What were the Angels of Mons?
At the end of August 1914, after the Battle of Mons in Belgium, the British army had to retreat with heavy losses. Soon people in Britain were saying that supernatural help had saved the soldiers. Sometimes it was a single angel, sometimes a host of angels between the lines, sometimes an army of medieval archers that held back the German troops.
A story from the newspaper
On September 29, 1914, the writer Arthur Machen published the short story “The Bowmen” in The Evening News. In it, a soldier calls on Saint George, and the bowmen of Agincourt appear. Machen always insisted that he had made the story up. Even so, over the following months reports appeared that claimed to be genuine eyewitness accounts, spread through parish magazines and sermons.
What scholars say
In 2004, the historian David Clarke studied how the legend came about. He found no reliable reports dating from the time of the battle itself. The legend does, however, say a lot about what people in Britain needed in 1914: the feeling that God was on their side.
Episode on this topic
Further reading
- Arthur Machen: “The Bowmen,” The Evening News, September 29, 1914.
- David Clarke: The Angel of Mons. Phantom Soldiers and Ghostly Guardians, 2004.