These numbers are based on the Gesta Henrici Quinti and the chronicle of Jean Le Fvre, the only two eyewitness accounts on the English camp. [8] These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. [59], The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. Im even more suspicious of the alleged transformation of p to f. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. When Henry V acceded to the English throne in 1413, there had been a long hiatus in the fighting. 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. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] King Henry V of England led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. Materials characterization, 29(2), 111117. with chivalry. 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. However, the lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. The Battle of Agincourt (720p) Watch on (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.). [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. . What does DO NOT HUMP mean on the side of railroad cars? The decorative use of the image of Priapusmatched the Roman use ofimages of male genitalia for warding off evil. It goes on to state thatafter an unexpected victory, the English soldiersmocked thedefeatedFrenchtroopsbywavingtheir middle fingers( here ). Wikipedia. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. Henry V's victory in the mud of Picardy remains the . [56] Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. After the victory, Henry continued his march to Calais and arrived back in England in November to an outpouring of nationalistic sentiment. [87] Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. 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. 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 . Dear Cecil: Can you confirm the following? [85], The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. 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. [38], The French army had 10,000 men-at arms[39][40][41] plus some 4,0005,000 miscellaneous footmen (gens de trait) including archers, crossbowmen[42] (arbaltriers) and shield-bearers (pavisiers), totaling 14,00015,000 men. [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. This was an innovative technique that the English had not used in the Battles of Crcy and Poitiers. 138). Singer Robbie Williams insults the viewer. 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. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. As the English were collecting prisoners, a band of French peasants led by local noblemen began plundering Henrys baggage behind the lines. 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. [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 English numbered roughly 5,000 knights, men-at-arms, and archers. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). [50] Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. 78-116). 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. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born Departing from Harfleur on October 8, Henry marched northward toward the English-held port of Calais, where he would disembark for England, with a force of 1,000 knights and men-at-arms and 5,000 archers. [106] This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. PLUCK YEW!". Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Nicolle, D. (2004). ", "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. This suggests that the French could have outnumbered the English 5 to 1. [89] A slaughter of the French prisoners ensued. 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 ). [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. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. [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]. And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here . For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. 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. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Adam Koford, Salt Lake City, Utah, Now for the facts. [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. 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). It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." One popular "origin story" for the middle finger has to do with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The "middle finger" gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. The 'middle finger salute' did not derive from the defiant gestures of English archers whose fingers had been severed at the Battle of Agincourt. Battles were observed and chronicled by heralds who were present at the scene and recorded what they saw, judged who won, and fixed names for the battles. 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. Jean de Wavrin, a knight on the French side wrote that English fatalities were 1,600 men of all ranks. [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. 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. Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. 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. False. 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. [34] The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops. The original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" [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. It supposedly describes the origin of the middle-finger hand gesture and, by implication, the insult "fuck you". "[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. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [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. 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. [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. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles,[30] calling on local nobles to join the army. . The English army, led by King Henry V, famously achieved victory in spite of the numerical superiority of its opponent. [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. In Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome, Anthony Corbeill, Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas wrote: The most familiar example of the coexistence of a human and transhuman elementis the extended middle finger. [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. [citation needed], The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. [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]. 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. Another verse begins: You love to be sodomized, Papylus . 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. The Battle of Agincourt is an iconic moment in English military history. [51] Albret, Boucicaut and almost all the leading noblemen were assigned stations in the vanguard. On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. 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 city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. 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. His men-at-arms were stationed in the centre, flanked by wedges of archers who carried longbows that had an effective range of 250 yards (229 metres). [123] Other ballads followed, including "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign. 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. (Its taking longer than we thought.) [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. Some notable examples are listed below. Wikipedia. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415), decisive battle in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) that resulted in the victory of the English over the French. [23] Thomas Morstede, Henry V's royal surgeon,[24] had previously been contracted by the king to supply a team of surgeons and makers of surgical instruments to take part in the Agincourt campaign. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Pronne, at Bthencourt and Voyennes[28][29] and resumed marching north. 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]. 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? This would prevent maneuvers that might overwhelm the English ranks. Contemporary accounts [ edit] 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. 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. Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. 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. giving someone the middle finger On February 1, 1328, King Charles IV of France died without an heir. Didn't it originate at Agincourt? [citation needed]. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started. The fact that Winston Churchill sometimes made his V-for-victory gesture rudely suggests that it is of much more recent vintage. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. [93] Among them were 90120 great lords and bannerets killed, including[95] three dukes (Alenon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpr, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudmont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. [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. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as plucking the yew. Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Over the years some folk etymologies have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. 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. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". [116] Rogers, on the other hand, finds the number 5,000 plausible, giving several analogous historical events to support his case,[112] and Barker considers that the fragmentary pay records which Curry relies on actually support the lower estimates. Details the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. 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 [37], Henry made a speech emphasising the justness of his cause, and reminding his army of previous great defeats the kings of England had inflicted on the French. 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. 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. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and a press of comrades while wearing armour weighing 5060 pounds (2327kg), gathering sticky clay all the way. [81] In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 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. 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 . 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. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. . 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 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. |. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. And for a variety of reasons, it made no military sense whatsoever for the French to capture English archers, then mutilate them by cutting off their fingers. 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. 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. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World. [82], The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Dos and Taboos of Body Language Around the World.New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. [60][61], Accounts of the battle describe the French engaging the English men-at-arms before being rushed from the sides by the longbowmen as the mle developed. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet.