The Angels of Mons - World War 1's Most Famous Legend
- Priyadarshini Kaul Mishra
- 02 February, 2022
- 2 mins ago

The Angels of Mons - World War 1's Most Famous Legend
How did the legend of World War 1’s most interesting paranormal account prove to be much more than a mere propaganda tool? Read on to know more about ‘The Angels of Mons’.
What was the pretext for this legend?
On the eve of August 23-24, 1914, around 21,000 British soldiers were poised to defend the Belgian city of Mons when the German army was planning to invade it. Mistakenly, the British army thought they would easily defend the city by defeating the Germans. But the battle of Mons proved a nightmare for the British as they suffered massive causalities and only a handful of British soldiers survived waiting to be massacred by the Germans.
Then how did the remaining British soldiers escape alive?
A paranormal tale was narrated first-hand by a survivor British soldier who said that they escaped the German soldiers after he summoned St. George, the patron saint of warriors. After that, the British phantom archers from the 1415 Battle of Agincourt emerged and the angelic archers held back the massive German army to rescue him and the remaining British soldier.
How did this news travel around?
London Evening News correspondent Arthur Machen soon publishes a fictional story, ‘The Bowmen’ inspired by the British soldiers’ remarkable flight. As Machen usually covered the actual wartime events, the readers were assumably convinced that this was an actual event. Though, the word, ‘The Bowmen’ read as more of a fictional work.
And the news goes viral in Victorian England
Upon asking for real pieces of evidence, Machen acknowledged that the story was fictional, but it was too late as by now the story had gone viral in entire Victorian England. It took a religious turn when the churches began to include ‘The Bowmen’ in the parish magazines. Priests even went on to publish the story as pamphlets and distribute it all over. The story grew as a legend and kept on snowballing though out the war emphasizing the divine intervention between the good and bad.
The propaganda tool is known as ‘The Angels of Mons’
The British government grossly underestimated the German power proved far more perilous than thought and as the war dragged on, ‘The Angels of Mons’ became perfect British propaganda to recruit and boost the morale of soldiers. Although the fable lived right through the war, historians use it to illustrate how easy it is to fool people in the name of sentiments.
Nevertheless, the Legend of The Angels of Mons remains as one of the most illustrious wartime references.