The Roman gesturemadeby extending the third finger from a closed fist, thus made the same threat, by forming a similarly phallic shape. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415)Battle resulting in the decisive victory of the English over the French in the Hundred Years' War. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415), decisive battle in the Hundred Years War (13371453) that resulted in the victory of the English over the French. The Battle of Agincourt was immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play Henry V. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Face of Battle. Dear Cecil: Can you confirm the following? The body part which the French proposed to cut off of the English after defeating them was, of course, the middle finger, without which it is impossible to draw the renowned English longbow. [104] Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. A truce had been formally declared in 1396 that was meant to last 28 years, sealed by the marriage of the French king Charles VIs daughter to King Richard II of England. In a book on the battle of Agincourt, Anne Curry, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of Southampton, addressed a similar claim prescribed to the V-sign, also considered an offensive gesture: No chronicle or sixteenth-centuryhistory says that English archers made any gesture to the French after the battle in order to show they still had their fingers. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". [88], Regardless of when the baggage assault happened, at some point after the initial English victory, Henry became alarmed that the French were regrouping for another attack. The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . The original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Moreover, with this outcome Henry V strengthened his position in his own kingdom; it legitimized his claim to the crown, which had been under threat after his accession. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Pronne, at Bthencourt and Voyennes[28][29] and resumed marching north. The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crcy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). Bloomsbury Publishing. [114][115] Curry and Mortimer questioned the reliability of the Gesta, as there have been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. Both note that the Gesta vastly overestimates the number of French in the battle; its proportions of English archers to men-at-arms at the battle are also different from those of the English army before the siege of Harfleur. [69] (The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crcy, for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles. It seems to me that the single upturned middle finger clearly represents an erect penis and is the gestural equivalent of saying f*ck you! As such, it is probably ancient Wikipedia certainly thinks so, although apparently it became popular in the United States in the late nineteenth century under the influence of Italian immigration, replacing other rude gestures like thumbing the nose or the fig sign. Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. Wikipedia. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. The "middle finger" gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army. [121] Mortimer notes the presence of noncombatant pages only, indicating that they would ride the spare horses during the battle and be mistakenly thought of as combatants by the English.[122]. The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. Keegan, John. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Keegan also speculated that due to the relatively low number of archers actually involved in killing the French knights (roughly 200 by his estimate), together with the refusal of the English knights to assist in a duty they saw as distastefully unchivalrous, and combined with the sheer difficulty of killing such a large number of prisoners in such a short space of time, the actual number of French prisoners put to death may not have been substantial before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order. query that we are duty bound to provide a bit of historical and linguistic information demonstrating why this anecdote couldn't possibly be accurate: The 'Car Talk' show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the 'Puzzler', and their most recent 'Puzzler' was about the Battle of Agincourt. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. PLUCK YEW!". They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. Agincourt 1415: The Triumph of the Longbow: Directed by Graham Holloway. It. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses. [34] It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. [88] In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. When the first French line reached the English front, the cavalry were unable to overwhelm the archers, who had driven sharpened stakes into the ground at an angle before themselves. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? [56] Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. There is no evidence that, when captured in any scenario,archers had their finger cut off by the enemy( bit.ly/3dP2PhP ). [124], The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. [citation needed]. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. Why is the missionary position called that? Omissions? It may be in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt). [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born It lasted longer than Henry had anticipated, and his numbers were significantly diminished as a result of casualties, desertions, and disease. And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? (Storyline based on the play by William Shakespeare "The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Batt. King Henry V of England led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. [70]), The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore [soldiers would] be incapable of fighting in the future. Some notable examples are listed below. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. [20] He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in the third rank could scarcely use their swords,"[63] and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. As the English were collecting prisoners, a band of French peasants led by local noblemen began plundering Henrys baggage behind the lines. Barker, following the Gesta Henrici, believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concluded that the attack happened at the start of the battle. Sumption, thus, concludes that the French had 14,000 men, basing himself on the monk of St. Denis;[119] Mortimer gives 14 or 15 thousand fighting men. [89] A slaughter of the French prisoners ensued. The two candidates with the strongest claims were Edward III of England, who was the son of Charles's sister, and Philip, Charles's paternal . Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. The Hundred Years' War. The French nobility, weakened by the defeat and divided among themselves, were unable to meet new attacks with effective resistance. [27], During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. Barker, Sumption and Rogers all wrote that the English probably had 6,000 men, these being 5,000 archers and 9001,000 men-at-arms. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. before a defensive battle was possible. The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crcy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). [74], The plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the 1,000 yards or so to the English lines while being under what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot". [107], Most primary sources which describe the battle have English outnumbered by several times. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. The Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415) was a pivotal battle in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), resulting in an English victory over the French. [citation needed], In any event, Henry ordered the slaughter of what were perhaps several thousand French prisoners, sparing only the highest ranked (presumably those most likely to fetch a large ransom under the chivalric system of warfare). [54] To disperse the enemy archers, a cavalry force of 8001,200 picked men-at-arms,[55] led by Clignet de Brban and Louis de Bosredon, was distributed evenly between both flanks of the vanguard (standing slightly forward, like horns). David Mikkelson Published Sep 29, 1999. And I aint kidding yew. Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured soldiers. Eventually the archers abandoned their longbows and began fighting hand-to-hand with swords and axes alongside the men-at-arms. The third line of the French army, recoiling at the pile of corpses before them and unable to make an effective charge, was then massacred swiftly. Mortimer also considers that the Gesta vastly inflates the English casualties 5,000 at Harfleur, and that "despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way". Humble English archers defeated the armoured elite of French chivalry, enshrining both the longbow and the battle in English national legend. The English eyewitness account comes from the anonymous author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, believed to have been written by a chaplain in the King's household who would have been in the baggage train at the battle. [92], The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. While the precise number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that English losses amounted to about 400 and French losses to about 6,000, many of whom were noblemen. [50] Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. What does DO NOT HUMP mean on the side of railroad cars? Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. They had been weakened by the siege at Harfleur and had marched over 200 miles (more than 320 km), and many among them were suffering from dysentery. [8] These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." Although it could be intended as humorous, the image on social media is historically inaccurate. 33-35). [46] Many lords and gentlemen demanded and got places in the front lines, where they would have a higher chance to acquire glory and valuable ransoms; this resulted in the bulk of the men-at-arms being massed in the front lines and the other troops, for which there was no remaining space, to be placed behind. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Many folkloric or etymological myths have sprung up about its origin, especially the widely quoted one about the interplay between the French and English soldiery at the battle of Agincourt 1415, where the French threatened to amputate the middle fingers of the English archers to prevent them from drawing their bows, which of course is absolute The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. If the one-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, as the graphic suggests, then at what point did it get transformed into two fingers in England? The recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland favoured the English, both because of its narrowness, and because of the thick mud through which the French knights had to walk. The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory in the Hundred Years' War.The battle took place on Friday, 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) in the County of Saint-Pol, Artois, some. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. Agincourt came on the back of half a century of military failure and gave the English a success that repeated victories such as Crcy and Poitiers. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed. Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. The battlefield was a freshly plowed field, and at the time of the battle, it had been raining continuously for several days. . 33-35). Details the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. It sounds rather fishy to me. Upon his death, a French assembly formed to appoint a male successor. 42 Share 3.9K views 4 years ago There is an old story that allegedly gives the background of how we came to use the middle finger as an insult along with the alleged origin of the "F-word". Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Tudor re-invention, leading to the quintessential Shakespearean portrayal of "we happy few", has been the most influential, but every century has made its own accretions. This claim is false. Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. Fighting ignorance since 1973. This article was. The Face of Battle.New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. The Battle of Agincourt took place during the the Hundred Years' War, a conflict which, despite its name, was neither one single war nor did it last one hundred years. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. Made just prior to the invasion of Normandy, Olivier's rendition gives the battle what Sarah Hatchuel has termed an "exhilarating and heroic" tone, with an artificial, cinematic look to the battle scenes. By contrast, Anne Curry in her 2005 book Agincourt: A New History, argued, based on research into the surviving administrative records, that the French army was 12,000 strong, and the English army 9,000, proportions of four to three. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crcy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The Battle of Agincourt forms a key part of Shakespeare's Henry V. Photo by Nick Ansell / POOL / AFP) Myth: During the Hundred Years War, the French cut off the first and second fingers of any. Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. [97] According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed,[e] while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. [86], The only French success was an attack on the lightly protected English baggage train, with Ysembart d'Azincourt (leading a small number of men-at-arms and varlets plus about 600 peasants) seizing some of Henry's personal treasures, including a crown. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. When the French rejected Henrys substantial territorial demands, he arrived in Normandy in August 1415 with a force of about 12,000 men and laid siege to the city of Harfleur. A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used,[75] although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. The situation in England, coupled with the fact that France was weakened by its own political crisisthe insanity of Charles VI had resulted in a fight for power among the nobilitymade it an ideal moment for Henry to press his claims. (There is an Indo-European connection between the p-sound and f-sound see the distinction between the Latin pater and the Germanic Vater/father but that split occurred a long time ago.) The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. [113] Barker opined that "if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries".[110]. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. Take on the burden and expense of caring for them? Didn't it originate at Agincourt? This is the answer submitted by a listener: Dear Click and Clack, Thank you for the Agincourt 'Puzzler', which clears up some profound questions of etymology, folklore and emotional symbolism. Singer Robbie Williams insults the viewer. In the song Hotel California, what does colitas mean? [135] The battle also forms a central component of the 2019 Netflix film The King. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Course Hero uses AI to attempt to automatically extract content from documents to surface to you and others so you can study better, e.g., in search results, to enrich docs, and more. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. Although an audience vote was "too close to call", Henry was unanimously found guilty by the court on the basis of "evolving standards of civil society".[136][137][138]. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. Image source The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should appear chivalric, honest, and just and how a king must sometimes act Machiavellian and ruthless. Since pluck yew is rather difficult to say, like pheasant mother plucker, which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative f, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. Osprey Publishing. A labiodental fricative was no less "difficult" for Middle English speakers to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial stop/voiceless lateral combination of 'pl' that the fricative supposedly changed into, nor are there any other examples of such a pronunciation shift occurring in English. [139] The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle. Archers were not the "similarly equipped" opponents that armored soldiers triumphed in defeating -- if the two clashed in combat, the armored soldier would either kill an archer outright or leave him to bleed to death rather than go to the wasteful effort of taking him prisoner. Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . The basic premise that the origins of the one-finger gesture and its association with the profane word "fuck" were an outgrowth of the 1415 battle between French and English forces at Agincourt is simple enough to debunk. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. [126], Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. It was a disastrous attempt. [116] One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French,anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Early in the morning on October 25 (the feast day of St. Crispin), 1415, Henry positioned his army for battle on a recently plowed field bounded by woods. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. The decorative use of the image of Priapusmatched the Roman use ofimages of male genitalia for warding off evil. [26] He also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur. [133] Branagh's version gives a longer, more realist portrayal of the battle itself, drawing on both historical sources and images from the Vietnam and Falkland Wars.[134]. This suggests that the French could have outnumbered the English 5 to 1. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. You would think that anything English predating 1607, such as the language, Protestantism, or the Common Law, would have been a part of Americas patrimony. Certainly, d'Azincourt was a local knight but he might have been chosen to lead the attack because of his local knowledge and the lack of availability of a more senior soldier. Do you return these prisoners to your opponents in exchange for nothing, thereby providing them with trained soldiers who can fight against you another day? The Battle of Agincourt was dramatised by William Shakespeare in Henry V featuring the battle in which Henry inspired his much-outnumbered English forces to fight the French through a St Crispin's Day Speech, saying "the fewer men, the greater share of honour". The terrain favoured Henrys army and disadvantaged its opponent, as it reduced the numerical advantage of the French army by narrowing the front. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. [62] Le Fvre and Wavrin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger. [44] There was a special, elite cavalry force whose purpose was to break the formation of the English archers and thus clear the way for the infantry to advance. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. On 25 October 1415, an army of English raiders under Henry V faced the French outside an obscure village on the road to Calais. With 4,800 men-at-arms in the vanguard, 3,000 in the main battle, and 1,200 in the infantry wings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). The key word for describing the battle of Agincourt is mud . ", "Miracle in the Mud: The Hundred Years' War's Battle of Agincourt", The Agincourt Battlefield Archaeology Project, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Agincourt&oldid=1137126379, 6,000 killed (most of whom were of the French nobility), Hansen, Mogens Herman (Copenhagen Polis Centre), This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 23:13. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). At issue was the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown as well as the ownership of several French territories. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . As the story goes, the French were fighting with the English and had a diabolical (and greatly advertised) plan of cutting off the middle fingers of any captured English archers so they could never taunt the French with arrows plucked in their . This material may not be reproduced without permission. . [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. Contents. |. [22], Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. Legend says that the British archers were so formidable that the ones captured by the French had their index and middle fingers cut off so that they . One of the most renowned. [7] Barker, who believes the English were outnumbered by at least four to one,[120] says that the armed servants formed the rearguard in the battle. A Dictionary of Superstitions. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. Giving the Finger - Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers.