Lieutenant-General James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, KCB (1797 – 1868), styled as Lord Cardigan, was an officer in the British Army who commanded the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, leading its charge at the Battle of Balaclava. Throughout his life in politics and his long military career, he characterized the arrogant and extravagant aristocrat of the period. His progression through the Army was marked by many episodes of extraordinary incompetence, but also by generosity to the men under his command and genuine bravery. As a member of the landed aristocracy, he had actively and steadfastly opposed any political reform in Britain, but in the last year of his life, he relented and came to acknowledge that such reform would bring benefit to all classes of society.