battle of agincourt middle finger

Moreover, if archers could be ransomed, then cutting off their middle fingers would be a senseless move. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". It sounds rather fishy to me. False. The puzzler was: What was this body part? Clip from the 1944 movie "Henry V" (137 min). They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were perfectly happy to wait for as long as it took. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." 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. And where does the distinction between one and two fingers come from? After a difficult siege, the English forces found themselves assaulted by a massive French force. [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]. 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. 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). 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. [52] The dukes of Alenon and Bar led the main battle. Osprey Publishing. 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. There was no monetary reward to be obtained by capturing them, nor was there any glory to be won by defeating them in battle. The field that the French had to cross to meet their enemy was muddy after a week of rain and slowed their progress, during which time they endured casualties from English arrows. [104] Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. This famous English longbow was . The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. 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. [5] [b] Henry V 's victory at Agincourt, against a numerically superior French army. [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. 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. 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 . "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. [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. [72], The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. Tudor re-invention, leading to the quintessential Shakespearean portrayal of "we happy few", has been the most influential, but every century has made its own accretions. 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". The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, Continue Reading 41 2 7 Alexander L [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] The battlefield was a freshly plowed field, and at the time of the battle, it had been raining continuously for several days. 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 . This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. 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 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. [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. The Battle of Agincourt (/dnkr(t)/ AJ-in-kor(t);[a] French: Azincourt [azku]) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. 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. New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. [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). When Henry V acceded to the English throne in 1413, there had been a long hiatus in the fighting. 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. 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. Agincourt 1415: The Triumph of the Longbow: Directed by Graham Holloway. 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. 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. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. 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. giving someone the middle finger 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. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . 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. [92], The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. [25] The siege took longer than expected. [22], Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. (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.) 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. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. [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). 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. 33-35). Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Fighting ignorance since 1973. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. 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. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Keegan, John. 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. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crcy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. 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 English numbered roughly 5,000 knights, men-at-arms, and archers. Why is the missionary position called that? 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] One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet. The metallography and relative effectiveness of arrowheads and armor during the Middle Ages. 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. The cavalry force, which could have devastated the English line if it had attacked while they moved their stakes, charged only after the initial volley of arrows from the English. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome.

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