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The Angels of Mons
Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh novelist, short story writer, journalist and actor. He wrote horror, fantasy and supernatural fiction. His love of Celtic, Roman and medieval history is seen in many of his stories. This collection of stories about World War I includes The bowmen -- The soldiers' rest -- The monstrance -- The dazzling light -- The bowmen and other noble ghosts, by "The Londoner."
48 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1915
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About the author
Arthur Machen
1,136 books1,022 followersArthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 8, 2015
Apparently, there was a legend during World War I that ghostly archers from the Battle of Agincourt materialized to defend a retreating British army from the forces of the Kaiser on the fields of France.
Arthur Machen here debunks the story, claiming that it derives from his own short story, which was published in a contemporary newspaper. The story, reprinted here, may have caused British hearts to swell with pride at the time, but the modern reader cannot be expected to give two shits about it. Its just a jingoistic little vignette and not a particularly interesting one. The same can be said for some similar short “stories” that are published here as well.
Arthur Machen here debunks the story, claiming that it derives from his own short story, which was published in a contemporary newspaper. The story, reprinted here, may have caused British hearts to swell with pride at the time, but the modern reader cannot be expected to give two shits about it. Its just a jingoistic little vignette and not a particularly interesting one. The same can be said for some similar short “stories” that are published here as well.
fic-guided
June 9, 2020War was declared between Britain and Germany in August 1914. A British Expeditionary Force was sent across the Channel. Jingoism on the home front was at hysteria level. The BEF was outnumbered and ordered to defend positions against the invading Germans which they had no time to fortify. Theirs not to reason why. Seasoned regulars – who had shot everything from ‘fuzzy wuzzies’ to ‘Johnny Boer’ (conscription had not yet cranked up) – were accepted into the force, and with wry humour christened themselves ‘the Old Contemptibles’. At Mons, on the Belgium border, the BEF held their ground before effecting an orderly retreat. It was a defeat but, like Dunkirk in the Second World War, a glorious one.
Arthur Machen, a venerable writer with a strong line in finely drawn supernatural horror fiction, had been, along with the rest of the nation, gripped by newsreel and newspaper coverage. He wrote a short story for the London Evening News of 29 September 1914, called ‘The Bowmen’. It features a ‘Latin scholar’ on the front line, facing the Teutonic foe, who invokes the spirit of Henry V. And:
as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal crying, ‘Array, array, array!’
Enter Harry’s archers. They help stem the Hun Horde – some of whom, to the mystification of the invader, have arrow wounds when their corpses are examined. Machen’s text is laced with the ‘buckets of eyeballs’ propaganda about German beastliness which had been whipped up by the British authorities to induce the necessary blood lust among a population who, in summer 1914, could not quite work out why a world war was necessary or, if it was, why they should lead the fight. In ‘The Bowmen’, Machen has a vivid scene in which German soldiers crucify a baby on a church door. ‘The baby was only three years old. He died calling piteously for “mummy” and “daddy”.’ Swine.
The newspaper did not clearly identify ‘The Bowmen’ as a work of fiction. It yielded Machen very little money but, in the weeks after it appeared, he was asked many times (mainly by clergymen) for the right to reprint or recite it. It merged with a confluent stream of war propaganda reporting that, during the Battle of Mons, British soldiers had seen not bowmen but ‘angels’ assisting their heroic efforts. It has been suggested that this nonsense was encouraged by ‘black arts’ propagandists in the war ministry.
Machen reissued his story ten months later, plumping it out to novel length with news reports, as The Angels of Mons. His original story had not mentioned angels. As an author (he penned some of the best ghost stories in the language) he was certainly susceptible to elements of the supernatural, but he loathed formal religion. As he wrote in his introduction to The Angels of Mons:
Well, I have long maintained that on the whole the average church, considered as a house of preaching, is a much more poisonous place than the average tavern . . .
Nonetheless, the Mons Angels lodged in the public mind as an enduring war legend, even if the troops serving in the British Army always had their doubts about receiving angelic reinforcements. When I was doing my national service in 1960, at a camp in Aldershot called ‘Mons’, one of the favourite complaints about something that had gone wrong was that it was ‘the biggest fuck-up’ (‘cock up’ if ladies were present) ‘since Mons’.
Arthur Machen, a venerable writer with a strong line in finely drawn supernatural horror fiction, had been, along with the rest of the nation, gripped by newsreel and newspaper coverage. He wrote a short story for the London Evening News of 29 September 1914, called ‘The Bowmen’. It features a ‘Latin scholar’ on the front line, facing the Teutonic foe, who invokes the spirit of Henry V. And:
as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal crying, ‘Array, array, array!’
Enter Harry’s archers. They help stem the Hun Horde – some of whom, to the mystification of the invader, have arrow wounds when their corpses are examined. Machen’s text is laced with the ‘buckets of eyeballs’ propaganda about German beastliness which had been whipped up by the British authorities to induce the necessary blood lust among a population who, in summer 1914, could not quite work out why a world war was necessary or, if it was, why they should lead the fight. In ‘The Bowmen’, Machen has a vivid scene in which German soldiers crucify a baby on a church door. ‘The baby was only three years old. He died calling piteously for “mummy” and “daddy”.’ Swine.
The newspaper did not clearly identify ‘The Bowmen’ as a work of fiction. It yielded Machen very little money but, in the weeks after it appeared, he was asked many times (mainly by clergymen) for the right to reprint or recite it. It merged with a confluent stream of war propaganda reporting that, during the Battle of Mons, British soldiers had seen not bowmen but ‘angels’ assisting their heroic efforts. It has been suggested that this nonsense was encouraged by ‘black arts’ propagandists in the war ministry.
Machen reissued his story ten months later, plumping it out to novel length with news reports, as The Angels of Mons. His original story had not mentioned angels. As an author (he penned some of the best ghost stories in the language) he was certainly susceptible to elements of the supernatural, but he loathed formal religion. As he wrote in his introduction to The Angels of Mons:
Well, I have long maintained that on the whole the average church, considered as a house of preaching, is a much more poisonous place than the average tavern . . .
Nonetheless, the Mons Angels lodged in the public mind as an enduring war legend, even if the troops serving in the British Army always had their doubts about receiving angelic reinforcements. When I was doing my national service in 1960, at a camp in Aldershot called ‘Mons’, one of the favourite complaints about something that had gone wrong was that it was ‘the biggest fuck-up’ (‘cock up’ if ladies were present) ‘since Mons’.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2019
This story is interesting in form if not in content. It's told in first person perspective, but is passive as the narrator is at first reltating what he did only obliquely in the form of an editorial about the actual story. The second and third parts are the story but as a journalist might relate it at a bar - "this happened as observed by so-and-so, as she told to so-and-so who told it to me". You can draw the line quite directly from this work to Lovecraft.
Thanks to Librivox for having public domain audiobooks.
Thanks to Librivox for having public domain audiobooks.
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October 4, 202328. The Angels of Mons, by Arthur Machen. This odd little tale – or collection of very short stories by the cult writer of supernatural yarns – can be tricky to track down and I'm still not sure I've read the version as seen by Sutherland. The 'Angels' piece itself first appeared in the London Evening News in 1914 and seems to have sparked a myth re British WWI soldiers seeing off the Germans with the aid of St George's ghostly bowmen. Expect Latin and quirkiness 6/10 #SutherlandChallenge #Books
December 31, 2018
The introduction and other writings by Machen, trying to convince people this wasn’t a true story, is as interesting as the story itself. Very simple, short, ghost stories, unlike other Machen stories I’ve read. They take place during World War I; Machen writes that he was inspired to write at least one of them (The Bowmen) after reading about a particularly brutal retreat.
I can see how it would have captured people’s imaginations during the First World War. Worth reading just for that.
I can see how it would have captured people’s imaginations during the First World War. Worth reading just for that.
March 20, 2021
Historierne er rimelig gode, men er desværre præget af en problematisk nationalistisk propaganda hvor tyskerne fremstilles som bestialske mens briterne er helte. Meget interesant er tilgengæld forordet hvor det beskrives hvordan mange troede at den fiktive historie/novelle om spøgelser og mirakler der kæmpede i krigen, var sande historier og hvordan mange nægtede at acceptere det når forfatteren til historien fortalte dem at det var ren fiktion.
March 30, 2020
This was not my cup of tea. I found it a bit ridiculous.
September 29, 2023
rather uninspiring supernatural tales, set in and around the trenches of the first world war -- all very rah-rah honest Tommies by jingo St George isn't the Boche evil, but that's only to be expected given when it was written.
the real interest here lies in Machen's introduction, showing his obvious frustration at how his fictional story of mediaeval archers saving a group of British soldiers from destruction by a German advance quickly became a widespread urban legend.
the real interest here lies in Machen's introduction, showing his obvious frustration at how his fictional story of mediaeval archers saving a group of British soldiers from destruction by a German advance quickly became a widespread urban legend.
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November 20, 2025The historical significance of this work is something of a marvel however short it may be. While not as good as the hammer horror esque 'The Great God Pan', it reminds one of how important and powerful writing is especially in the hardest of times.
April 26, 2015
Very good. I'm glad I discovered Arthur Machen.
November 30, 2016
Utterly unmemorable.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews