the Battle of Dorking 1871

[thejammedgatling]

No, not a new battle report from me, but a book I stumbled across while researching HG Wells. Many of the members of this forum may well be familiar with it. It is a real book about a fictitious invasion of Britain  (yes, by none other than the Prussians!!) in 1871 following the Franco Prussian War. Apparently this 'invasion literature' took the country by storm and many works followed in a similar vein, though Wells took it one step further.

Anyway, here's the Wikipedia link to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Battleofdorking.jpg

As the book is no longer in copyright you can download it for free from the net.  The PDF version is 13mb, or 6mb for black and white pdf from this link:

http://www.archive.org/details/battleofdorking00chesrich

If you get through the rather dry start (or skip) and into the guts of the battle report (the idea is that most of the regular forces are on foreign duty, leaving mostly territorials and volunteers to repel the invasion, with terrible consequences for Britain). VSF has been around..well ..since the Victorians.

Have a read. If nothing else you get to see Surrey take a terrible bashing. Again.

[Malamute]

Yes Thunuderchicken was advising me of this book which I had never heard of, but then again, I am not an educated man (Contrary to popular belief..)

It mirrors our own disasterous campaign in many ways

[argsilverson]

If you get through the rather dry start (or skip) and into the guts of the battle report (the idea is that most of the regular forces are on foreign duty, leaving mostly territorials and volunteers to repel the invasion, with terrible consequences for Britain). VSF has been around..well ..since the Victorians.

It sounds very interesting. I started dowloading it.

This is what I believe about the army in VSF in England during the invasion. Queen Vicky had to get any power she has to defend home.
So, the VSF army to repel the invasion should include: women units, garisson units, volunteers/territorials/militia and paramilitary units like police etc.

[answer_is_42]

Ah! Yes! The Battle of Dorking. A great read, though it's a shame we lose. I bought it along with 15 other Victorian era invasion stories in this book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tale-Great-1871-1914-Still-Come/dp/0815603584/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224507710&sr=8-2

It's got everything from The French invading Britain to airships fighting steam tanks, and many contemporary pictures of the above mentioned. If you're into VSF, BUY IT. Ahem.

[argsilverson]

It is an interesting site, you can find some old books there.
Thanks for the link.

Now back to VSF etc. Here is the link of what is available when you search their site for:
 Imaginary wars and battles
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Imaginary%20wars%20and%20battles%20AND%20collection%3Aamericana

it has some interesting books

[Gluteus Maximus]

It sounds very interesting. I started dowloading it.

This is what I believe about the army in VSF in England during the invasion. Queen Vicky had to get any power she has to defend home.
So, the VSF army to repel the invasion should include: women units, garisson units, volunteers/territorials/militia and paramilitary units like police etc.

This is a bit like my Darkest Africa/VSF games, in that I hardly have any British Regulars, just units of Sikhs, Territorials, ad-hoc colonists and Natives. I'm another who has not heard of this book, so I'll have to get it myself 

[argsilverson]

It sounds very interesting. I started dowloading it.

This is what I believe about the army in VSF in England during the invasion. Queen Vicky had to get any power she has to defend home.
So, the VSF army to repel the invasion should include: women units, garisson units, volunteers/territorials/militia and paramilitary units like police etc.

This is a bit like my Darkest Africa/VSF games, in that I hardly have any British Regulars, just units of Sikhs, Territorials, ad-hoc colonists and Natives. I'm another who has not heard of this book, so I'll have to get it myself 

If I understand well actually in africa there wwas not enough regulars. so they had to ship troops from India, South Africa or even England. So, to my idea, having units of sikhs, territorials, volunteers colonists [in out of africa karen blixey states that her husband joined the English-Danish unit] and natives plus KAR, is mostly historically correct. Even the germans had a handful of white regulars and the majority were africans. Regulars were shipped at a later stage (true for portugese at least]

If I am wrong I think that Plynkes might correct me.