title: Bowmen of England (Pen and Sword Military Classics)
author: Donald Featherstone
description: Donald Featherstone is a military expert who is the author of Poitiers 1356, Warriors and Warfare in Ancient and Medieval Times and Victorian Colonial Warfare. The Introduction is written by the pre-eminent medieval scholar Richard Barber.
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  THE BOWMEN
  
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  # THE BOWMEN
  
  
  ### Arthur Machen
  
  
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  IT WAS DURING the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority
  
  
  of the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But
  
  
  it was on the most awful day of that awful time, on the day when ruin
  
  
  and disaster came so near that their shadow fell over London far away;
  
  
  and, without any certain news, the hearts of men failed within them and
  
  
  grew faint; as if the agony of the army in the battlefield had entered
  
  
  into their souls.
  
  
  On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms
  
  
  with all their artillery swelled like a flood against the little
  
  
  English company, there was one point above all other points in our
  
  
  battle line that was for a time in awful danger, not merely of defeat,
  
  
  but of utter annihilation. With the permission of the Censorship and of
  
  