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    The Battle of Dorking
    The Battle of Dorking
    The Battle of Dorking
    Ebook74 pages1 hour

    The Battle of Dorking

    By George Tomkyns Chesney

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    Britain is under attack, and winning at Dorking is the only way the empire can be saved

    It is the late nineteenth century, and a country much like Germany is on the move in Europe. It has already beaten its rivals on the continent and mobilized to the Netherlands, provoking the fear of British citizens. Then the nation strikes. Its powerful weapons destroy the Royal Navy, and invasion cannot be far behind.
     
    Written as a hypothetical exercise to raise awareness among average British citizens about the potential danger that a resurgent Germany could pose, The Battle of Dorking earned its place in literary history as the forerunner to the invasion-novel genre, predating The War of the Worlds by almost twenty years. The novel’s drama, which culminates in a fight that will change the course of history forever, thrilled audiences when it was originally released as a serial, and it maintains its power today.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateNov 25, 2014
    ISBN9781497691056
    The Battle of Dorking
    Author

    George Tomkyns Chesney

    George Tomkyns Chesney (1830–1895) was a British general, most famous for his military literature. In 1848 he journeyed to India to join the Bengal Engineers, with whom he had an illustrious career and fought in the siege of Delhi. Chesney wrote books on topics as diverse as a hypothetical invasion of Britain by Germany, to the workings of the Indian government. After his career as a soldier, Chesney was elected to the House of Commons, where he served until his death.

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    Reviews for The Battle of Dorking

    3/5

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    • 2/5
      I am not sure what to think. This was published in 1800's. Which after you read this and realize when and what the story is about one just might be gob-smacked. It was only 47 pages, but a bit of a challenge to read. It just ran together. But again, lets look at when it was published. I don't want to say what this is about, that will take away from everything. But its short and won't take to much of your time.

      But having said what I said I must spoil the book. I mean the author talks about a German invasion into the UK. They actually set foot on British soil. I shall make mention again that this was published in something like 1847. I am still gob-smacked by this 47 page story.
    • 4/5
      This novella written in 1871 is on most lists of must read proto-science fiction, because it was one of the first books that had a theme of an alternative reality. In this case it imagined a successful German Invasion of England. This description is a little misleading because there is very little about what life would have been like in England under an occupation: nine tenths of the book is about a significant battle between two armies on the North Downs of England; after all Chesney called his book The Battle of Dorking and so this should not come as any surprise.

      Sir George Tomkyns Chesney was a British Army General, politician, and writer of fiction, (there are no other works of his still in print although they can be found online) and I am sure he would have been surprised by the relative success of this novella (60 pages). Sir George writes well about what he knows and this is a land battle in the late nineteenth century. He imagines the British army being ill prepared and suffering because of a better equipped and better trained enemy. The book does serve as a warning to Britain as Chesney sketches the political situation as he saw it in 1870's England: an economy dependent on trade and raw materials supplied by its commonwealth, with an army that was being scaled down in deference to a more powerful navy. He imagines a situation where troubles in Ireland and in India have stretched the army to a point where it is not able to defend its homeland. Although the invading country is not named it is obviously Germany. The alternate history serves as an introduction to the real meat of the book which a disastrous defensive action against the invasion.

      Chesney writes from the point of view of a reservist called up with a couple of days notice to fight for his country. The description of the logistics of an overstretched transport system and the battle itself seems quite realistic. It was particularly relevant for me because I know the countryside around Dorking very well and could easily relate to the protagonist who does his best to do his bit in a situation that is confused and difficult. The battle scene itself is vividly described both from the point of view of the soldiers and the civilians inevitably caught up in the conflict. It is not an anti-war book, nor a book of heroic action it is rather a blow by blow account of a few days of military action and its consequences.

      A political and strategic battle story whose realistic well written style holds the attention, the later addition of its significance to a genre still over 40 years away from its creation makes this well worth a look. I would not be averse to reading one of Chesney's other works of fiction if I came across them in a second hand bookshop. 3.5 stars.

    Book preview

    The Battle of Dorking - George Tomkyns Chesney

    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. And yet we had plenty of warnings, if we had only made use of them. The danger did not come on us unawares. It burst on us suddenly, ’tis true; but its coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been wilfully blind. We English have only ourselves to blame for the humiliation which has been brought on the land. Venerable old age! Dishonourable old age, I say, when it follows a manhood dishonoured as ours has been. I declare, even now, though fifty years have passed, I can hardly look a young man in the face when I think I am one of those in whose youth happened this degradation of Old England—one of those who betrayed the trust handed down to us unstained by our forefathers.

    What a proud and happy country was this fifty years ago! Free-trade had been working for more than a quarter of a century, and there seemed to be no end to the riches it was bringing us. London was growing bigger and bigger; you could not build houses fast enough for the rich people who wanted to live in them, the merchants who made the money and came from all parts of the world to settle there, and the lawyers and doctors and engineers and other, and trades-people who got their share out of the profits. The streets reached down to Croydon and Wimbledon, which my father could remember quite country places; and people used to say that Kingston and Reigate would soon be joined to London. We thought we could go on building and multiplying forever. ’Tis true that even then there was no lack of poverty; the people who had no money went on increasing as fast as the rich, and pauperism was already beginning to be a difficulty; but if the rates were high, there was plenty of money to pay them with; and as for what were called the middle classes, there really seemed no limit to their increase and prosperity. People in those days thought it quite a matter of course to bring a dozen of children into the world—or, as it used to be said, Providence sent them that number of babies; and if they couldn’t always marry off all the daughters, they used to manage to provide for the sons, for there were new openings to be found in all the professions, or in the Government offices, which went on steadily getting larger. Besides, in those days young men could be sent out to India, or into the army or navy; and even then emigration was not uncommon, although not the regular custom it is now. Schoolmasters, like all other professional classes, drove a capital trade. They did not teach very much, to be sure, but new schools with their four or five hundred boys were springing up all over the country.

    Fools that we were! We thought that all this wealth and prosperity were sent us by Providence, and could not stop coming. In our blindness we did not see that we were merely a big workshop, making up the things which came from all parts of the world; and that if other nations stopped sending us raw goods to work up, we could not produce them ourselves. True, we had in those days an advantage in our cheap coal and iron; and had we taken care not to waste the fuel, it might have lasted us longer. But even then there were signs that coal and iron would soon become cheaper in foreign parts; while as to food and other things, England was not better off than it is now. We were so rich simply because other nations from all parts of the world were in the habit of sending their goods to us to be sold or manufactured; and we thought that this would last forever. And so, perhaps, it might have lasted, if we had only taken proper means to keep it; but, in our folly, we were too careless even to insure our prosperity, and after the course of trade was turned away it would not come back again.

    And yet, if ever a nation had a plain warning, we had. If we were the greatest trading country, our neighbours were the leading military power in Europe. They were driving a good trade, too, for this was before their foolish communism (about which you will hear when you are older) had ruined the rich without benefiting the poor, and they were in many respects the first nation in Europe; but it was on their army that they prided themselves most. And with reason. They had beaten the Russians and the Austrians, and the Prussians too, in bygone years, and they thought they were invincible. Well do I remember the great review held at Paris by the Emperor Napoleon during the great Exhibition, and how proud he looked showing off his splendid Guards to the assembled kings and princes. Yet, three years afterwards, the force so long deemed the first in Europe was ignominiously beaten, and the whole army taken prisoners. Such a defeat had never happened before in the world’s history; and with this proof before us of the folly of disbelieving in the possibility of disaster merely because it had never fallen upon us, it might have been supposed that we should have the sense to take the lesson to heart. And the country was certainly roused for a time, and a cry was raised that the army ought to be reorganised, and our defences strengthened against the enormous power for sudden attacks which it was seen other nations were able to put forth. And a scheme of army reform was brought forward by the Government. It was a half-and-half affair at best; and, unfortunately, instead of being taken up in Parliament as a national scheme, it was made a party matter of, and so fell through. There was a Radical section of the House, too, whose votes had to be secured by conciliation, and which blindly demanded a reduction of armaments as the price of allegiance. This party always decried

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