When 5,000 British Archers Defeated Over 30,000 French Knights Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Wikipedia. I admit that I bring this story up when I talk about the Hundred Years War only to debunk it. Upon his death, a French assembly formed to appoint a male successor. Soon after the battle started, it had thousands of English and French soldiers and horses running through it. [127], Shakespeare's play presented Henry as leading a truly English force into battle, playing on the importance of the link between the monarch and the common soldiers in the fight. This famous weapon was made of the . And I aint kidding yew. Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. [135] The battle also forms a central component of the 2019 Netflix film The King. The English King Henry V and his troops were marching to Calais to embark for England when he was intercepted by forces which outnumbered his. [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. 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of French prisoners put to death may not have been substantial before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. One popular "origin story" for the middle finger has to do with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. 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. The battlefield was a freshly plowed field, and at the time of the battle, it had been raining continuously for several days. 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 next line of French knights that poured in found themselves so tightly packed (the field narrowed at the English end) that they were unable to use their weapons effectively, and the tide of the battle began to turn toward the English. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. [27], During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. Since then there had been tension between the nobility and the royal house, widespread lawlessness throughout the kingdom, and several attempts on Henry Vs life. One of the most renowned. Battle of Agincourt: English victory over the French | Britannica In such a "press" of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles. 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. In March 2010, a mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the slaughter of the prisoners was held in Washington, D.C., drawing from both the historical record and Shakespeare's play. A BBCNews Magazinereportsimilarlytracesthe gesture back toAncient Greek philosophers ( here ). The Hundred Years' War. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. [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. After Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. It seems clear, however, that the English were at a decided numerical disadvantage. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. [94][10][11] The list of casualties, one historian has noted, "read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation". The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". "[102], Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orlans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.[12]. The English account in the Gesta Henrici says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well."[62]. Agincourt 1415: The Triumph of the Longbow (Video 1993) - IMDb Legendinc.com Giving the Finger History [85], The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. [36] Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. A Dictionary of Superstitions.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. 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". Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. The Battle of Agincourt 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. When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and, using hatchets, swords, and the mallets they had used to drive their stakes in, attacked the now disordered, fatigued and wounded French men-at-arms massed in front of them. England had been fraught with political discord since Henry IV of the house of Lancaster (father of Henry V) had usurped the throne from Richard II in 1399. The battle probably lasted no longer than three hours and was perhaps as short as half an hour, according to some estimates. Most importantly, the battle was a significant military blow to France and paved the way for further English conquests and successes. [108] While not necessarily agreeing with the exact numbers Curry uses, Bertrand Schnerb, a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, states the French probably had 12,00015,000 troops. Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com. Longbowmen and "The Finger" - (on 'TheBeckoning') The 'middle finger salute' did not derive from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed at the Battle of Agincourt. The idea being that you need two fingers to draw a bow, which makes more sense, and thus links up a national custom with a triumphant moment in national history! Battle of Agincourt - Wikipedia I thought the French threatened to cut off the primary finger of the English longbowmen (the middle finger was neeed the most to pull the bowstring). Military textbooks of the time stated: "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win. [109] Juliet Barker, Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of the numbers involved. The battle repeated other English successes in the Hundred Years War, such as the Battle of Crcy (1346) and the Battle of Poitiers (1356), and made possible Englands subsequent conquest of Normandy and the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which named Henry V heir to the French crown. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. 33-35). [59], The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. The Face of Battle. Idiom Origins - Middle finger - History of Middle finger [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. According to research, heres the true story: 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. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [5] [b] Henry V 's victory at Agincourt, against a numerically superior French army. Two are from the epigrammatist Martial: Laugh loudly, Sextillus, when someone calls you a queen and put your middle finger out., (The verse continues: But you are no sodomite nor fornicator either, Sextillus, nor is Vetustinas hot mouth your fancy. Martial, and Roman poets in general, could be pretty out there, subject-matter-wise. [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. 1.3M views 4 months ago Medieval Battles - In chronological order The year 1415 was the first occasion since 1359 that an English king had invaded France in person. giving someone the middle finger 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. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Agincourt was a battle like no other but how do the French remember And although the precise etymology of the English word fuck is still a matter of debate, it is linguistically nonsensical to maintain that that word entered the language because the "difficult consonant cluster at the beginning" of the phase 'pluck yew' has "gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'f.'" The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir. Africa: Funny but Fanciful - Little Evidence for Origin of the F Word Common estimates place the English army at about 6,000, while the French army probably consisted of 20,000 to 30,000 men. News of the contrivance circulated within Europe and was described in a book of tactics written in 1411 by. [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. 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. . Originally representing the erect phallus, the gesture conveyssimultaneously a sexual threat to the person to whom it is directed andapotropaicmeans of warding off unwanted elements of the more-than-human. ( here ). [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. [17] Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet. In the Battle of Agincourt, the French threatened the English Soldiers that they would cut off their fingers and when they failed the Englishmen mocked them by showing their fingers. (Even if archers whose middle fingers had been amputated could no longer effectively use their bows, they were still capable of wielding mallets, battleaxes, swords, lances, daggers, maces, and other weapons, as archers typically did when the opponents closed ranks with them and the fighting became hand-to-hand.). [92], The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. [77][78][79][80] Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at 220 yards (200m). [53] A further 600 dismounted men-at-arms stood in each wing, with the left under the Count of Vendme and the right under the Count of Richemont. Wikipedia. .). Battle of Agincourt - English History [citation needed], Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as Azincourt, after the nearest fortified place. Since the French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. The English numbered roughly 5,000 knights, men-at-arms, and archers. At least one scholar puts the French army at no more than 12,000, indicating that the English were outnumbered 2 to 1. [22], Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. One Of The Oldest Insults: The Origin Of The Middle Finger - Storypick [21] On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. Contemporary accounts [ edit] The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Kill them outright and violate the medieval moral code of civilized warfare? This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. Your opponent is not going to pay you (or pay you much) for the return of mutilated soldiers, so now what do you do with them? After the victory, Henry continued his march to Calais and arrived back in England in November to an outpouring of nationalistic sentiment. And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? |. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. The delay allowed a large French force, led by the constable Charles dAlbret and the marshal Jean II le Meingre (called Boucicaut), to intercept him near the village of Agincourt on October 24. (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.) On October 25, 1415, during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) between England and France, Henry V (1386-1422), the young king of England, led his forces to victory at the Battle of . [34] The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops. Despite the lack of motion pictures and television way back in the 15th century, the details of medieval battles such as the one at Agincourt in 1415 did not go unrecorded. It seems it was purely a decision of Henry, since the English knights found it contrary to chivalry, and contrary to their interests, to kill valuable hostages for whom it was commonplace to ask ransom. The origins of the sign aren't confirmed, but popular folklore suggests that its original meaning, packed with insult and ridicule, first appeared in the 20th century in the battle of Agincourt. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the gesture is known as giving the bird. And yew all thought yew knew everything! [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]. 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]. [139] The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle. Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. 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 First of all, the word pluck begins with the blend pl, which would logically become fl if the voiceless bilabial plosive p has actually transformed into the labiodentalfricative f, which is by no means certain. Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows), 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. [b] The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until France defeated England in the Siege of Orlans in 1429. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. [101] The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born Agincourt and the Middle Finger | First Floor Tarpley Shakespeare's portrayal of the casualty loss is ahistorical in that the French are stated to have lost 10,000 and the English 'less than' thirty men, prompting Henry's remark, "O God, thy arm was here". French knights, charging uphill, were unseated from their horses, either because their mounts were injured on the stakes or because they dismounted to uproot the obstacles, and were overpowered. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. [125] Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event. 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. He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting the limbs, particularly at close range. Image source [91] Such an event would have posed a risk to the still-outnumbered English and could have easily turned a stunning victory into a mutually destructive defeat, as the English forces were now largely intermingled with the French and would have suffered grievously from the arrows of their own longbowmen had they needed to resume shooting. The 'middle finger salute' is derived from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed by the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Bloomsbury Publishing. The earliest known photograph of "the finger," given by Charles "Old (Storyline based on the play by William Shakespeare "The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Batt. 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. [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. [25] The siege took longer than expected. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. ), And even if killing prisoners of war did not violate the moral code of the times, what would be the purpose of taking archers captive, cutting off their fingers, and then executing them? The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants (who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour) combined with the English men-at-arms. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles,[30] calling on local nobles to join the army. 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. This article was. [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]. In his 2007 film adaptation, director Peter Babakitis uses digital effects to exaggerate realist features during the battle scenes, producing a more avant-garde interpretation of the fighting at Agincourt. [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 . It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. Poitiers 1356: The capture of a king (Vol. Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield. In 1999, Snopesdebunked more of the historical aspects of the claim, as well as thecomponent explaininghow the phrase pluck yew graduallychanged form to begin with an f( here ). The f-word itself is Germanic with early-medieval roots; the earliest attested use in English in an unambiguous sexual context is in a document from 1310. A Short History of "Flipping the Bird" - OddFeed What Is the History of the Middle Finger? | Snopes.com 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. Osprey Publishing. Another verse begins: You love to be sodomized, Papylus . The Battle of Agincourt - The European Middle Ages They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. 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.
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