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. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. The image makes the further claim that the English soldiers chanted pluck yew, ostensibly in reference to the drawing of the longbow. [87] Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Fighting commenced at 11:00 am, as the English brought their longbows within killing range and the first line of French knights advanced, led by cavalry. 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. 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. Do you return these prisoners to your opponents in exchange for nothing, thereby providing them with trained soldiers who can fight against you another day? [47] Although it had been planned for the archers and crossbowmen to be placed with the infantry wings, they were now regarded as unnecessary and placed behind them instead. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2million crowns. The Hundred Years War was a discontinuous conflict between England and France that spanned two centuries. It is unclear whether the delay occurred because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault (and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position), or whether the French mounted knights instead did not react quickly enough to the English advance. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. [101] The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. 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. Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . Image source [34][d] The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. 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]. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. with chivalry. [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. [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. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. 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. Before the battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French proposed cutting the middle finger off of captured English soldiers rendering them incapable of shooting longbows. 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. [25] The siege took longer than expected. But lets not quibble. False. 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). 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. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. [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. Nonetheless, so many readers have forwarded it to us accompanied by an "Is this true?" The image makes the claim that the gesture derives from English soldiers at the Battle of Agincourt, France in 1415. [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. A labiodental fricative was no less "difficult" for Middle English speakers to pronounce than the aspirated bilabial stop/voiceless lateral combination of 'pl' that the fricative supposedly changed into, nor are there any other examples of such a pronunciation shift occurring in English. 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. "[102], Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orlans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.[12]. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays. The Gesta Henrici places this after the English had overcome the onslaught of the French men-at-arms and the weary English troops were eyeing the French rearguard ("in incomparable number and still fresh"). The Face of Battle.New York: Penguin Books, 1978 ISBN 0-140-04897-9 (pp. When Henry V acceded to the English throne in 1413, there had been a long hiatus in the fighting. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. Keegan, John. 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. . This article was. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. 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. In the other reference Martial writes that a certain party points a finger, an indecent one, at some other people. before a defensive battle was possible. Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. 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. 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. Battle of Agincourt. It forms the backdrop to events in William Shakespeare's play Henry V, written in 1599. 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. 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. 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. [32] In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps. Most importantly, the battle was a significant military blow to France and paved the way for further English conquests and successes. Agincourt. [17] Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. 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. The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles (420km) in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and were greatly outnumbered by well-equipped French men-at-arms. After a difficult siege, the English forces found themselves assaulted by a massive French force. [93] Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. [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. 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 '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. His men-at-arms were stationed in the centre, flanked by wedges of archers who carried longbows that had an effective range of 250 yards (229 metres). 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. 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. 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? I admit that I bring this story up when I talk about the Hundred Years War only to debunk it. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [48] On account of the lack of space, the French drew up a third battle, the rearguard, which was on horseback and mainly comprised the varlets mounted on the horses belonging to the men fighting on foot ahead. . (Its taking longer than we thought.) The insulting gesture of extending one's middle finger (referred to as digitus impudicus in Latin) originated long before the Battle of Agincourt. Departing from Harfleur on October 8, Henry marched northward toward the English-held port of Calais, where he would disembark for England, with a force of 1,000 knights and men-at-arms and 5,000 archers. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. ", "Miracle in the Mud: The Hundred Years' War's Battle of Agincourt", The Agincourt Battlefield Archaeology Project, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Agincourt&oldid=1137126379, 6,000 killed (most of whom were of the French nobility), Hansen, Mogens Herman (Copenhagen Polis Centre), This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 23:13. Opie, Iona and Moira Tatem. 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. [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. [Adam attaches the following memo, which has been floating around the Internet for some time.] In pursuit of his claim to the French throne, Henry V invaded Normandy with an army of 11,000 men in August 1415. Its not known whether one displayed the digitus infamis in the same manner that we (well, you) flip the bird today. 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. . 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. By most contemporary accounts, the French army was also significantly larger than the English, though the exact degree of their numerical superiority is disputed. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France. 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. Why is the missionary position called that? The battlefield was a freshly plowed field, and at the time of the battle, it had been raining continuously for several days. 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 Battle of Agincourt was dramatised by William Shakespeare in Henry V featuring the battle in which Henry inspired his much-outnumbered English forces to fight the French through a St Crispin's Day Speech, saying "the fewer men, the greater share of honour". 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. giving someone the middle finger 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. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. [74], The plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the 1,000 yards or so to the English lines while being under what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot". Kill them outright and violate the medieval moral code of civilized warfare? Osprey Publishing. [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. Some historians trace its origins to ancient Rome. 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 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). [92], The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. [68], Henry's men were already very weary from hunger, illness and retreat. 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. [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. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird". If the two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, then at what point was it reduced to one finger in North America? It seems it was purely a decision of Henry, since the English knights found it contrary to chivalry, and contrary to their interests, to kill valuable hostages for whom it was commonplace to ask ransom. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. Many folkloric or etymological myths have sprung up about its origin, especially the widely quoted one about the interplay between the French and English soldiery at the battle of Agincourt 1415, where the French threatened to amputate the middle fingers of the English archers to prevent them from drawing their bows, which of course is absolute [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. . [105] Other benefits to the English were longer term. [34] It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. 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. "[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. Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! [62] 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. What does DO NOT HUMP mean on the side of railroad cars? 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.