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. [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. Image source 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. [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. 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. 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". 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. [85], The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy. Contents. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. The Face of Battle.New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. 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. Thepostalleges that the Frenchhad planned to cut offthe middle fingers ofall captured English soldiers,to inhibit them fromdrawingtheir longbowsin futurebattles. The English won in a major upset and waved the body part in question at the French in defiance. Fighting ignorance since 1973. The struggle began in 1337 when King Edward III of England claimed the title King of France over Philip VI and invaded Flanders. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. The English numbered roughly 5,000 knights, men-at-arms, and archers. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with bachelor's degrees in English Language and Literature and Medieval Studies. [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. Bowman were not valuable prisoners, though: they stood outside the chivalric system and were considered the social inferiors of men-at-arms. [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. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. Since the French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were perfectly happy to wait for as long as it took. 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. Didn't it originate at Agincourt? [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 campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. [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]. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. In another of his books Morris describes a variety of sexual insults involving the middle finger, such as the middle-finger down prod, the middle-finger erect, etc., all of which are different from the classic middle-finger jerk. [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 symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". What it is supposed to represent I have no idea. [citation needed]. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. . [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. 42 Share 3.9K views 4 years ago There is an old story that allegedly gives the background of how we came to use the middle finger as an insult along with the alleged origin of the "F-word". [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] The Hundred Years' War. If the one-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, as the graphic suggests, then at what point did it get transformed into two fingers in England? The 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. Several heralds, both French and English, were present at the battle of Agincourt, and not one of them (or any later chroniclers of Agincourt) mentioned anything about the French having cut off the fingers of captured English bowman. 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. 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. [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. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. [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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The Face of Battle. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. [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. 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 . For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. Common estimates place the English army at about 6,000, while the French army probably consisted of 20,000 to 30,000 men. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. 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 ). But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. 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. before a defensive battle was possible. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. 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! Moreover, with this outcome Henry V strengthened his position in his own kingdom; it legitimized his claim to the crown, which had been under threat after his accession. The puzzler was: What was this body part? 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. 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. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". . Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. One final observation: any time some appeal begins with heres something that intelligent people will find edifying you should be suspicious. With Toby Merrell, Ian Brooker, Philip Rosch, Brian Blessed. [45] A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. [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. 138). To meet and beat him was a triumph, the highest form which self-expression could take in the medieval nobleman's way of life." 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). Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured soldiers. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". Nicolle, D. (2004). And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? In Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution, Desmond Morris and colleagues note that the digitus infamis or digitus impudicus (infamous or indecent finger) is mentioned several times in the literature of ancient Rome. A Dictionary of Superstitions.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. Probably each man-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (or varlet), an armed servant, adding up to another 10,000 potential fighting men,[7] though some historians omit them from the number of combatants. Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. 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. 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. 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. After a difficult siege, the English forces found themselves assaulted by a massive French force. The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . Soon after the battle started, it had thousands of English and French soldiers and horses running through it. 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 . Axtell, Roger E. Gestures: The Do's and Taboos of Body Language Around the World. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. It seems clear, however, that the English were at a decided numerical disadvantage. [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. The image makes the further claim that the English soldiers chanted pluck yew, ostensibly in reference to the drawing of the longbow. Julia Martinez was an Editorial Intern at Encyclopaedia Britannica. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. [72], The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. Im even more suspicious of the alleged transformation of p to f. Jones, P. N. (1992). Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). 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. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . [21] On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. However, the lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415), decisive battle in the Hundred Years War (13371453) that resulted in the victory of the English over the French. [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. It forms the backdrop to events in William Shakespeare's play Henry V, written in 1599. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. 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 . PLUCK YEW!". 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 ).