Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore 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. Fighting ignorance since 1973. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". Adam Koford, Salt Lake City, Utah, Now for the facts. [19], Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. There had even been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". 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. (Its taking longer than we thought.) Soon after the battle started, it had thousands of English and French soldiers and horses running through it. Some notable examples are listed below. Omissions?
Agincourt was a battle like no other but how do the French remember The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. 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 original usage of this mudra can be traced back as far as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. [62] [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]. [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. 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. [31], The precise location of the battle is not known. [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. Agincourt. The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . One of the most renowned. 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. Wikipedia. Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com. If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America?
- 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. [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.
Saint Crispin's Day - Wikipedia 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 . 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 . Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. 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. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born The Face of Battle.New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. 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 ). [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. 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 famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and so the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking yew". October 25, 1415. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France. The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. [34] The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops.
Agincourt 1415: The Triumph of the Longbow (Video 1993) - IMDb Bloomsbury Publishing.
Africa: Funny but Fanciful - Little Evidence for Origin of the F Word 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. Its origins can be traced back to 1066 . Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army. Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture.
030223 - Musings From Leroy By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself.
The traditional view of the years 131821 is one of domination by [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. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. Thinking it was an attack from the rear, Henry had the French nobles he was holding prisoner killed. The English account in the Gesta Henrici says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well."[62]. [68], Henry's men were already very weary from hunger, illness and retreat. [25] The siege took longer than expected. T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! 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. "[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.
Battle of Agincourt and the origin of Fu#K | Origin story of middle . 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. 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? Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. 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. The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, Continue Reading 41 2 7 Alexander L 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 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. 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! 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). The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, three from eyewitnesses. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. 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. Most importantly, the battle was a significant military blow to France and paved the way for further English conquests and successes. News of the contrivance circulated within Europe and was described in a book of tactics written in 1411 by. 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. [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. This famous weapon was made of the . "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. The Roman gesturemadeby extending the third finger from a closed fist, thus made the same threat, by forming a similarly phallic shape. 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. 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. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. 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. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brtigny).