventeenth, however trifling in numbers, rallied, as under Captain Morris, and followed them to the attack on the Russian cavalry. Where an officer of another corps rallied them, they followed him with the same devotion and intrepidity. The little knot with Major Mayow, under his leadership attacked ten or fifteen times their number of Russians, defeated them, pursued them, halted, rallied on the 8th Hussars, attacked with them successfully once more, and stood ready to renew the attack yet again if supports should come. Where, again, no officer was present, the non-commissioned officers, true to regimental tradition, readily took command; and Sergeant O’Hara and Corporal Morley proved themselves worthy successors of Tucker and Stephenson. Had the attack of the Light Brigade been supported there is reason to suppose that it would have been brilliantly successful; for the Russian cavalry had been thoroughly scared, and even the infantry had been formed into squares to resist the onslaught of the few score of men who had passed the battery. Lord Lucan had indeed every intention of supporting it with the Heavy Brigade, and actually brought that brigade within destructive fire; [Sidenote: 1854.] but seeing from his advanced position up the valley the frightful losses of the Light Brigade, he could not bring himself to sacrifice the Heavies also. Pulling up under the cross-fire of the batteries, his horse wounded in two places, and his own thigh injured by a musket ball, he took his resolution and ordered the Heavy Brigade to retire. What his feelings may have been when he saw the wreck of his old regiment return to him we can only guess. Yet this was not the first occasion on which the Seventeenth had charged ten times their number of cavalry; they had done it once before at Cowpens against a far more dangerous and resolute enemy. After Balaclava the Seventeenth, like the other four regiments of the Light Brigade, had almost ceased to exist in the Crimea, from the extent of its loss both in men and horses. A supply of remounts was, however, obtained by the capture of about 100 Russian troop-horses which stampeded into the British camp on the night of the 26th October. [Sidenote: 5th Nov.]