The Bowmen Flashcards
by Arthur Machen — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: The Bowmen
What historical event provides the setting for "The Bowmen"?
The Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, based on the British retreat from the Battle of Mons in August 1914 during World War I.
What dire military situation do the British soldiers face at the start of the story?
About a thousand English soldiers hold a critical salient against 300,000 German troops; if the angle is crushed, the entire Allied left flank would be turned and a second Sedan would follow.
How do the soldiers initially respond to the relentless German bombardment?
They joke about the shells, give them funny names, place bets on them, and greet them with scraps of music-hall songs, maintaining morale even as their numbers dwindle.
What triggers the supernatural intervention in the story?
A Latin-educated soldier remembers a vegetarian restaurant whose plates bore an image of St. George with the motto "Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius" and speaks the invocation aloud while firing.
What happens immediately after the soldier utters the Latin invocation?
He feels something between a shudder and an electric shock, the battle noise fades to a murmur, and he hears a great voice crying "Array, array, array!" followed by thousands shouting for St. George.
What do the ghostly bowmen do when they appear?
A long line of shining shapes appears beyond the trench, drawing bows and sending clouds of singing arrows toward the German hosts, killing them by the thousands.
How does the battle end?
Ten thousand German soldiers lie dead before the English salient with no discernible wounds on their bodies, and the English position is saved, preventing a second Sedan.
How does Germany officially explain the mass German casualties?
The German General Staff concludes that the English must have used shells containing an unknown poisonous gas, since no wounds were found on the dead soldiers.
Who is the central character in the story, and what distinguishes him from the other soldiers?
The unnamed Latin-educated soldier, who knows Latin and "other useless things" and whose classical knowledge leads him to recall the St. George invocation that summons the bowmen.
What roles do Bill and Tom play in the story?
Bill and Tom are ordinary soldiers who witness the miraculous German defeat but attribute it to machine guns, not supernatural forces. Bill clouts the Latin scholar to stop him wasting ammunition on already-dead Germans.
Who are the ghostly bowmen, and where do they come from?
They are the spirits of English archers from the Battle of Agincourt (1415), summoned by St. George to defend England once again five centuries later.
What is the significance of St. George in the story?
St. George is England's patron saint who answers the soldier's invocation by sending his Agincourt bowmen to save the English, connecting medieval faith and national identity to a modern battlefield.
How does the "Tipperary humorist" contribute to the story's tone?
He improvises a grim new version of the marching song ending with "And we shan't get there" and quips "What price Sidney Street?" His dark humor captures the soldiers' defiant spirit in the face of certain death.
How does the story explore the theme of faith versus rationalism?
The Latin scholar's faith-based invocation produces a miraculous result, while the German "scientific principles" lead to a false rational explanation (poison gas), suggesting faith perceives truths that science cannot.
How does Machen connect medieval English identity to World War I?
By having Agincourt's bowmen rescue modern soldiers, Machen suggests an unbroken continuity of English martial spirit and divine protection spanning from the medieval era to 1914.
What does the story suggest about how legends are born?
Only one soldier understands the supernatural truth while others credit machine guns or poison gas, showing how extraordinary events get rationalized into competing narratives -- the very process by which the real-life Angels of Mons legend emerged from this fiction.
What is the significance of the soldiers having "no hope" yet continuing to fire "as if they had been shooting at Bisley"?
It illustrates the theme of duty and stoic courage -- the soldiers maintain professional discipline and composure even when they believe death is certain.
What narrative point of view does Machen use, and why is it effective?
A detached, journalistic third-person narrator who references censorship and military experts, giving the fantastical events the veneer of a factual war dispatch -- which is exactly why readers believed the story was true.
Identify the extended metaphor Machen uses to describe the intensifying German bombardment.
He compares it to a storm at sea: just when people say "it can blow no harder," a blast comes ten times fiercer -- paralleling the cannonade that escalates beyond what seems possible.
What is ironic about the German General Staff's conclusion regarding the dead soldiers?
The "scientific" Germans blame an unknown poison gas -- a rational explanation -- while the actual cause is supernatural bowmen from medieval legend, inverting the expected roles of reason and superstition.
How does Machen use the vegetarian restaurant detail as a literary device?
It serves as an unlikely catalyst connecting the mundane modern world (lentil cutlets pretending to be steak) to the sacred and mythic (St. George's invocation), showing how the miraculous can emerge from the ordinary.
What does the Latin motto "Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius" mean?
It means "May St. George be a present help to the English." The soldier reads it on plates at a vegetarian restaurant and later speaks it as an invocation during battle.
What does the medieval cry "Harow!" mean in the context of the ghostly voices?
It is a medieval English and Anglo-French cry for help or alarm, used by the spectral bowmen as they call upon St. George -- reinforcing that these are spirits from the medieval past.
What is a "salient" in military terminology, as used in the story?
A salient is a section of a battle line that projects toward the enemy, making it vulnerable to attack from multiple sides. The English hold a critical salient that the Germans target.
What is the significance of the closing line: "St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English"?
It definitively confirms the supernatural explanation over the scientific one, and only the Latin scholar knows the truth -- making him the sole keeper of a legend that the rest of the world will misinterpret.
What does the soldier mean when he says "World without end. Amen" before remembering the restaurant motto?
It is a phrase from Christian liturgy (the doxology), spoken with "some irrelevance" as a resigned prayer in the face of death -- yet it unconsciously opens the mental path to the sacred invocation that follows.
What is the effect of the ordinary soldiers' dialogue -- "More machine guns!" / "Don't hear them" -- during the supernatural event?
It shows that most soldiers experience the miracle without recognizing it, attributing the impossible German losses to conventional weapons, which underscores how differently the same event can be perceived.