138). As John Keegan wrote in his history of warfare: "To meet a similarly equipped opponent was the occasion for which the armoured soldier trained perhaps every day of his life from the onset of manhood. [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. As the mle developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. 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. [43], The French were organized into two main groups (or battles), a vanguard up front and a main battle behind, both composed principally of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by more of the same in each wing. Without the middle finger it would be impossible for the English soldiers to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore incapable of fighting in the future. This use of stakes could have been inspired by the Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry. [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. The Face of Battle. [34][d] The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. 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. A Dictionary of Superstitions. 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]. Battle of Agincourt, 1415 (ALL PARTS) England vs France Hundred The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. PLUCK YEW!". Thepostalleges that the Frenchhad planned to cut offthe middle fingers ofall captured English soldiers,to inhibit them fromdrawingtheir longbowsin futurebattles. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party points a finger, an indecent one, at some other people. "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. Idiom Origins - Middle finger - History of Middle finger 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. Fighting commenced at 11:00 am, as the English brought their longbows within killing range and the first line of French knights advanced, led by cavalry. 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 . It was a disastrous attempt. [62] T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. 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. The 'middle finger salute' did not derive from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed at the Battle of Agincourt. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. [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. Turning to our vast classical library, we quickly turn up three references. To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." 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". Africa: Funny but Fanciful - Little Evidence for Origin of the F Word Didn't it originate at Agincourt? . [84] The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. At issue was the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown as well as the ownership of several French territories. [33], Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen) across a 750-yard (690m) part of the defile. ", "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. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 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. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. The "middle finger" gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The English numbered roughly 5,000 knights, men-at-arms, and archers. 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 historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . 33-35). 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. Rogers says each of the 10,000 men-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) and a noncombatant page, counts the former as fighting men, and concludes thus that the French in fact numbered 24,000. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. 10+ True Battle Agincourt Facts That Will Make You Look Stupid 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]. [130][131] Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War, when the British Expeditionary Force's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it.[132]. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. This moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry and as a key example of the paradox of kingship. Henry V and the resumption of the Hundred Years War, That fought with us upon Saint Crispins day, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Agincourt, World History Encyclopedia - Battle of Agincourt, Warfare History Network - Miracle in the Mud: The Hundred Years' War's Battle of Agincourt, Battle of Agincourt - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). 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. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". 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. There had even been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes. [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 two candidates with the strongest claims were Edward III of England, who was the son of Charles's sister, and Philip, Charles's paternal . 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. This battle concluded with King Harold of England dying at the hands of the Norman King William, which marked the beginning of a new era in England. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [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. [128] The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict. This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. Henry managed to subjugate Normandy in 1419, a victory that was followed by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, which betrothed Henry to King Charles VIs daughter Catherine and named him heir to the French crown. Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. [27], During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. Adam Koford, Salt Lake City, Utah, Now for the facts. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415)Battle resulting in the decisive victory of the English over the French in the Hundred Years' War. [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]. 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 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. (Storyline based on the play by William Shakespeare "The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Batt. 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. "[129], The play introduced the famous St Crispin's Day Speech, considered one of Shakespeare's most heroic speeches, which Henry delivers movingly to his soldiers just before the battle, urging his "band of brothers" to stand together in the forthcoming fight. "Guardian newspaper:French correction: Henry V's Agincourt fleet was half as big, historian claims, 28 July 2015", "Living Dictionary of the French Language", "Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance", "High Court Rules for French at Agincourt", "High Court Justices, Legal Luminaries Debate Shakespeare's 'Henry V', "The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War", "Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt", The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, "Henry V's Greatest Victory is Besieged by Academia", The Little Grey Horse Henry V's Speech at Agincourt and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography, "The Battle of Agincourt: An Alternative location? 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. But lets not quibble. The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here . 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. 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. [68], Henry's men were already very weary from hunger, illness and retreat. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. 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. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . The terrain favoured Henrys army and disadvantaged its opponent, as it reduced the numerical advantage of the French army by narrowing the front. Contemporary accounts describe the triumphal pageantry with which the king was received in London on November 23, with elaborate displays and choirs attending his passage to St. Pauls Cathedral. 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. The effect of the victory on national morale was powerful. 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. [18] A recent re-appraisal of Henry's strategy of the Agincourt campaign incorporates these three accounts and argues that war was seen as a legal due process for solving the disagreement over claims to the French throne. [citation needed]. 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. Medieval Archers (Everything you Need to Know) - The Finer Times There is a modern museum in Agincourt village dedicated to the battle. False. Inthe book,Corbeillpoints to Priapus, a minor deityhedatesto 400 BC, whichlater alsoappears in Rome as the guardian of gardens,according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome( here ). The original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. 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 . 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. because when a spectator started to hiss, he called the attention of the whole audience to him with an obscene movement of his middle finger. Morris also claims that the mad emperor Caligula, as an insult, would extend his middle finger for supplicants to kiss. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Corrections? Humble English archers defeated the armoured elite of French chivalry, enshrining both the longbow and the battle in English national legend. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? Julia Martinez was an Editorial Intern at Encyclopaedia Britannica. [126], Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Henry V's victory in the mud of Picardy remains the . The English finally crossed the Somme south of Pronne, at Bthencourt and Voyennes[28][29] and resumed marching north. .). Agincourt and the Middle Finger | First Floor Tarpley 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. Legendinc.com Giving the Finger History Omissions? [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. [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. 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. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] 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! Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. 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. [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). It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". The French had originally drawn up a battle plan that had archers and crossbowmen in front of their men-at-arms, with a cavalry force at the rear specifically designed to "fall upon the archers, and use their force to break them,"[71] but in the event, the French archers and crossbowmen were deployed behind and to the sides of the men-at-arms (where they seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle). 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". The point is, the middle-finger/phallus equation goes back way before the Titanic, the Battle of Agincourt, or probably even that time Sextillus cut off Pylades with his chariot. Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. This article was. It forms the backdrop to events in William Shakespeare 's play Henry V, written in 1599. The insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battle of Agincourt. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. [96] Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable (Albret), an admiral (the lord of Dampierre), the Master of Crossbowmen (David de Rambures, dead along with three sons), Master of the Royal Household (Guichard Dauphin) and prvt of the marshals. 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. While numerous English sources give the English casualties in double figures,[8] record evidence identifies at least 112 Englishmen killed in the fighting,[103] while Monstrelet reported 600 English dead. [107], Most primary sources which describe the battle have English outnumbered by several times. It sounds rather fishy to me. 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. 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. I suppose that the two-fingered salute could still come from medieval archery, even if it didnt come specifically from the Battle of Agincourt, although the example that Wikipedia links to (the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter) is ambiguous. [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. giving someone the middle finger October 25, 1415. [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. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. [124], The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? 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. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. This suggests that the French could have outnumbered the English 5 to 1. [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. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brtigny). [32] In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps. The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Battle of Agincourt and the origin of Fu#K | Origin story of middle [21] On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir.