battle of agincourt middle finger battle of agincourt middle finger

This battle concluded with King Harold of England dying at the hands of the Norman King William, which marked the beginning of a new era in England. The Battle of Agincourt is an iconic moment in English military history. King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 by Sir John Gilbert, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport, Lancashire. 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). [126], Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. 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. Update [June 20, 2022]: Updated SEO/social. 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. People who killed their social betters from a distance werent very well liked, and would likely have paid with their lives as did all the French prisoners, archers or otherwise, whom Henry V had executed at Agincourt, in what some historians consider a war crime. 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 archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. [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. When the French rejected Henrys substantial territorial demands, he arrived in Normandy in August 1415 with a force of about 12,000 men and laid siege to the city of Harfleur. When the English won the battle the soldiers waved their middle fingers at the French in defiance, thus flipping the bird was born |. 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. Loades, M. (2013). Materials characterization, 29(2), 111117. 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. [36] Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. T he battle of Agincourt, whose 600th anniversary falls on St Crispin's Day, 25 October, is still tabloid gold, Gotcha! 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. 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. And I aint kidding yew. (Indeed, Henry V was heavily criticized for supposedly having ordered the execution of French prisoners at Agincourt. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. During this battle, the medieval archers started ahead of the army and commenced the action. Thepostalleges that the Frenchhad planned to cut offthe middle fingers ofall captured English soldiers,to inhibit them fromdrawingtheir longbowsin futurebattles. 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. . query that we are duty bound to provide a bit of historical and linguistic information demonstrating why this anecdote couldn't possibly be accurate: The 'Car Talk' show (on NPR) with Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers have a feature called the 'Puzzler', and their most recent 'Puzzler' was about the Battle of Agincourt. The English were not in an ideal condition to fight a battle. The Roman gesturemadeby extending the third finger from a closed fist, thus made the same threat, by forming a similarly phallic shape. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. 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. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Nicolle, D. (2004). Moreover, if archers could be ransomed, then cutting off their middle fingers would be a senseless move. 33-35). The French, who were overwhelmingly favored to win the battle, Continue Reading 41 2 7 Alexander L 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. 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. [56] Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. [76] Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. News of the contrivance circulated within Europe and was described in a book of tactics written in 1411 by. (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.). It sounds rather fishy to me. Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". Agincourt came on the back of half a century of military failure and gave the English a success that repeated victories such as Crcy and Poitiers. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ), near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France. In the Battle of Agincourt, the French threatened the English Soldiers that they would cut off their fingers and when they failed the Englishmen mocked them by showing their fingers. This symbol of rocking out is formed by tucking the middle and index finger and holding them in place with the thumb. 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. [51] Albret, Boucicaut and almost all the leading noblemen were assigned stations in the vanguard. Didn't it originate at Agincourt? [25] The siege took longer than expected. During World War II the symbol was adopted as a V for victory. A Dictionary of Superstitions.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-19-282916-5 (p. 454). Fixed formatting. The Battle of Agincourt was another famous battle where longbowmen had a particularly important . The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. Corrections? A list of English archers killed at Agincourt, as recorded in the village's museum, The story of the battle has been retold many times in English, from the 15th-century, Dates in the fifteenth century are difficult to reconcile with modern calendars: see, The first known use of angled stakes to thwart a mounted charge was at the Battle of Nicopolis, an engagement between European states and Turkish forces in 1396, twenty years before Agincourt. 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. Why is the missionary position called that? The city capitulated within six weeks, but the siege was costly. [82], The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. [8] These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. It lasted longer than Henry had anticipated, and his numbers were significantly diminished as a result of casualties, desertions, and disease. All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ISBN 0-471-53672-5 (pp. The English army, led by King Henry V, famously achieved victory in spite of the numerical superiority of its opponent. The main part of the speech begins "This day is called the feast of . Inthe book,Corbeillpoints to Priapus, a minor deityhedatesto 400 BC, whichlater alsoappears in Rome as the guardian of gardens,according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome( here ). 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. After a difficult siege, the English forces found themselves assaulted by a massive French force. [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. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019 with bachelor's degrees in English Language and Literature and Medieval Studies. Bloomsbury Publishing. [123] Other ballads followed, including "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign. (Storyline based on the play by William Shakespeare "The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Batt. [77][78][79][80] Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at 220 yards (200m). [88] In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. [93] In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. 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). 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. It continued as a series of battles, sieges, and disputes throughout the 14th century, with both the French and the English variously taking advantage. I suppose that the two-fingered salute could still come from medieval archery, even if it didnt come specifically from the Battle of Agincourt, although the example that Wikipedia links to (the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter) is ambiguous. At issue was the question of the legitimate succession to the French crown as well as the ownership of several French territories. 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. 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 ). Winston Churchhill can be seen using the V as a rallying call. Supposedly, both originated at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, . On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. [45] A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. "[67] On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. 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. For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. before a defensive battle was possible. [93] Among them were 90120 great lords and bannerets killed, including[95] three dukes (Alenon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpr, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudmont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. 78-116). Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 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? But lets not quibble. The Hundred Years' War. [c], The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. [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). 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. This claim is false. The French nobility, weakened by the defeat and divided among themselves, were unable to meet new attacks with effective resistance. . [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]. Image source The historian Suetonius, writing about Augustus Caesar, says the emperor expelled [the entertainer] Pylades . Maybe it means five and was a symbol of support for Henry V? Unable to cross the Somme River because of French defenses, he was forced to take a detour inland and cross farther upstream. "Guardian newspaper:French correction: Henry V's Agincourt fleet was half as big, historian claims, 28 July 2015", "Living Dictionary of the French Language", "Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance", "High Court Rules for French at Agincourt", "High Court Justices, Legal Luminaries Debate Shakespeare's 'Henry V', "The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War", "Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt", The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, "Henry V's Greatest Victory is Besieged by Academia", The Little Grey Horse Henry V's Speech at Agincourt and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography, "The Battle of Agincourt: An Alternative location? Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. [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. 33-35). [34][d] The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. 138). Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. 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. 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. 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. 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. A widely shared image on social media purportedly explains the historic origins of the middle finger, considered an offensive gesture in Western culture. The Battle of Agincourt (720p) Watch on One popular "origin story" for the middle finger has to do with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. 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. Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415)Battle resulting in the decisive victory of the English over the French in the Hundred Years' War. 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. The Battle of Agincourt forms a key part of Shakespeare's Henry V. Photo by Nick Ansell / POOL / AFP) Myth: During the Hundred Years War, the French cut off the first and second fingers of any. 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. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. 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. [69] (The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crcy, for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles. ", "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. On 25 October 1415, an army of English raiders under Henry V faced the French outside an obscure village on the road to Calais. [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]. [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. Its not known whether one displayed the digitus infamis in the same manner that we (well, you) flip the bird today. 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. 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. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets.[64]. Its up there with heres something that they dont want you to know.. The middle finger gesture does not derive from the mutilation of English archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. 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]. But frankly, I suspect that the French would have done a lot worse to any captured English archers than chopping off their fingers. [139] The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle. After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. 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. This famous English longbow was . 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. 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. (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.) [109] Juliet Barker, Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of the numbers involved. [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.