However, a need to reassert his authority at home (as well as his own ambition and a sense of justice) led Henry V to renew English claims in France. [39] Curry, Rogers[118] and Mortimer[42] all agree the French had 4 to 5 thousand missile troops. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. The Roman gesturemadeby extending the third finger from a closed fist, thus made the same threat, by forming a similarly phallic shape. . Adam Koford, Salt Lake City, Utah, Now for the facts. [citation needed], Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as Azincourt, after the nearest fortified place. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. Keegan, John. Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? According to contemporary English accounts, Henry fought hand to hand. 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. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. 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. And I aint kidding yew. 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). (Its taking longer than we thought.) [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 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. 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". This would prevent maneuvers that might overwhelm the English ranks. In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party points a finger, an indecent one, at some other people. [73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Julia Martinez was an Editorial Intern at Encyclopaedia Britannica. With 4,800 men-at-arms in the vanguard, 3,000 in the main battle, and 1,200 in the infantry wings. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. [106] This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . giving someone the middle finger But lets not quibble. 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 ). [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). [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. The third line of the French army, recoiling at the pile of corpses before them and unable to make an effective charge, was then massacred swiftly. 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. Soon after the victory at Agincourt, a number of popular folk songs were created about the battle, the most famous being the "Agincourt Carol", produced in the first half of the 15th century. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. The struggle began in 1337 when King Edward III of England claimed the title King of France over Philip VI and invaded Flanders. The one-finger salute, or at any rate sexual gestures involving the middle finger, are thousands of years old. |. Recent heavy rain made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The English army, led by King Henry V, famously achieved victory in spite of the numerical superiority of its opponent. Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. The military aspects of this account are similarly specious. The Duke of Brabant (about 2,000 men),[65] the Duke of Anjou (about 600 men),[65] and the Duke of Brittany (6,000 men, according to Monstrelet),[66] were all marching to join the army. 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. And although the precise etymology of the English word fuck is still a matter of debate, it is linguistically nonsensical to maintain that that word entered the language because the "difficult consonant cluster at the beginning" of the phase 'pluck yew' has "gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'f.'" The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crcy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). 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 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. Although it could be intended as humorous, the image on social media is historically inaccurate. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy. The approximate location of the battle has never been disputed, and the site remains relatively unaltered after 600 years. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. Agincourt, Henry V's famous victory over the French on 25 October 1415, is a fascinating battle not just because of what happened but also because of how its myth has developed ever since. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. An account purporting to offer the historical origins of the obscene middle-finger extended hand gesture (varously known as "flipping the bird," "flipping someone off," or the "one-finger salute") is silly, and so obviously a joke that shouldn't need any debunking. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. It. 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. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. [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. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. 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. 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. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. 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. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". 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! This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew." 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. 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. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". 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. 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). According to research, heres the true story: 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 Hundred Years' War. [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. 33-35). 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. [70]), The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used,[75] although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. 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. Why not simply kill them outright in the first place? Archers were not the "similarly equipped" opponents that armored soldiers triumphed in defeating -- if the two clashed in combat, the armored soldier would either kill an archer outright or leave him to bleed to death rather than go to the wasteful effort of taking him prisoner. Since pluck yew is rather difficult to say, like pheasant mother plucker, which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow, 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. [20] He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com. [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. T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! 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 effect of the victory on national morale was powerful. 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. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with bachelor's degrees in English Language and Literature and Medieval Studies. 33-35). Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades. ), 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? The version that I tell explains the specific British custom of elevating two fingers as a rude gesture. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [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. [104] Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. 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. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. [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]. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. PLUCK YEW!". Kill them outright and violate the medieval moral code of civilized warfare? [101] The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. 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. 78-116). David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. 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. 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 ). 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. [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. (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.). [90] In his study of the battle John Keegan argued that the main aim was not to actually kill the French knights but rather to terrorise them into submission and quell any possibility they might resume the fight, which would probably have caused the uncommitted French reserve forces to join the fray, as well. Updates? 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 (720p) Watch on The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. It was a disastrous attempt. 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. Since then there had been tension between the nobility and the royal house, widespread lawlessness throughout the kingdom, and several attempts on Henry Vs life. [27], During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. 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. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd. The Battle of Agincourt took place on October 25, 1415. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born The f-word itself is Germanic with early-medieval roots; the earliest attested use in English in an unambiguous sexual context is in a document from 1310. The Battle of Agincourt originated in 1328. 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. Despite the lack of motion pictures and television way back in the 15th century, the details of medieval battles such as the one at Agincourt in 1415 did not go unrecorded.
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