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Before and after "The Battle of Dorking"
Author(s): I. F. Clarke
Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 33-46
Published by: SF-TH Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240574
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 33
I.F. Clarke
Before and After The Battle of Dorking
The most recent performance in the long-running drama of the war-to-come
is an all-American anticipation. Caspar Weinberger, a former secretary of
defense, joined with Peter Schweizer some time ago to produce the five
scenarios in The Next War (Regnery, 1996). Their book is a telling sign of the
interesting times in which we live. In marked contrast to most of their
fore-runners these last two hundred years, the authors do not concentrate on
one chosen enemy. Because they accept the unique role of their country as the
still dominant superpower in a world that technology has made one, they find
good reasons for warning their fellow Americans of the coming confrontations
with Mexico, Iran, Russia, Japan, and China. Their five projections combine
to send one urgent message to the people of the United States: defense
spending is no longer sufficient to meet the dangers they foresee between 1998
and 2008.
Preparedness is the theme of 7he Next War. That same need for the intelligent anticipation of future possibilities-external or internal dangers, new
weapons or new political alignments-is the leitmotif echoing through most of
the future-war stories that have followed from the unprecedented and extraordinary effect of Chesney's Battle of Dorking. The evidence shows that the
modern tale of the coming conflict dates from the May 1871 issue of Blackwood's Magazine; and that event offers a convenient opportunity to tell Ameri-
can readers that, for reasons which will soon become apparent, much of this
account has to deal with European affairs and, worse still, some parts will be
unavoidably Anglocentric.
The Letter Books for 1871 in the Blackwood's Archives in the National
Library of Scotland show that John Blackwood rejoiced frequently at the hectic
activity which kept the presses at work from May to late August in the printing
room in George Street, Edinburgh. It was the best business they had ever had.
And yet there is nothing to show that, although John Blackwood appreciated
the novelty and effectiveness of Chesney's story, he ever realised how The
Battle of Dorking had given a new model to futuristic fiction. There are,
however, indications in his correspondence with Chesney that suggest he had
perceived how the link between today and tomorrow helped to generate the
nightmare of the Chesney story. That total, necessary concentration on the
scenario of the coming conflict leads into a non-stop revelation of triumph or
disaster. The alarm bells ring in vain in future-war fiction, if the projected
action is not seen to follow directly from the dangers or the opportunities that
have always shaped contemporary thinking about the future of a nation or of
the whole world.
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34 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
The tale of the war-to-come is undoubtedly the most limited form of futur-
istic fiction. This tale of consequences has to develop through a projected
pattern of military operations and apposite comments so that readers cannot
fail to perceive how the end-victory or defeat-was present from the start in
yesterday's world before the projected war began. During the first phase in the
evolution of the new genre-from the French declaration of war on Great Brit-
ain in 1793 to the German victories in the War of 1870-propagandists and
patriots on both sides of the English Channel selected whatever literary form
they found most convenient for presenting their hopes or fears to their nations.
The French began proceedings with a play, Le jugement dernier des rois,
which opened in Paris on 17 October 1793, the day after the execution of
Marie-Antoinette.
That atrocious act signalled the end of the old order as clearly as the
declaration of the 1evee en masse two months earlier had confirmed the author-
ity of the Committee of Public Safety and had inaugurated the new epoch of
vast citizen armies. In 1793 France was at war with most European countries;
the Vendee had risen in revolt; the royalists had handed over Toulon to the
British; and Charlotte Corday had stabbed Marat to death. These threats to the
unity of the nation and to the survival of the revolution raised the most serious
questions about the future of France. The response of Marechal Sylvain in Le
jugement dernier des rois was true to the hopes of the French republicans and
to the nature of futuristic fiction. He composed a dramatic, exultant pre-view
of the last days of monarchy. There, already present at the inception of the
new mode, were two elements that have appeared time and again in these anticipations of future warfare: association, collaboration, or connivance with the
government of the day, evident in the note that the play had the support of the
Committee of Public Safety; and a preposterous self-assurance which tailored
the future to suit the propaganda. The peoples of the earth have risen up and
ended monarchical government everywhere. Sans-culottes from all the European nations transport the last kings to a desert island. Declamations and pronouncements proclaim the new republic: "In a word, France is a republic in
every sense of the word. The French have risen up. They said: We want no
more kings; and the throne vanished. They said once more: We want a repub-
lic, and we are now all republicans. " 1 The kings fight between themselves; a
volcano explodes; and fire descends from above. End of monarchy and end of
play.
The theme must have chimed with the general mood, and no doubt it found
favour with the Committee of Public Safety, since two more plays followed
on the same theme: Les potentats foudroys... ou la deportation des rois de
1 'Europe in 1793; and in the following year Jean Antoine Lebrun-Tossa staged
a British variant on the end of monarchy. This was La folie du roi George; ou
I 'ouverture du parlement d 'Angleterre-a hectic succession of republican statements which ended with the deposition of George III and the proclamation of
a republic by Charles James Fox, the most ardent supporter of the French
republicans in the British parliament. The last lines look forward to happy
times in the new British republic: "Let us meet with the French, since we are
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 35
worthy of them now that we have learnt to imitate them. They were our ene-
mies in the days when we were governed by tyrants. May a sacred friendship
unite us for ever, and may our example hasten that happy moment when all
the peoples of earth will be united in one farnily."
The British response to that time of troubles went forward on a broader
front. In the hour of greatest danger, when the veterans of Napoleon's Armee
de l'Angleterre were encamped along the Channel coast from Boulogne to
Dunkirk, there were plays that spoke defiance to the would-be French invaders
-The Invasion of England, 1803; The Armed Briton, 1806-and there were
occasional highly imaginative speeches and proclamations attributed to Bonaparte in The Anti-Gallican, which never failed to give the worst news about
the intentions of the French. These usually followed the lines of:
ORDERS OF BONAPARTE
TO THE
ARMY OF ENGLAND
Respecting their Conduct when they
shall have captured London, and
subdued Britain.
SOLDIERS!
In sending you to Britain I send heroes to cope with raw pedlars and shopkeepers. History bears witness that whenever French and British have met, that
British effeminacy has always yielded to Gallic prowess....2
These warnings of the terrors-to-come were rudimentary attempts to give a
realistic edge to straightforward propaganda. They were unsparing in their
dreadful revelations, as is apparent in the final paragraph of Bonaparte's
purported "Address to his Army encamped on the plains of Calais":
We will, O! Frenchmen, enjoy their riches, their power, their lands, their
palaces and their women. These are the splendid rewards I promise you. No
English bosom shall once again breathe British air-her commerce, her navy,
her riches shall be transferred to France. France then indeed will be mistress
of the world as she will be then of the ocean!!!
On one occasion, however, these brief pieces rose to the originality of a
three-page action story and came close to meeting all the requirements for a
tale of future warfare. This was the projection developed in "An Invasion
Sketch" which ran swiftly through the first week of Bonaparte's arrival in
London, from the atrocities of 10 Thermidor, year-to the final decrees of 17
Thermidor, year-when the Corsican ordered: "the name of London to be
changed for Bonapartopolis, and the appellation of the country to be altered
from Great Britain to that of La France insulaire; Edinburgh to take the name
of Lucienville, Dublin that of Massenopolis."3
The most original response, however, came from British and French engravers who did a thriving trade in supplying prints of vast troop transports-
rafts powered by windmills-supposed to be waiting for GB Day in Boulogne
harbour. This myth, which began in France, seems to be the first example of
a deception plan in the making. The word went (was passed?) round that the
eminent mathematician and inventor of descriptive geometry, Gaspard Monge,
had ordered the construction of vast rafts 700 yards long and 350 yards wide.
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36 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
It seemed a likely story, since Monge had been appointed minister of marine
in 1792; and the French print-makers hastened to exploit the opportunity for
patriotic fantasies by publishing the first artists' impressions of secret weapons.
These showed enormous rafts-windmills at the comers, filled with infantry
and artillery, or taking aboard squadrons of cavalry-all with inscriptions that
looked forward to the final conquest of the United KIngdom.4
British print-makers had the French prints copied, and they added captions
that presented: "The real view of the FRENCH RAFT as intended for the Invasion of ENGLAND. Drawn From the Original at Brest." Some included details
that had appeared in the French originals:
A new MACHINE (or RAFT) to cover (or protect)
the Landing of the FRENCH on their intended
INVASION OF ENGLAND.
Engraved after an Original Drawing made by a FRENCH PRISONER of WAR.
This machine is flat: 2 100 feet long, and 1 500 feet broad; has 500 Cannon
round it, of 36 and 48 pounders; at each end is (sic) two Wind Mills, which
turn Wheels in the Water at every point of the Wind to Navigate; in the middle
is a Fort enclosing Mortars, Perriers, etc. It carries 60 000 Men, Cavalry,
Infantry, and Artillery.
London: Published by Wm. HINTON, Engraver and Printer, Fetter Lane, Jan. 29, 1798
Asapmnismb . -A.FT saitl AiPARAAk a ;meu by d. PRENCH rtr r
:NVAclN OF ENGLAND.
eif~~~g 7111, ~~(V,sss a Dawis aa ?&Ms whos has md& hiEfcpso V m samu.)
.
...
'._.....
T
c
w
s
o
s
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 37
. .@ , \~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.. .............
month, as they followed the course of the war of the prints against the Corsican up to the brief interlude of the Treaty of Amiens. Gillray celebrated the
fourteen months of that peace treaty (March 1802 to May 1803) with a notorious satire, "The First Kiss These Ten Years.' It went the rounds of the Euro-
pean print-makers and gave great amusement to Napoleon. Gillray's most
effective essays in patriotic propaganda, however, appeared in a series of
elaborate prints, famous in their time, devoted to the "Consequences of a
Successful French Invasion." All of the plates carried a derisive texct which
enlarged on the horror of each scene:
No m, Plate 2d. Me teach de English Republicans to work.
Description: A row of English People in Tatters and wooden Shoes, hoeing a
field of Garlic. A tall raw-boned Frenchman with a long Queue behind, like a
Negro Driver with a long Waggoner's Whip in each Hand, walking by their
side. The People very sulky, but tolerably obedient and tractable for so short
a Time....
Although the print war went on until the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the
various projections of the invasion-to-come tailed off rapidly after the decisive
naval engagement off Trafalgar (20 October 1805). Nelson's victory ruled out
the possibility that a sea-borne force could ever leave Boulogne; and, as Admiral Mahan would note later on, their mastery at sea allowed the British to
establish bridgeheads wherever they chose on the coasts of Europe. An-d then
the Emperor met his Waterloo about 8 pm on 18 June 1815, when the British
squares repulsed the last assault of the Old Guard against the allied positions
in front of Mont S. Jean.
What had the tale of the war-to-come achieved during the 20 years of
fighting the Republic and the Empire? The answer has to be: very little-no
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38 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
1 - 1~~~~~~~1
--,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
..
..er
..-_
more than a brief exchange of some unremarkable plays, a few minor pieces
of fiction, and a number of original, often brilliant satirical prints. That
comparative failure in response contrasts with the remarkable flowering of the
new prophetic fiction during the first twenty years of the new century: A.K.
Ruh, Guirlanden um die Urnen der Zukuft (1800 ); Restif de la Bretonne, Les
Posthumes (1802 ); Cousin de Grainville, Le Dernier Homme (1805); Le Duc
de Levis, Les Voyages de Kang-hi (1810); Julius von Voss, Ini: ein Roman aus
dem ein und zwanzigstein Jahrhundert (1810); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
(1818).5 The reasons for this difference in quality and originality start from the
fact that these authors wrote from within an established practice of speculation
about things-to-come which goes back to the European success of Sebastien
Mercier's L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante (1771). Fiction was the area
where the imagination was free to wander at will. For the business of dealing
with everyday realities, however, it was reckoned that nothing could compare
with the tracts and pamphlets which had long been the most favoured means
of presenting arguments about political and military matters. The immense
influence of the future-think ideas presented in, for example, Tom Paine's
Common Sense and the Abbe Sieyes' Que'est-ce que le Tiers Etat? guaranteed
that the tract would continue to be the dominant form for the day-to-day debates about church and state, the monarchy and the people, the armed forces
and the enemy. And so, year after year during the long struggle with the
French, British writers poured out tracts and pamphlets by the hundred to
advise, warn, or exhort their countrymen about the future of their country:
Britons Beware: The Tender Mercies of Napoleon in Egypt!, England in Danger and Britons Asleep!, The Prospect; or a Brief View of the Evils which the
Common People of England are likely to suffer, by a successful Invasion from
the French.
It will be evident that, for want of a satisfactory narrative mode, there
could be little variation in the time-honoured way of arguing the case for new
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BA TTLE OF DORKING 39
naval vessels or for radical changes in the army system. In 1844, when the
Prince de Joinville wrote in his Notes sur les forces navales de la France that
the new steamships had greatly increased the chances of a successful sea-borne
invasion of the United Kingdom, there was a flood of pamphlets: On the Defence of England, The Defences of London, The Perils of Portsmouth and so
on. The nearest any of them ever came to fiction was a brief passage in The
Defenceless State of Great Britain (1850) by Sir Francis Head. There, in "Part
IV: On the Capture of London by a French Army," the author described the
course of a French landing, their advance, and their successful attack on Lon-
don. His analysis posed serious communication problems: the text (410 pages)
was for specialists only. The lay reader would have to wait another two decades before Chesney invented a narrative that revealed in the most dramatic
manner possible the price to be paid for neglecting the armed forces.
Until 1871, then, enterprise and originality were only to be found beyond
the British Isles. First, in France, where Louis Geoffroy invented the new
mode of the alternative history in his Napoleon et la conquete du monde 18121832: Histoire de la Monarchie universelle (1836). It was a Bonapartist mighthave-been dream of the Emperor victorious in Russia, conqueror of Great
Britain and of Asia, and finally of the whole world, when the presidents, monarchs, generals, and rulers of all the nations in the Americas accept him as
their Universal Monarch. The story remains a stupendous achievement, analysed ably and at length in Pierre Versins' Encyclopedie (360-66).
The major prizes for achievement in the first phase of the future-war story
have to go to the United States, and to two writers from the Old Dominion:
Nathaniel B. Tucker (Professor of Law at William and Mary, 1833-51) for
The Partisan Leader, secretly printed in Washington in 1836; and Edmund
Ruffin (pioneer agriculturist and publisher of the influential Farmers' Register)
for his Anticipations of the Future, to serve as Lessons for the Present Time,
published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1860. How was it that two American
writers succeeded in establishing a reasonable narrative form for their tales of
the coming civil war, when the Europeans achieved so little-even though the
British and French had lived through a great land war that raged from Moscow
to Madrid and a naval war that saw engagements at the Nile, in the Atlantic,
and as far north as Copenhagen and the Baltic?
In war and in future-war stories the objective decides everything. As in
war, so in fiction: the scale of the projected action increases in keeping with
the range of the story. Because the accident of the English Channel reduced
the options for British and French writers to the winner-take-all theme of
invasion, their anticipations were necessarily limited to the success or failure
of the initial landings and the subsequent British repulse of the invaders or the
French seizure of London.
When two American writers, better informed and far more intelligent than
their European counterparts, chose to contemplate the awesome possibility of
a war between the States, their stories had to take in a swathe of social interests and historical associations in order to deal adequately with the Constitution
of the United States and the different interests of North and South. Nathaniel
Tucker took on this task in an over-long, meandering story, stronger on ro-
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40 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
mance than on action, and did not examine the issue of a civil war in all its
ramificiations. So, the first prize has to go to Edmund Ruffin: for originality,
since he secured great flexibility for his narrative by telling his tale in
"Extracts of Letters from an English Resident in the United States, to the
London Times, from 1864 to 1870"; and for the completeness of his history,
since his narrative covered most major matters from the social and political
causes of the projected disruption to engagements on land and at sea.
Although Ruffin's Anticipations of the Future dealt well enough with the
consequences of a civil war, it proved to be the last of the old-style tales of
close-quarter infantry engagements, small armies and short casualty lists. The
American Civil War and, more especially for the Europeans, the FrancoGerman War of 1870 changed all thinking about warfare. Mass armies, rifled
artillery, entrenchments, troop transportation by train, telegraphic communications, primitive ironclads, and the strength of the defensive shown by the rifle
fire at Saint-Privat and at Gettysburg-these changes imposed a general re-
think. The new practices and new weaponry of technological warfare found an
immediate response in tales of the war-to-come. For the Europeans, and especially for the British, the spectacular and unexpected German victories in 1870
signalled an all-change in political alignments: the new Reich had replaced
France as the dominant military and political power in Europe. Moreover, the
victories of the Prussian reservists had shown how nation-wide conscription
was the only way to survive in the future.
In the United Kingdom these lessons were digested in innumerable articles,
tracts and books about the defence of the nation and the future of the army.
The major newspapers, journals, and magazines reported at length on the
course of the War of 1870 and on the prospects for the British in the changed
Europe of 1871. Out of that turmoil of arguments and proposals came Chesney's "Battle of Dorking"-a short story and the first item in Blackwood's
Magazine for May 1871. It touched off a chain reaction of stupefaction, alarm,
and such indignation in the United Kingdom that the prime minister, William
Gladstone, felt he had to speak out against the "alarmism" of "a famous article
called The Battle of Dorking." How this came about is a complex story about
the man, his moment, and his method. Lieut. Chesney (later General Sir
George Tomkyns Chesney) left England in 1850 to begin a military career as
an officer in the Bengal Engineers. His outstanding competence earned him
rapid promotion: distinguished service as brigade major in the siege of Delhi;
appointed Director of Public Works in 1860; and in 1870 recalled to England
to found the Royal Indian Civil Engineering College in Middlesex. Up to that
time he had published nothing but an article and a few reviews in Blackwood's; and then, on 8 February 1871 when the whole country was discussing
the current programme of army reforms, he wrote to John Blackwood that "a
useful way of bringing home to the country the necessity for a thorough
reorganisation might be a tale-after the manner of Erckmann-Chatriandescribing a successful invasion of England, and the collapse of our power and
commerce in consequence."6
As a first-time writer of fiction Chesney was doubly fortunate. His experience of warfare and military organisation ensured that he would not fudge the
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 41
details of the battles he had to describe; and, even more important, his decision to use the fiction of Erckmann-Chatrian as the model for his narrative
gave him an ideal means for telling his story. He borrowed several major
features from The Conscript (1864) and Waterloo (1865). First, the narrator
who sees all and tells all. In the French stories he is a conscript who experiences the hazards and disasters of the Napoleonic Wars from 1810 onwards.
In The Battle of Dorking he becomes the Volunteer, a half-trained soldier in
the wrong military system. Second, Chesney learnt from the French originals
how to distance the narrator from the events he relates by telling the story long
after the German conquest. Interested readers should compare, for instance,
the similarities between the opening paragraphs in The Conscript and The
Battle of Dorking. In The Conscript the story begins:
Those people who did not see the glory of the Emperor Napoleon during the years
1810, 1811 and 1812, can never know to what a height the power of a man may
rise. When the Emperor passed through Champagne, Lorraine, or Alsace, people
who were hard at work at the vintage or harvesting would leave everything to go
and see him.
Chesney improved on this, since he made his narrator an old man who begins:
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.
From that ominous start Chesney goes on to lament the past glories, wealth
and power of a defeated nation like any grandfather recalling the good old
days as they used to be. Indeed, Chesney does better than Erckmann-Chatrian.
In his persona as the young Volunteer, he is able to recount the sad history of
the national disaster in a series of brilliantly observed episodes; and, when he
moves into the reflective mode of the grandfather, he comments on the failures
and defeats with all the benefit of hindsight.
Chesney's most successful device was the presentation of the German invaders, since the narrator always keeps his eye on the increasingly desperate
situation of the British forces. The narrator is forever looking over his shoulder at the advancing enemy, as the Volunteer and his comrades march and
counter-march, badly equipped, half-trained, and uncertain of their role. For
most of the action the enemy are off-stage-always victorious, an irresistible
force which approaches nearer and near-as the defence forces are for ever
retreating. On the two climactic set-piece occasions, when Chesney turns his
attention to the German troops, they dominate both episodes-by their marked
superiority as soldiers and by their contempt for their half-trained enemy.
These are the moments when Chesney begins to move towards the Quod erat
demonstrandum of his conclusion; and in the final, eloquent paragraphs the
grandfather piles on the agony of recollecting happier days in a miserable old
age: "the bitterest part of our reflection is that all this misery and decay might
have been so easily prevented and that we brought it about ourselves by our
own shortsighted recklessness." The rich were idle and luxurious, Chesney
wrote in his last paragraph; and the poor begrudged the cost of defence:
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42 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
Politics had become a mere bidding for Radical votes, and those w
led the nation stooped rather to pander to the selfishness of the
the popular cry which denounced those who would secure the de
by the enforced arming of its manhood, as interfering with the
people.
During the first week of May 1871, as Chesney's story went the rounds of the
subscribers, the clubs, and casual readers on the bookstalls, there was an
immediate and absolute division of opinion. For many the final disaster came
as a condign punishment for a feckless nation; but for even more it was an
outrageous, unmerited judgment and a betrayal of their country. Suddenly, for
the first time in fiction, a short story became a matter of intense debate for a
nation. The issue was conscription. If the British could have created a vast
army on the European scale, they would be more than ready for any invading
force; and here Chesney had to give a hostage to fortune by arranging for the
fleet to be far away in foreign waters at the time of the projected German
landings. The "absence of the fleet" was a fictional device that left the British
Isles open to invasion. The logic of Chesney's story was arranged to show that
conscription had to be the answer to the problems of living with the new military power.7
There is a book waiting to be written about the history of Chesney's Battle
of Dorking. It would begin with the first ranging round from the not-so-silent
majority. On 8 May 1871, within days of the appearance of the May issue of
Blackwood's Magazine, the London Times discharged a leading article at the
anonymous author of "The Battle of Dorking": "It is really hard that the
key-note of a new panic should be struck at the very moment we are doing our
best, at no small cost of money and controversy, to put an end to old ones"
(7). At that date the editor of the Times was the great John Thaddeus Delane,
who always kept a close eye on his foreign correspondents and leader-writers.
His immense experience seems to have told him that the success of the Blackwood's invasion story was the end of the venerable tradition of argument by
tracts. The new era of the highly motivated short story had begun; for Delane
commissioned one of the best-known journalists of the day, Abraham Hayward, to tell the tale of what really happened after the last stand at Dorking.
This was "The Second Armada (A Chapter of Future History)," which opened
in the Times on 22 June 1871 with another blast from a leading article:
One imaginary history is, as far as argument goes, as good as another, for none
does more than express what the the author thinks may happen, or might have
happened, and the very nature of the literary artifice precludes any serious reading.
We beg, therefore, to present our readers with a sketch of an Invasion of England
which, though less elaborate in description than the Battle of Dorking, has quite as
much claim to be considered a just view of the event of such an enterprise. The
Battle of Dorking has given a new thrill, not unmixed with a sensation of gloomy
pleasure, to our alarmists. (9)
The entries for 1871 in the Blackwood's Archives show that future-war
themes had become a new element in the calculation of publishers: British
readers began buying and kept on buying, as new editions of the May issue
poured out. On 25 May Blackwood's received a terse telegram from their
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 43
London office: "Reprint five hundred magazine. We have seventy-five left also
complete Battle of Dorking at once for publication next week." That was the
start of the most profitable pamphlet editions of Chesney's story; and three
weeks later John Blackwood sent Chesney a cheque for ?250 for the first reprints, and he added the good news that the money was "for just 50 000, and
as our sales are now materially over 80 000 there is a pleasant prospect in
store."8 The interest of readers overseas was just as great-for reasons that
had nothing to do with the defence of the United Kingdom. From New Zea-
land to Toronto there was universal astonishment over a story that described
the collapse and disappearance of the dominant superpower of that time. As
the new telegraphic systems spread the news of Chesney's story throughout
Europe, and further afield to Australia, Canada, and the United States, the
demand for the original version led to translations into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish, plus two pirated (?) US editions, two
reprints in Canada, one in Melbourne, and one in New Zealand-all within
months of the original printing.9 At the same time there was a rolling barrage
from the opposition in the United Kingdom-a succession of some twenty
counter-blasts, all presenting their very different versions of the Chesney sto
on the lines of The Other Side at the Battle of Dorking, What Happened after
the Battle of Dorking, The Battle of Dorking: A Myth. By July Chesney's invasion story had received the supreme award of a music hall song, The Battle of
Dorking: A Dream of John Bull's, words by Frank W. Green, Esq. and the
music arranged by Carl Bernstein. The chorus, to the tune of The British
Grenadiers, spoke of defiance to the foe and of final victory:
Then like a mighty whirlwind the British Army came,
Then came the roar of battle, the cannon smoke and flame.
Above the din of battle rose some hearty ringing cheers,
As driving back the foe were seen our British Volunteers.
Then shout hurrah! for Britain, boys, her Line and grenadiers,
And three times three for England's pride, her gallant Volunteers.
Chesney's Battle of Dorking, which is about to see yet another resurrection in
the POPULAR FICTION series of Oxford University Press, must be the most
talked-about and imitated short story in the history of printing. It certainly
attracted more immediate attention than that other contender for immediate
notoriety, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Although it vanished from the lists
of books-in-print in 1873, it has gone on re-appearing ever since. The overseas
reception of Chesney's story points to some of the reasons for this remarkable
record of survival. One of the earliest comments on The Battle of Dorking
appeared in the "Correspondance de Londres" in the May 1871 number of the
Revue Britannique (217), where the editor reported from London that:
This story is enjoying an extraordinary success. The Revue Britannique has to
translate it, and I am sending you herewith the fifteenth edition. There is such an
air of verisimilitude about this little tale of the future that one would think it is
about what happened yesterday rather than about what will happen tomorrow.
In the June number Le Bataille de Dorking appeared (279-337) without
introduction or comment. The story spoke for itself. The same thoughts occurred to the editor of a German periodical, Die Grenzboten, who introduced
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44 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
the first instalment of Die Schlacht bei Dorking in the May 1871 issue (870
-79):
This is such a significant story that we present it in translation, without regard to
the entirely mistaken opening account in which the author represented Germany as
eager for war and for territory ..... because it contains a number of truths about the
British situation and because it is written in an unsually attractive manner.
Another German periodical, Die Allgemeine Zeitung, went even further and
made fun of the Chesney story. In a special supplement (Nr 154, 3 June, 2765
-68) the editor had much fun in printing "A Special Message from John Michael Trutz-Baumwoll, Anglo-German politician of the future to HRH the
German Emperor. " This elaborate take-off was another innovation in the newstyle tale of the war-to-come. It would be seen more frequently in the eighties
and nineties, when British, French, or German propagandists would transpose
tales from the other side to their own national settings. The British response
to this first German exercise in Schadenfreude shows how thoughts of mutual
profitability had already entered into the international gamesmanship of the
new future-war stories. Five days after German readers had read the special
message from Trutz-Baumwoll, the Pall Mall Gazette came out with a wry
column on:
A German View of England's Future
The idea of a German invasion of England as developed in 'The Battle of Dorking'
has now been taken up by the German press, and in its number of Saturday last the
Allgemeine Zeitung publishes a facetious letter... to the German Emperor, in which
the latter is recommended to conquer England, as William of Normandy and
William of Orange did before him. Herr Trutz-Baumwoll says that, as a German,
he warmly desires the extension of the German Empire and of the glories of his
race, while as an English citizen he is no less mindful of the real interests of his
adopted country, and that he is convinced that the two objects might both be
attained by the same means.
By the end of September sales of the Battle of Dorking pamphlet editions had
gone into a terminal decline. By April 1872, when Chesney received his last
cheque from John Blackwood, the British had begun to forget the panic and
alarm of The Dorking episode; but the story lived on in the public memory as
a model for would-be historians of the war-to-come. The French displayed a
particular admiration for the Chesney story. As their Batailles imaginaires
multiplied in keeping with the great expansion of future-war fiction in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, there were occasional respectful gestures to
their British model. For example, Augustin Garcon edited a series of translations from English originals in the eighteen-eighties; and in 1885 he introduced
La Bataille de Londres en 188- (his translation of The Siege of London, 1884)
with a tribute to The Battle of Dorking. He went on to give the French view
of future-war fiction:
The Siege of London belongs to that kind of publications in which the British seem
to be the masters, especially since the War of 1870. These can be classified under
the heading of Imaginary Battles. Their objective is either to criticise the actions
of the government, or to influence public opinion enough to oblige the government
to prepare for possible dangers or for probable international disputes; and to bring
about an increase and improvement in the defences of a country.10
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BEFORE AND AFTER THE BATTLE OF DORKING 45
Time presses and word-count warns that this history is reaching the length
of the old military tracts. What remains to be said, and may be said another
time, is that the short story continued to be the favoured form for European
future- war stories until the eighteen-nineties. Then the new mass press demanded serial stories to keep their readers interested, and the increasing chau-
vinism of European readers led to a sad falling away from the urbane standards Chesney had set. By 1900 the tale of "the next great war" had become
a minor publishing industry in Britain and in Germany, as more and more
propagandists and patriots described the war they all expected. The new military technologies-flying machines, submarines, even armoured fighting vehi-
cles-began to appear in future-war stories, notably in the most original anticipations of H.G. Wells. In a succession of famous stories he foresaw how the
perfection of weaponry would endanger the entire planet. Microbes save humankind from a Martian take-over in 7he War of the Worlds (1898), whereas
reckless imprudence and a total lack of restraint lead inevitably to the end of
civilisation in The War in the Air (1908). Although Wells's future world of
1956 seized on the second chance he offered after the atomic war in The
World Set Free (1914), the major European nations pressed on from one accident to another to the long foretold Great War. The final irony take us back
to Chesney. Had the British accepted his argument for conscription in 1871,
the offensive power of a vastly enlarged British Expeditionary Force might
well have prevented the outbreak of war in 1914.
The American people soon discovered that no nation can be an island unto
itself, when the new submarines went to war in the manner Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle had described in his prophetic short story, "Danger," in 1914. President
Wilson protested against the sinking of the Lusitania, 7 May 1915, and by the
end of that year it had become evident to many Americans that their country
might be drawn into the European conflict. Suppose a great power conquered
all Europe, assembled a vast fleet and sailed westwards to the United States.
What then? This was the Chesney syndrome of 1871 transferred to Manhattan.
One response to that nightmare came from a great American publisher, George
Haven Putnam. The United States, he argued, had to increase its armed
forces. In his introduction to America Fallen, an invasion-of-America story,
he held up Chesney's Battle of Dorking as an admirable model and as a means
of looking at the future of the United States. He wrote in his long introduction:
Nearly half a century ago Sir George Chesney brought into print a bit of prophetic
history entitled The Battle of Dorking. There was even as far back as the late
sixties increasing apprehension with certain groups of Englishmen in regard to the
designs of their big neighbour across the North Sea. At that time Germany had
practically no fleet, or at least no fleet which Englishmen needed to take into
account. But military leaders like Sir George Chesney, who certainly could not be
accused of hysterical imagination, pictured to themselves that it might be possible,
nevertheless, to transport into England, during some temporary absence of the
Channel Fleet, a scientifically organized army strong enough to overcome any
forces which could be brought together from the small posts of Regulars and from
the Militia. The Battle of Dorking is the work of a man who was a great staff
officer and an accomplished student of military history. The author possessed also
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46 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
dramatic power and literary skill, and his prophetic story has been compared to the
famous account given by De Foe of the plague in London.
The Battle of Dorking sold by the thousands, and the influence that it exerted
upon the thinking power of patriotic Englishmen was sufficient to bring into
existence the Volunteer Force, a force the purpose of which was the defence of
England. The methods under which the patriotism of English citizens has since
been utilized for defensive organization have changed somewhat in the later
decades, but the Territorials who are now sturdily defending the Empire in the
trenches of Northern France may be considered as the direct result of the forcible
arraignment by Chesney of the policy of leaving England undefended.
The author of America Fallen is a leading member of the New York Bar, who
has made a careful study of the possibilities of defence for his country and has
given special attention to the needs of the American Navy; and he has presented
in America Fallen a similar bit of prophetic history .... America Fallen is a very
cleverly presented bit of possible history, and the book makes an appeal for the
realization on the part of American citizens of the risk of invasion, which is very
similar to the appeal made in The Battle of Dorking.' 1
NOTES.
1. Mar6chal, Sylvain, Le Jugement dernier des rois. Prophetie en un Acte, en prose
(Paris, 1793), 9. Other plays were: Anon., Les Prisonniers francais en Angleterre
(Paris, 1797) and J. Coriande Mittie, La Descente en Angleterre (Paris, 1798).
2. The Anti-Gallican, 1804, 212-14.
3. The Anti-Gallican//invasion.
4. For a full account of the invasion plays and the rafts see: H.F.B. Wheeler &
A.M. Broadley, Napoleon and the Invasion of England (London: John Lane, 1908).
5. For a full discussion of these early stories see the excellent account in: Paul
Alkon, Origins of Futuristic Fiction (Athens and London, University of Georgia Press,
1987).
6. Mrs Gerald Porter, John Blackwood, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood,
1898), 299.
7. Chesney's choice of Germany was in no sense political, since Great Britain and
the new Reich were on, and remained on, good terms until the Germans decided to
build a great fleet in 1898. Chesney had no choice: after the elimination of France in
1870 Germany was the only power that could conceivably attempt an invasion.
8. Blackwood MSS, National Library of Scotland: see respectively (1) MS 30022
No. 218, 25 May 1871; and (2) MS 30, 364, 15 July 1871.
9. Although the various entries in the Letter Books for 1871 in the Blackwood's
Archives (National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh) cover the main business of publishing from May to December 1871, there are gaps in the correspondence and in the
instructions to the printers. For instance, there is nothing to indicate the total number
of the reprint editions of the May issue. Amedie Pichot, editor of the Revue Britannique, sent the journal a copy of "the fifteenth edition" in May 1871 (see p 21). Were
there later editions? Again, the suspicion that most of the translations were pirated,
especially the American and Canadian reprints, seems to be confirmed by the absence
of correspondence on copyright arrangements save for the French translation published
by Plon. Postgraduate students with a thesis in mind will find that the entries in the
National Union Catalogue and in the Catalogue of Printed Books in the British Library
together provide a lengthy list of reprints and translations.
10. Augustin Gargon, Les Batailles imaginaires: La bataille de Londres en 188-
(Paris: H. Charles-Lavauzelle, 1885), 7-8.
11. George Haven Putnam, introduction to J. Bernard Walker's America Fallen
(London and Edinburgh: Ballantyne. 1915), 1-10.
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