As the English were collecting prisoners, a band of French peasants led by local noblemen began plundering Henrys baggage behind the lines. Didn't it originate at Agincourt? 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). Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World. The Agincourt Carol, dating from around this time and possibly written for Henrys reception in London, is a rousing celebration of the might of the English. Although it could be intended as humorous, the image on social media is historically inaccurate. Medieval warriors didn't take prisoners because by doing so they were observing a moral code that dictated opponents who had laid down their arms and ceased fighting must be treated humanely, but because they knew high-ranking captives were valuable property that could be ransomed for money. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. Why do some people have that one extra-long fingernail on the pinkie finger. Agincourt 1415: The Triumph of the Longbow: Directed by Graham Holloway. 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. 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. The ransoming of prisoners was the only way for medieval soldiers to make a quick fortune, and so they seized every available opportunity to capture opponents who could be exchanged for handsome prices. 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 French nobility, weakened by the defeat and divided among themselves, were unable to meet new attacks with effective resistance. [31] This entailed abandoning his chosen position and pulling out, advancing, and then re-installing the long sharpened wooden stakes pointed outwards toward the enemy, which helped protect the longbowmen from cavalry charges. 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. [23] The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur. 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. [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. 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. Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com. [25] The siege took longer than expected. Some notable examples are listed below. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. 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. [130] Critic David Margolies describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com. 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 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. Last, but certainly not least, wouldn't these insolent archers have been bragging about plucking a bow's string, and not the wood of the bow itself? 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! The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . 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. The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. ), 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? [45] A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Pronne, at Bthencourt and Voyennes[28][29] and resumed marching north. These heralds were not part of the participating armies, but were, as military expert John Keegan describes, members of an "international corporation of experts who regulated civilized warfare." Jean de Wavrin, a knight on the French side wrote that English fatalities were 1,600 men of all ranks. . (Indeed, Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt. 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. 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. 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 . 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. [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. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. . |. The English army, led by King Henry V, famously achieved victory in spite of the numerical superiority of its opponent. T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! This famous weapon was made of the . The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. Recent heavy rain made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. This famous English longbow was . The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. [56] Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. The fact that Winston Churchill sometimes made his V-for-victory gesture rudely suggests that it is of much more recent vintage. 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! Osprey Publishing. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. It was a disastrous attempt. 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. There is no evidence that, when captured in any scenario,archers had their finger cut off by the enemy( bit.ly/3dP2PhP ). A list of English archers killed at Agincourt, as recorded in the village's museum, The story of the battle has been retold many times in English, from the 15th-century, Dates in the fifteenth century are difficult to reconcile with modern calendars: see, The first known use of angled stakes to thwart a mounted charge was at the Battle of Nicopolis, an engagement between European states and Turkish forces in 1396, twenty years before Agincourt. The . 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. The Face of Battle. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. 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. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. [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). David Mikkelson Published Sep 29, 1999. Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. Keegan, John. However, the lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. The pl sound, the story goes, gradually changed into an f, giving the gesture its present meaning. This suggests that the French could have outnumbered the English 5 to 1. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. It lasted longer than Henry had anticipated, and his numbers were significantly diminished as a result of casualties, desertions, and disease. 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! 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. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. Details the English victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. 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. [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. Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). 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 army was divided into three groups, with the right wing led by Edward, Duke of York, the centre led by the king himself, and the left wing under the old and experienced Baron Thomas Camoys. The metallography and relative effectiveness of arrowheads and armor during the Middle Ages. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. 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. 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. The longbow. 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. [89] A slaughter of the French prisoners ensued. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415)Battle resulting in the decisive victory of the English over the French in the Hundred Years' War. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. Whether this was true is open to question and continues to be debated to this day; however, it seems likely that death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed. 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. [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. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. [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). 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. It forms the backdrop to events in William Shakespeare 's play Henry V, written in 1599. 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. 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. Many people who have seen the film question whether giving the finger was done around the time of the Titanic disaster, or was it a more recent gesture invented by some defiant seventh-grader. [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. Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . The Hundred Years' War. 33-35). Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. Bloomsbury Publishing. 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 . Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. before a defensive battle was possible. [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. 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. Thepostalleges that the Frenchhad planned to cut offthe middle fingers ofall captured English soldiers,to inhibit them fromdrawingtheir longbowsin futurebattles. 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. 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). This material may not be reproduced without permission. With Toby Merrell, Ian Brooker, Philip Rosch, Brian Blessed. 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. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with bachelor's degrees in English Language and Literature and Medieval Studies. This claim is false. 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. 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]. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Turning to our vast classical library, we quickly turn up three references. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. 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. [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. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The Battle of Agincourt is an iconic moment in English military history. [110][111][112] Ian Mortimer endorsed Curry's methodology, though applied it more liberally, noting how she "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", and concluded that "the most extreme imbalance which is credible" is 15,000 French against 8,0009,000 English. The middle finger gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. 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. 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 insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battle of Agincourt. [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. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. It goes on to state thatafter an unexpected victory, the English soldiersmocked thedefeatedFrenchtroopsbywavingtheir middle fingers( 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. [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. [52] The dukes of Alenon and Bar led the main battle. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. 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. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. Eventually the archers abandoned their longbows and began fighting hand-to-hand with swords and axes alongside the men-at-arms. 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. In the ensuing negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Anjou, Brittany, Flanders, Normandy, and Touraine, as well as Aquitaine. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. It may be difficult to pinpoint exactly when the middle finger gesture originated, but some historians trace its roots to ancient Rome. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. (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.) [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]. Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. 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. Fighting ignorance since 1973. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. This would prevent maneuvers that might overwhelm the English ranks. 78-116). (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.).