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The Battle of Dorking
18 July 2021 07:24 amBy the end of the 19th Century, the diplomatic protocols set up in the Congress of Vienna to prevent another European War à la Napoleon were beginning to break down. And everyone knew it. If there was any doubt, the Franco-Prussian War made that clear. So now, with Bismark flexing his muscles towards the unification of Germany into a single nation-state, a war scare swept Europe. A major war was coming, even more so than the conflict between the North German Confederation and France, people were just uncertain as to when.
Out of this uncertainty came a new genre of speculative fiction: the Invasion Novel.
Sir George Tomkyns Chesney was a captain in the Royal Engineers, and had written numerous articles and pamphlets warning of the coming conflict and the lack of British military preparedness, but had failed to sway public opinion. In 1871, he reworked his warnings into The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer, which was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, a respected political journal.
The narrator had plenty of blame to go around. He had praise for free trade and colonialism building the British economy but also pointed out how cheaper foreign competition threatened the economy and spreading the Royal Navy about the world to defend those colonies weakened defense at home. There was plenty of criticism for liberalism wanting to reduce the military as a way to challenge the aristocratic structures but also criticism for business working to prevent military enlistment as a way of keeping workers in the factories.
The narrator, and the author of course, was not presenting a position either liberal or conservative but was a hawk. It is something I would expect from a career soldier who had probably served through multiple administrations swinging between liberal and conservative. No matter, so long as the army is kept strong.
After that introduction, the storm comes in the form of the sudden annexation of Holland and Denmark by some unnamed foreign power. The author seems to go to great lengths to never name what power it is but it is obviously Germany. The narrator precedes to describe the call to arms, the closing of embassys, the cutting off of contact with Europe, and the destruction of the Channel Fleet by the enemy’s use of some wonder weapon, the specifics of which remain undescribed. I am reminded of Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, 1846 presentation to the British admiralty of a superweapon that affords "the infallible means of securing at one blow our maritime superiority and of thereafter maintaining it in perpetuity-of at once commencing and terminating a war by one conclusive victory." What Dundonald's Destroyer was actually was never revealed either.
We are a quarter of the way through the story before we start to hear anything of the narrator’s personal view of any of the events. Herein, he describes in almost exhausting detail how his militia unit is mustered out and deployed. Clearly the writings of a soldier interested in the minutia of war rather than that of a storyteller. The entire middle half of the story is preparing, deploying, marching, redeploying, and so on. For an author attempting to sway public opinion, this middle section is probably the weakest part of the narrative. Here, he is a soldier talking to other soldiers. Except that his voice, the narrator, is not a soldier but a militiaman, who has never before seen combat or even fired his weapon. Soldiers might be attentive to all the steps involved in deploying but it seems unlikely that a banker pressed to service would share the same viewpoints.
Finally, three-quarters of the way through, the shooting finally starts. The narrative strengthens with the horrors of these green militia getting pushed back even through valiant effort but, again, the author is speaking to other soldiers and fails to really convey the horrors that would his non-soldier narrator would likely experience. But, of course, these are Englishmen defending their island and the Anglo-Saxon race so, of course, they would soldier on.
As predicted, the fight is lost before it even started. The lines do no break, at least, not the lines of the narrator. As militia, they are pulled back when regular army comes up to reinforce the line. The narrator is further back when those lines inevitably fail and, wounded and out of ammunition, he discards his rifle, blends into the crowds of refugee civilians.
There are a few pages of “occupation” where thew author describes the German brutes pillaging, killing, and being generally un-civilized. Finally, the last three pages consist of the lamenting of what England had become in the aftertmath of a lost war.
As an advocacy for policy written in the form of a rousing story, The Battle of Dorking fails for having too much of the story embroiled in the minute-to-minute actions of a militiaman. And as a rousing narrative, it is weakened by the author creator of that militiaman being an aristocratic colonial soldier. In the end, though, he got a part of his wish. Fifteen years after publishing The Battle of Dorking, as military member of the governor-generals council, Chesney was able to implement a number of reforms. He was unsuccessful in advancing Indianization, the acceptance of Indian nationals into the officer corps.
Wikipedia credits The Battle of Dorking as being “an important precursor of science fiction” but, aside from the mention of a wonder-weapon that devastates the British fleet, there are no science elements to the tale. I believe that Mary Shelly had pretty much invented science fiction outright with Frankenstein in 1818 and it took half a century for the rest of literature to reinvent that wheel. But, as I said earlier, The Battle of Dorking was the first in a series of invasion fiction that influenced speculative and science fiction and that probably found its pinnacle in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
Out of this uncertainty came a new genre of speculative fiction: the Invasion Novel.
Sir George Tomkyns Chesney was a captain in the Royal Engineers, and had written numerous articles and pamphlets warning of the coming conflict and the lack of British military preparedness, but had failed to sway public opinion. In 1871, he reworked his warnings into The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer, which was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, a respected political journal.
“You ask me to tell you, my grandchildren, something about my own share in the great events that happened fifty years ago. ‘Tis sad work turning back to that bitter page in our history, but you may perhaps take profit in your new homes from the lesson it teaches. For us in England it came too late.”The narrative begins, as so many Victorian narratives do, with the narrator looking back on events. In this case, the narrator is looking back from an economically and socially devastated England that, in the last quarter of the 19th Century, fell to a sudden, but wholly predictable (by the narrator) foreign invader.
The narrator had plenty of blame to go around. He had praise for free trade and colonialism building the British economy but also pointed out how cheaper foreign competition threatened the economy and spreading the Royal Navy about the world to defend those colonies weakened defense at home. There was plenty of criticism for liberalism wanting to reduce the military as a way to challenge the aristocratic structures but also criticism for business working to prevent military enlistment as a way of keeping workers in the factories.
The narrator, and the author of course, was not presenting a position either liberal or conservative but was a hawk. It is something I would expect from a career soldier who had probably served through multiple administrations swinging between liberal and conservative. No matter, so long as the army is kept strong.
After that introduction, the storm comes in the form of the sudden annexation of Holland and Denmark by some unnamed foreign power. The author seems to go to great lengths to never name what power it is but it is obviously Germany. The narrator precedes to describe the call to arms, the closing of embassys, the cutting off of contact with Europe, and the destruction of the Channel Fleet by the enemy’s use of some wonder weapon, the specifics of which remain undescribed. I am reminded of Thomas Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, 1846 presentation to the British admiralty of a superweapon that affords "the infallible means of securing at one blow our maritime superiority and of thereafter maintaining it in perpetuity-of at once commencing and terminating a war by one conclusive victory." What Dundonald's Destroyer was actually was never revealed either.
We are a quarter of the way through the story before we start to hear anything of the narrator’s personal view of any of the events. Herein, he describes in almost exhausting detail how his militia unit is mustered out and deployed. Clearly the writings of a soldier interested in the minutia of war rather than that of a storyteller. The entire middle half of the story is preparing, deploying, marching, redeploying, and so on. For an author attempting to sway public opinion, this middle section is probably the weakest part of the narrative. Here, he is a soldier talking to other soldiers. Except that his voice, the narrator, is not a soldier but a militiaman, who has never before seen combat or even fired his weapon. Soldiers might be attentive to all the steps involved in deploying but it seems unlikely that a banker pressed to service would share the same viewpoints.
Finally, three-quarters of the way through, the shooting finally starts. The narrative strengthens with the horrors of these green militia getting pushed back even through valiant effort but, again, the author is speaking to other soldiers and fails to really convey the horrors that would his non-soldier narrator would likely experience. But, of course, these are Englishmen defending their island and the Anglo-Saxon race so, of course, they would soldier on.
As predicted, the fight is lost before it even started. The lines do no break, at least, not the lines of the narrator. As militia, they are pulled back when regular army comes up to reinforce the line. The narrator is further back when those lines inevitably fail and, wounded and out of ammunition, he discards his rifle, blends into the crowds of refugee civilians.
There are a few pages of “occupation” where thew author describes the German brutes pillaging, killing, and being generally un-civilized. Finally, the last three pages consist of the lamenting of what England had become in the aftertmath of a lost war.
“Need I tell you the rest?--of the ransom we had to pay, and the taxes raised to cover it, which keep us paupers to this day?--the brutal frankness that announced we must give place to a new naval Power, and be made harmless for revenge?--the victorious troops living at free quarters, the yoke they put on us made the more galling that their requisitions had a semblance of method and legality? Better have been robbed at first hand by the soldiery themselves, than through our own magistrates made the instruments for extortion. How we lived through the degradation we daily and hourly underwent, I hardly even now understand. And what was there left to us to live for?”There should be a certain irony in seeing the author’s abject fear of brutal taxation for reparations in light of exactly the same imposed on German thirty years later after their loss in the First World War. But, given German’s financial imposition on France after the Franco-Prussian war a year before Chesney published “The Battle of Dorking”, it seems that this sort of behavior was standard procedure. To be expected.
As an advocacy for policy written in the form of a rousing story, The Battle of Dorking fails for having too much of the story embroiled in the minute-to-minute actions of a militiaman. And as a rousing narrative, it is weakened by the author creator of that militiaman being an aristocratic colonial soldier. In the end, though, he got a part of his wish. Fifteen years after publishing The Battle of Dorking, as military member of the governor-generals council, Chesney was able to implement a number of reforms. He was unsuccessful in advancing Indianization, the acceptance of Indian nationals into the officer corps.
Wikipedia credits The Battle of Dorking as being “an important precursor of science fiction” but, aside from the mention of a wonder-weapon that devastates the British fleet, there are no science elements to the tale. I believe that Mary Shelly had pretty much invented science fiction outright with Frankenstein in 1818 and it took half a century for the rest of literature to reinvent that wheel. But, as I said earlier, The Battle of Dorking was the first in a series of invasion fiction that influenced speculative and science fiction and that probably found its pinnacle in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.
