The Battle Of Dorking

Author: George Tomkyns Chesney

In the middle years of the 19th century, Prussia embarked on a series of military adventures against Denmark, Austria and finally France which succeeded in uniting the German states under the Prussian crown, establishing a new military power in Europe, and destabilising the balance of power. As a result, stories began to appear stoking the fear of Germany as a way of lobbying for increased spending on the army and navy. One of the first and certainly the most famous of these was "The Battle of Dorking" by George Chesney, a Captain in the Royal Engineers who had grown concerned by the lack of preparedness of the British army and also by the speed of the Prussian army. His story, recounted long after the event, describes a lightning German invasion of Britain, which sweeps aside the ill-trained British forces at Dorking and goes on to conquer the entire country and split up the empire. Why it's on the list: A flood of invasion stories followed "The Battle of Dorking", serialised in newspapers that found that they increased sales in towns named as part of the invasion route. The general fear of war that was building up meant that similar stories appeared in France, America and even Germany. Through books like The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, invasion stories were transformed into what we recognise as spy stories. And the sub-genre also directly influenced The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, so that the stories also gave rise to alien invasion tales.